Random futa things

by Jokiba

Just as the title says pure smut

44. SISSEKAI: The Story of How I Became Trap

SISSEKAI: The Story of How I Became Trapped In A Virtual Reality Game And Turned Into A Sissy!

FEMINYZE_CAPTIONS

Summary:

VALKYRIE is the world's most ambitious VRMMORPG yet, and when a young man is asked by his crush to try it out with her, he can't start soon enough. But all is not as it seems in this virtual world, and as slightly amiss details begin to pile up around them, our hero begins to wonder if this game is truly a game at all...

Also, lots of forced fem, NTR, ruthless futa-fucking, all that good stuff. Enjoy!

Notes:

hiiii! this is a story that i started a while ago, and lately i've been thinking about picking it back up and actually continuing it! it's a fair bit slower than JAILBIRD, and not nearly as porn-focused as my captions on other sites, buuuuut it's really fun and i think it's worth a read if you're at all into sissification and isekais and that kind of stuff!

(See the end of the work for other works inspired by this one.)

Chapter 1: Entering the World of VALKYRIE

Chapter Text

I could barely contain my excitement as the loading screen flared into life over my optic nerves. The Phantasm Vision was the state-of-the-art virtual reality console of my generation: it had cost an arm and a leg, but it did everything. Full haptic feedback, perfect proprioceptory mapping, vital sign monitoring so that games could react to the user's pulse and adrenaline levels… it was even supposed to be able to simulate olfactory and gustatory sensations. And I hadn't even known what gustatory meant before I'd read the user manual for this thing. Best of all, it somehow achieved all of this with a rig no more obtrusive than a single headset with goggles and headphones. There was no awkward form-fitting bodysuit, no omnidirectional treadmill, and in fact not even any handheld controllers to worry about. It truly was a technological marvel.

In the end, though, the Vision was just a platform: a really, really expensive platform, but still one that did little without something to do on it. That was where the other half of today's equation came in; the open beta release of the upcoming VR game VALKYRIE, an MMORPG touted as so expansive and immersive that it could only have been made with the Vision on the market. Despite the gaming industry's long history with overhyped betas, critics were already unanimously declaring that VALKYRIE was going to blow every other game on the platform completely out of the water.

It was the entire reason I'd bought the Vision in the first place, and I was sure the investment was going to pay off-- not because of what any critics thought, but because of the person I was going to be playing VALKYRIE with. I let myself have a giddy little laugh as I thought of April. I wasn't normally much of an MMO person, but she'd sent me a free key for this game. The least I could do was take her up on her offer to party up with me in these first few weeks of the beta. Maybe this was how I would finally gather up the courage to ask her out on a date.

The game was still installing, so I lost myself for a while in thoughts of April, and her glistening dark skin, and her toned muscles, and the raw unperfumed scent of her sweat whenever she finished running track for the school, and her unruly mane of black hair, and her pearly white smile. Outside the protective bubble of my Vision goggles, I could feel my cock stirring in my pants. For a moment, I considered rubbing one out right there-- but my bedroom door wasn't locked, and with the goggles on my head I had a very good chance of not noticing my mom opening the door to check in on me. I shook my head. April was going to be joining voice chat very soon, and there was no way I was going to let the first thing she heard be the sound of me panting to myself. There would be no explaining that.

As if to vindicate my thoughts, a familiar notification played through my Vision's headphones.

"Hi," I said awkwardly to empty space, after a couple of seconds.

"Hello!" came the immediate reply. April's voice was nice and clear: it was almost like she was standing right next to me. "Are you in yet?"

I smirked slightly at the vaguely inappropriate wording, but couldn't think of a way to make a joke about it without coming across as a little perverse. "Uh, no," I said instead. "Still installing. I'm nearly at 70%."

"Oh, cool, cool beans," April said. "Well, I guess this gives us a chance to talk about our characters! Have any ideas yet?"

"No," I said truthfully. "I haven't even looked at the options yet." Though I wasn't big on MMOs, I did often tackle solo RPGs, and so I'd figured I'd know well enough to get by once I was in VALKYRIE's character creator.

"Well, this game is a pretty classic RPG. The races are, you know, stuff like Elf, Human, Dwarf, and the classes are like, Mage, Druid, Monk, Knight, and so on."

"Cool," I said. "And you're already an… Orc Druid, right?"

"Beastkin Druid," April corrected me. "Oh, you've gotta see my character! She's so cute! She has these big, fluffy ears, and this long tail…"

While she babbled on about her character, I thought about my options. Druids were usually spellcasters, I was pretty sure, with a strong nature magic theme… so she was probably going to be playing healer for me. That meant it would probably be best for me to pick a strong frontline class, so I could soak hits for her and dish out damage while she healed me: maybe the Knight thing she'd mentioned. It was a little stereotypical, and maybe a bit too on the nose to be literally white knighting for her, but it was worth a shot.

When she paused to take a breath, I plunged in with my suggestion. "So, it sounds like a Knight might be a good option for me?"

"Ooh. You know, I hear the ladies love a guy in armour," April said. I could almost hear her eyebrows waggling in her voice.

I snorted. "Sounds good to me. Oh!" The installation bar had finally reached 100%. It was time to get started with the game.

"Uh, April?" I said. "When you started out, was the first choice your character's gender too?"

April made a thoughtful sound. "Yeah, I think so. Why?"

"It's just, normally there's more than one option, right? Like, boy and girl?"

"Mhm," April said. "Why, what does yours say?"

I didn't answer for a while.

"Hello? You there?"

"Uh, sorry," I said quickly. "It says… 'SISSY'."

"Huh?" April's confusion was audible. "Try restarting the game, maybe?"

I did. When the game loaded back up, nothing had changed: I still had exactly one choice, and that choice was still SISSY.

"Hmm," April said thoughtfully when I reported this back to her. "Maybe it's a bug? Just click through it for now. You can always make a new character later, whenever they fix it."

I shrugged and gestured at the option. The screen flashed a pale pink for a fraction of a second-- but I didn't mention it to April. It was probably just the bug acting up. When the pink faded, the screen had changed, and now there were several options.

Weirdly, all three boxes already had information in them, and they were all greyed out like they were disabled. I gestured at the top one, trying to open up the on-screen keyboard, but got nowhere: and I achieved similar results with the other two fields. For some reason, I was locked into these values.

Like before, I reported this to April, and she made another confused sound. "It's kind of the same as the gender bug… maybe this is some kind of debug character that got left in the game?"

"A debug character?" I asked.

"Yeah," April said, clearly warming to the idea. "Maybe one of the devs had 'Anne's' details pre-set so he could test things in game, and some bug made it so you got stuck with her. Him?" She frowned. "What the heck do you call a 'sissy' anyway?"

I grunted and clicked through the confirm button at the bottom of this screen.

The next screen was clearly a character creator. Standing T-posed on a dais in front of me was someone clearly supposed to be Anne herself. I was pretty sure she was supposed to be a "she", regardless of what the gender screen said. Though she wore a long, flowing robe that kept her figure quite invisible, her face and head were another story. Her hair was long, black, and done up in twin-tails with the help of some pink scrunchies that looked distinctly anachronistic next to her robe. Her face was distinctly pretty: on the Vision's incredible specs, she looked almost like a real girl, with nice thick eyelashes and soft cheeks. There were the barest hints of blush on her face, though I wasn't sure if it was meant to be makeup or just her skin colour. As an elf, she did have a slight point to her ears, which I didn't mind--I had always thought that was cute. It was just incredibly unfortunate that I was going to be the one piloting this stupidly girly body.

"I think it's a she," I said. "Or this one is, anyway."

"Huh," April said pensively.

I had a hunch about what was going to happen next. In silence, I pulled up the character feature tab and picked something at random to try to change-- her chin size-- and, as I'd suspected, it was untouchable. So was everything else I went on to try, including even the clothes… though I did discover an interesting feature while I was snooping around those tabs. There was a handy button I could click to make her outerwear totally invisible, revealing her underwear.

"She's wearing panties?" I groaned.

April snickered. "Wait, seriously? A bra, too?"

"… Yes," I said.

"Even my character doesn't have panties, L.O.L," April said. "She just has these like… boxer things, I guess. I didn't even know it was an option! Oooh, oh, do they match?"

"Do what match?" I asked, guardedly.

"The panties and the bra!"

Not only did they match, they were lacey pink abominations that I could only describe as a set of lingerie… but April didn't need to know that. "Yeah, they match. They're, uh… pink."

April chortled, but didn't say anything more. It was probably because she was a girl, but she hadn't asked at all about what I considered the most important things about Anne's undergarments: the size of her breasts and dick. Thankfully, she was completely flat despite the bra… and even more thankfully, there was a definite, if small, dick-and-balls-shaped bulge in the front of her panties. I breathed a sigh of relief. At least I wasn't going into this game with a completely womanly physique, even if it was a lot more feminine than I wanted it to be.

April mistook my relief for resignation, and said, "Aw, come on. It's not that bad. I bet she's so cute, all the guys will fawn all over you, haha!"

I grimaced to myself, but tried to put on a brave face for her. "Yeah. Just... not what I expected."

"Well, I'm sure they'll fix that bug soon," April consoled me. "Then you can create a new character… if that's what you want."

"Uh, yeah," I said. "Why wouldn't it be?"

"Umm, I dunno! Just leaving your options open, you know?" April giggled, and I couldn't stay indignant for long.

"Ah, alright," I grumbled. "Not like there's any point putting this off for any longer." I moved my hand over the confirmation button one last time. My vision went white, and a message appeared where Anne and her dais had just stood.

When the white light cleared, I found that the message had been quite accurate-- it really did feel like I'd entered another world. The sun was brighter, unfiltered by the smoggy haze that hovered over most modern cities. The air smelled clean and sharp, like I was in the countryside. I looked around, and found the graphics just as breath-taking. The scene was a just a simple medieval courtyard, but it positively gushed with details. There were butterflies jittering through the air, flying in that drunken way that butterflies do. There were robins chirping in a nearby tree.

My body felt different, too. I could feel Anne's overlong pig tails thwap against my back every time I moved my head. I reached up to touch my face, and saw that my hands had become dainty and feminine, and my nails flimsy and long. My face was much softer than usual, without even a hint of stubble or acne. As for my clothes… the bra that I had on underneath my tunic wasn't too tight or anything, but it was still hard to ignore, since the elastic or whatever clung to my skin unlike any shirt or singlet I'd ever worn before. The panties felt embarrassingly good against my cock, but I was still privately glad that I even still had one of those. I wasn't totally sure how VALKYRIE or the Vision handled crossgender avatars, but after everything else I was beginning to suspect that they weren't afraid of simulating lady parts for the sake of immersion.

"Ah! Another adventurer on my doorstep!" I spun around, banishing all thoughts of panties and lady parts from my mind. Behind me, standing on a sort of rickety wooden porch affixed to the front of a cobblestone cottage with a thatch roof, stood a rather large woman with a wide grin on her face. She wore a tunic rather like my own, plain and shapeless, but hers did a poorer job of concealing her figure-- mostly because her figure looked fit to burst right out of her clothes. I spent longer than I wanted to admit just ogling her massive rack. Vaguely, I wondered if she had a bra on.

"My eyes are up here," she said suddenly. For a moment, the courtyard felt a few degrees colder than it had before. I looked up, chagrined, just in time to see her expression go from a small scowl to the grin she'd had earlier.

"S-sorry!" I babbled before I could think. She might have been an NPC, but she looked--and acted--so real.

She shook her head before she carried on. "Well! Welcome to Lumberg, dearie. My name is Madam Humbert, and I'm Lumberg's Head Priestess. That means I tend to our church, hold weekly sermons in the name of our gods, and work healing magic for the townsfolk-- and visiting adventurers like you, of course." She stopped for a moment and looked at me, almost quizzically. "What's your name, darling?"

"Uh, I'm…" I tried to say my own name, but it wasn't coming out for some reason. "… Anne," I said finally.

Madam Humbert pursed her lips, but didn't say anything. "Anne. That's a pretty name for such a cute little thing. Tell me, have you ever cast a spell before?"

I squinted at her, about to bristle at her remark, but when her brow furrowed, I quickly answered before she could tell me off again. "Um, no, miss, ma'am."

"Ma'am will do," she told me. "Well then! I suppose that in addition to giving you your holy symbol, I will also be giving you your first lesson in casting spells as a Priestess!" She tugged open the door to the cottage behind her and gestured. "Ladies first, dearie."

I resisted the urge to ask what that made her and just stalked ahead of her. The interior of the cottage was about what I expected from the outside-- it was cramped and homely, full of rickety furniture that looked much too small for a woman as girthy as Madam Humbert and various trinkets and what looked like sewing supplies. The first room I came across was pretty dim: the cottage's windows were small and high up on the wall, so most of the light in the room came from a haphazard collection of candles scattered along the top of the mantlepiece and several other otherwise unoccupied surfaces in the room. Before I could snoop around in it, Madam Humbert clapped her meaty hands on my back and firmly shoved me forward, past the living room entirely and into what had to be her kitchen.

Madam Humbert's kitchen was lit fairly similarly to the other room, but she'd clearly paid more attention to where the candles were sitting, and as a result it seemed much brighter. It helped that the counter and her dining table were both bare, except for a single cutting board on the counter and a strange object on the table. This object consisted of a long, thin shaft that almost looked like the shaft of a candy cane, with pink and white stripes twined together all the way up its length, and a large, golden five-pointed star piece at the shaft's top. There were gaudy sheer ribbons attached to the point where the star and the shaft met, and to cap it off each of the star's points were tipped with a small pink ball.

Madam Humbert ushered me into one of the tiny chairs beside the table and picked up the star-stick by its star-shaped head. "Here, dearie, take this," she said, holding it out to me.

I took hold of it by the shaft, and gave a jolt as a warm tingle ran through my body. It wasn't an unpleasant sensation by any means, but I tensed up and looked at the stick suspiciously.

"As Priestesses, we worship each one of the many gods of this land, but each of us has one god that we're most devoted to, and they shape how we grow in magic and spirit. For instance, I'm an acolyte of Tesel, the Lady of Truth and Light, and so I'm better with truth and knowledge spells than other Priestesses." Madam Humbert paused. "Normally, I'm supposed to give adventurers like you a choice between the gods, but old Tesel's said that things are… different, for you. So that wand there is your holy symbol, Anne."

A white box appeared in the air in front of me, with an arrow extending down to the wand in my hand.

"With a holy symbol, a Priestess like you can cast spells." Madam Humbert stuck her hand in her tunic and pulled out a decrepit old book. Its cover might have been merely brown at one point, but now it was solidly the colour of dirt. She offered it to me, and I gingerly took it. Another white box appeared, this one an option box rather than a tooltip.

"Books like the one I just gave you are called skill books," Madam Humbert explained. "The people of our land can consume skill books to learn spells and activated skills. Be warned: this destroys the book, so the same book can't be used twice."

This was all pretty standard fare. I nodded, and Madam Humbert proceeded with her tutorial. "To use any spell or activated skill, all you have to do is speak it out loud! Now, Anne, would you be a dear and stand up for me?"

I rose from my seat. Madam Humbert turned around and grabbed a frying pan off a hook on the wall beside her. "Cure is a spell that heals a small amount of any single creature's life points. Do you know what life points are?"

I gave another nod, and then jumped in my skin as a glowing green bar appeared at the top left of my vision. "Anne ()" read the label next to it, indicating that this was my health bar.

"HUD Down," I whispered, just to try it out. As expected, my health bar vanished from view, and I decided to leave it like that-- it was a little distracting, floating up there at the edge of my vision.

"Now then, sweetie," Madam Humbert said, suddenly taking on a cloyingly sweet tone herself. "Could you bend over this table for me?"

My first impulse was to refuse, but when I opened my mouth I thought for a second. This was just a tutorial, right? In a video game? It was silly of me to keep thinking Madam Humbert was up to something, or didn't like me for some reason. As realistic as VALKYRIE's devs had made her, she was ultimately just a bunch of pixels on the screen of my Phantasm Vision. She wasn't scheming or plotting anything--she quite literally didn't have a mind to scheme or plot with.

Almost laughing at my own paranoia, I planted my hands on the table and leaned forward, giving her a nice, solid eyeful of Anne's derriere. I even gave her a roll of my eyes, as if to say, "Get on with it, you old buzzard."

SMACK!

My health bar reappeared on my screen, but now it was a sickly yellow-- and a fair chunk of it had gone missing. At the same time, my ass exploded with pain. I squawked indignantly and clapped my hands over it.

"What the fuck?!" I snapped, pulling myself back up to Anne's unimpressive full height.

Madam Humbert smiled angelically at me, clutching the frying pan in both hands as if she hadn't just landed a two-handed swing on my ass with it. "Sorry, dearie, but I've found that most novices don't take well to being told I'm about to injure them. It's better to just… strike while the iron is hot, don't you think?"

That didn't even sound like the right place to use that phrase, but I wasn't in the mood to lecture an NPC on the correct use of idiom.

"Well, Anne, why don't you try casting Cure on yourself?" she continued. "Simply point your holy symbol at the creature you wish to target and say the name of the spell you wish to cast."

I sighed and pointed my stupid pink wand at myself. "Cure."

A sudden warmth rushed through my body, shooting from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. It vanished as quickly as it had come, and I watched my health bar shoot back up to full and green. The stinging pain in my ass had vanished along with it, and I held it for a moment, marvelling at how nice the healing spell had felt.

"Well, Anne, that's everything I need to show you," Madam Humbert said once the moment had passed. "Please, do come find me if you have any more questions about this wonderful world. I'm always happy to help!"

I scowled. If giving me a surprise spanking was her idea of "help", I wasn't sure I ever would be back here.

"Oh, don't be like that. Here." Madam Humbert pulled something out of her robes and held it out for me to take. It was a tiny vial, filled with a curious sparkly red liquid that almost looked like nail polish. Grudgingly, I took it, and it vanished into my inventory.

"What is it?" I asked Madam Humbert.

She smiled mysteriously. "Just a little reward for being so good for me today. If you use it when you're in a tight spot, it might just give you the push you need to get out of it."

"AHHHH!!" It had taken some time to track down April's character after I'd finished the tutorial with Madam Humbert, but her shrill shriek of delight told me that she'd seen me first. I turned around to see her character bearing down towards me at tremendous speed.

"You're so cuuuute!!" April squealed. She looked pretty much identical to how she did in real life, with the addition of a pair of furry white animal ears-- dog or cat, by the look of things-- and a fluffy white tail that seemed to sprout from just above her fine ass. Like the real April, game-April was tall, toned, deeply tanned, and totally gorgeous. Though she was only about a head taller than me in real life, her character was almost two heads taller than mine, leaving my eye level squarely at her boobs... not that I was complaining about that. She wore what I assumed was the default clothing for druids starting out: a simple, long skirt in a muddy shade of beige, and a bottle green strapless top that did amazing things to her cleavage.

To my shock, she immediately picked me up off my feet and pulled me into a bone-crushing hug. The force and heat of her embrace felt astonishingly real, and my breath caught, almost like she'd really squeezed me. For a moment I hugged her back, pressing my face into her glorious breasts, and smelling-- really smelling-- the salty, earthy odour of her body, so much like the smell of sitting right behind her in our poorly air-conditioned Maths classroom.

"Let-- let go of me!" I snapped. She dropped me, and I suddenly realized that I'd just asked to be released from close (if crushing) contact with April's breasts. I looked back up at her, about to apologize, to see that she was squinting down at me, as if studying me. "Wh-what is it?"

"You know," April said, "I think 'Anne' looks a lot like you!"

I felt my chest tighten. "What? No she doesn't."

April held out a hand and pulled a hand mirror out of thin air. Typical woman, carrying around makeup supplies even in a virtual world where I wasn't even sure makeup existed. "No, seriously, look."

I looked into the mirror. What was unmistakeably supposed to be a girl batted her eyelashes back at me as I blinked. "Nope, I'm looking. Not me."

April sighed, and the mirror vanished back into her inventory. "Alright, whatever. Let's just go… fight some monsters?"

"Let's do it," I agreed.

As the beginners' town of VALKYRIE, Lumberg neighboured a couple of low-level areas for newbies to grind their first few levels in. The newbiest of the newbiest area was a forest called simply the Silverwood, and it was here that April led me. Though a part of me wanted to marvel at all the hyperrealistic graphics on our trip there--the silvery white wood of the birch trees, the perfectly simulated blades of tall grass, even the carefully rendered flagstones on the path out of the town--my eyes never drifted away from April for long. Her avatar's tail almost seemed alive, with the way it twitched and occasionally wagged in time with her beautiful voice, and whenever a breeze came I could swear that the fur on it was being visibly rustled.

"Here we are!" April raised her voice, and I looked up to see that we had encountered our first ever opponent as a party.

The beast was a hulking wolf that appeared to be made, from its snout to the tip of its tail, entirely out of wood. In keeping with this, above its head floated the words Timber-Wolf: Level 1 . Its name and level, I gathered. For now, the timber wolf was content to paw at the ground territorially at us, as if waiting for us to make a threatening move. Its wooden tongue lolled out the side of its mouth, and I was struck by the sheer grainy detail on it.

"That is lifelike," I remarked. "This game's graphics are… insane."

April grinned, and I suddenly realized that her canines were much longer and sharper than they were in real life, giving the impression of beastly fangs. Another feature of being a Beastkin, like the ears and the tail were, I guessed. "So, you know how to cast spells and junk, right?"

"Yeah," I said, not without reservation. "I have, uh, a wand."

"Cool. Well, since it's your first fight and all, how about you take the first shot?" She gestured at the timber-wolf, which looked quizzically from her to me, then back again. Like it seemed confused by the insinuation that I was going to be attacking it.

I reached to "unsheathe" my wand from its place in my inventory, but hesitated. "Um, the thing is…"

April cocked an eyebrow. "Well?" she asked, a touch impatiently.

"I don't have any, uh, damaging spells."

"Huh," April said. "So you just have healing?"

I nodded, a little sadly. "Cure and, um, Antidote."

"Well… I guess a lot of monsters around here poison people," April said doubtfully. "Oh, whatever. Just stand back and heal me if it hits me." Before I could even say "roger that", a wooden mace studded with some kind of green crystal materialized in her hands and she leapt for the timber-wolf. A bestial roar tore through the air, followed by the sound of splintering wood, and then April was flung back. I glanced at her health bar-- she'd taken a little bit of damage. Ignoring me completely, the timber-wolf leapt after her, but April had shot back to her feet and was ready with her mace. As it charged for her chest, she cracked it over the head, and this attack made a much grislier sound.

The timber-wolf gave a horrible screech in response, almost like the sound of nails being scraped down a chalkboard, and made a swipe for April's calves. She took the attack with a grunt, but didn't step back or stagger. This time, her health dropped by almost twenty percent. I groaned. I really didn't want her to see my wand… but I didn't want to let her down and not heal her, either. I scrunched my eyes shut. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if I didn't see her reaction to seeing my wand for the first time.

"C-Cure!" I shouted, eyes glued shut.

"What the heck are you doing?" April giggled.

I snapped my eyes open, the wand in my hands momentarily forgotten. April's health bar hadn't changed at all. Had my spell failed somehow? Madam Humbert hadn't said anything about that kind of thing, but she hadn't exactly been a font of wisdom either. April gestured emphatically at the wolf, which seemed to be in much better shape than before. Had it healed itself?

"Oh no," I said, looking at the wand in my hand and my mana bar, now down the cost of a single Cure spell. "Did I just… heal the monster?"

"Yes!" April laughed. "L.O.L!" The timber-wolf charged her again: but this time, when she cracked it over the head with her mace, it collapsed into a pile of wood chips. "Oh, man. That's hilarious. Why'd you have your eyes shut, you dork?"

"I… didn't want you to see my wand," I admitted.

April laughed again. "So you closed your eyes?" She gave it a look, since I was still holding it up. "What's wrong with it?"

I looked back at it, too, half hoping that it had suddenly changed into a more dignified form-- but I had no such luck. Its shaft was still a white-and-pink candy cane swirl. It was still tipped with a bright yellow star, each of its points capped with a tiny pink ball, and at the point where the shaft and the star met there was still a profusion of gossamer ribbons in gold, red and pink. The star itself was still embossed with what appeared to be a unicorn in front of a rainbow.

"It's so… girly," I mumbled.

"Uh, didn't you just take a look at yourself?" April pointed out. "Your whole character is girly!"

"That doesn't make this wand any better!" I said hotly.

April rolled her eyes, but she let the matter drop. "Whatever. So you didn't get any real weapons from the tutorial, either?"

"Real weapons?" I said.

"Yeah, like a club or sword or something," April said. "Something you can use to, you know, hit people with."

"No," I said.

"Hm," April mused. "Well, I have a spare club I got from a baddy before, so you can use that until we can go back to town and get a better one."

The club appeared in her hand as she spoke, a simple mass of wood with a wide head that tapered down into a shaft. It was a fair bit smaller and less impressive-looking than the crystal-studded mace April had drawn earlier, but I wasn't going to turn it down. She held it out for me to take, but when I made as if to pick it up, a scarlet tooltip flashed over it.

"What's taking so long?" April asked, a touch impatiently.

"Um, it's saying I can't equip it," I said. "I think my Strength stat is too low."

April frowned and turned the club in her hands, presumably pulling up its tooltip for herself. "Really? This says it only takes Strength 6 to wield."

"Wait, what's your Strength?" I asked.

"Uh… twenty?" April said, moving like she was pulling up her own stat screen. "Yeah, twenty."

Four times as much as me? That was… frustrating. Sure, I had no illusions that I was stronger than her in real life-- she actually enjoyed sports and stuff-- but I was pretty sure that the gap between our abilities wasn't that big. Why did this game have to saddle me with such a miserable character?

I inhaled deeply. There was no need for me to get mad. I was playing an MMO with the most gorgeous girl in the world. Eventually, I would get to make myself a proper character, and everything would be fine.

"Oh well," April shrugged. "You'll be fine for now, since you're with me, and we can head back to town later and get you something you can use so you'll be fine on your own, too!"

"Yeah," I said uncertainly, not sure I liked the idea of playing the damsel in distress who needed April to protect her from the big bad wolves. "Good idea."

"Now come on!" April flashed me a toothy grin, those Beastkin canines of her giving it an almost savage quality. "Let's go grind some bad guys!"

"Whoo!" April crowed, wiping her brow and planting her mace into the forest floor with a dull whump as the body of the goblin she'd just taken down melted into gross muck behind her. Her health bar was in the yellow, so I pointed my stupid wand at her and topped her up with a Cure spell. To my surprise, a tooltip appeared in front of me.

"What's a Milestone?" I asked.

"Oh," April said, hefting her mace back over her shoulder. "Did you just get your first one?"

"Yeah," I said. "I think it's because I've been healing you a lot."

April nodded. "Yeah, that makes sense. Milestones are like this game's levelling system, I think. Instead of earning like, experience points or whatever to level up, we earn Milestones by doing specific stuff. I've gotten two so far, uh, Savagery and Natural Wisdom."

"What do those do?" I asked.

"Uh, hang on," April said, clearly fiddling with her character menu. With a surprisingly un-immersive boop, a pair of white boxes appeared in the air in front of her.

"Can you see these?" April asked me.

"Yeah," I said. "Wow. That Savagery one looks really useful. Do you think I could get that?"

"Maybe," April shrugged. "I dunno, these seem pretty Druid-y, so I kinda think they're, like, based on our class… and anyway, you're not going to be landing the killing blow on any enemies until we can get you a weapon."

I grimaced. "Right, right."

"What's your one?" April said. "You can open up your menu and just tap on the big thing that says Milestones-- yeah, that's it." She read it for a while, and for a moment I thought I caught her suppressing a giggle-- but if she was, it was only for a second. "Hey, do you see those question marks too?"

"Yeah," I said. "It's weird, because I could read that part of your Natural Wisdom thingy just fine."

"I guess it's just secret for some reason," April said.

"So what do those things mean, anyway? Evolve and Level up?"

"Well, Level up seems to mean the Milestone gets stronger each time you get a new Milestone," April said. "Savagery started at just 4%, and it went to 6% when I got the other one. I guess Evolve means Natural Wisdom's going to get stronger when I get my twentieth Milestone?"

"And I don't know when my one will Evolve," I said.

"Yeah," April agreed. "Anyway, you ready for another fight? I wanna see how good that extra healing feels!"

"Wait, hang on," I said. "Can we go back into town and get a weapon?" I'd amassed a tidy sum of gold over the last couple of encounters, even while splitting the rewards with April, so I figured I'd at least be able to buy a basic dagger or something, which I couldn't imagine would be too hard to wield even with my abysmal Strength score.

April pulled a face, but she nodded all the same. "Alright, fiiiiine. It's kinda fun having you stuck as my pocket healer, but I guess you'd be more useful with a weapon."

For some reason my cock hardened in my panties at that remark. I silently thanked the game for the loose robes it had put me in.

On our way back to Lumberg, we were accosted by yet another a timber-wolf; this one was accompanied by a strange flying monster that resembled a tiny green girl with a slender, almost elfin figure. It flittered about chaotically on a set of four translucent wings, and before any of us had even entered a battle stance, it threw up one arm and pointed at the timber-wolf by its side with the other. A green aura suffused the wolf for a moment, then faded as if nothing had happened.

"What's that?" I asked April, pointing at the flying girl monster. Unlike the timber-wolf by its side, the text above its head simply read ???: Level 2 .

She shrugged and drew her mace. "Looks like a pixie or something, I guess. I think it just buffed the wolf, so watch out."

True to her word, when April lunged for the wolf, it rocketed forward with far more force than the timber-wolves we'd fought before. It cracked her in the chest with a painful-sounding headbutt, not even giving April the chance to bring her mace crashing down on its head, and April flew back, stopping just short of stumbling back into me and bowling me over.

"Ow!" April grumbled. I looked at her health bar, and found that the one hit had already knocked her into the red.

"Cure!" I said hastily, pointing at April.

"Thanks," she said. "Oof, this guy is gonna be tough."

The green pixie, which had been watching this exchange with some interest, chittered at the wolf and pointed at us. Its voice was distinctly squeaky, and the language it spoke in had a bizarrely musical quality to it: it sounded almost like a recording of several songs played in reverse and layered over each other. The wolf growled and leaped for April again, once again shockingly fast: but this time, as it clashed with her, the pixie thrust its hand at me.

Hot spikes of pain erupted throughout my body, and I screamed. They subsided after only a moment, but I was left winded-- I hastily summoned up my interface, and saw that my health had dropped slightly. Next to my health bar and my name, a purple skull icon had appeared.

Well, at least Antidote would finally be useful, I thought.

"Heal!" April grunted, bucking back and forth on the floor ahead of me as she tried to wrestle the wolf into what could only be described as a clumsy headlock. Sure enough, her health bar was back in the red again.

"Cure!" I said. Keeping her alive was more important than saving me the twenty or so life points I'd lose by staying poisoned for another few seconds. April's health bar shot back up to green, almost brought back to full in one spell thanks to my Pocket Healer milestone.

Another wave of pain wracked me, and I almost dropped my wand. "Argh!!"

I looked back at the pixie, and I could've sworn its tiny face was contorted into an ugly scowl as it realized that its plan to distract me hadn't worked. It made the same thrusting action again, this time aiming at April, and she gave another grunt as the same purple skull appeared next to her health bar. A moment later, the wolf managed to tear itself free of her grapple and snapped at her side, dealing another hefty blow to her.

"Cure!" The poison wouldn't really matter to April, either, if I could just keep healing her through it, and whatever buff the pixie had given to the wolf would have to wear out eventually… or so I figured.

Much to my surprise, this third Cure barely took April's health bar out of the yellow. A tooltip flashed over the pixie's head.

"What?!" I squawked. That was so unfair! "Antidote!" A green bolt shot from the tip of my wand and sunk into the middle of April's back. The purple skull vanished from her health bar, indicating that my spell had worked.

With a growl that bordered on a roar, April managed to get a solid grip on the timber-wolf and hurled it aside. It wasn't quite downed yet, but it seemed stunned for the time being.

"Heal!" April barked, even as she charged the pixie, who she seemed to have identified as the more pressing threat.

"Cure!" I said. Another wave of the poison ran through my body. I checked my health bar again: I was at about two-thirds. I had a much lower total pool than April, I was pretty sure, so I figured that one Cure would be enough to top me off even through the poison, but that would take the Pocket Healer buff off April for the next Cure I cast on her… it was probably better to just count on her being able to sort this fight out before the poison took me out.

Unfortunately, as I watched the pixie effortlessly dodge each of April's wild swings at it like it was a leaf dancing through an autumn breeze, that was looking less and less likely. The pixie suddenly stopped still in the air and gestured at me again, but this time it didn't seem to be casting a spell.

"Look out!" April shouted.

Something huge and heavy barrelled into my side, and the world suddenly spun upside-down in a sickening fashion. My face collided with what might have been a tree and what might have been the loamy forest floor. In the corner of my screen, I saw that my health bar was so close to empty that I couldn't even see the last green sliver of health in it-- and then, to my incredible relief, the purple skull icon beside it vanished.

"Holy shit," mumbled April from outside my field of view. Two strong hands gripped me by my shoulders and gave me a shake. "You okay?" An intoxicating sound filled my ears-- April was panting.

"Y-yeah," I mumbled, shakily. "Cure." To my surprise, nothing happened. "Cure?"

"What's wrong?" April asked.

"I can't cast my spell," I said.

"Huh," April said. "Here, have this." A glass bottle filled with a faintly glowing red liquid appeared in her hand, and she put its neck to my lips. The moment I began to drink it, the familiar sensation of glorious warmth filled my body, and I found myself able to get to my feet.

"Cure," I said experimentally. This time, the spell went off without a hitch, and my health bar shot back to full.

"How the heck did you survive that attack?" April marvelled, when we'd both recovered somewhat.

"I dunno," I said. "Maybe the pixie's buff wore off at some point?"

"Maybe," April said pensively. "Anyway, did you see that badass move I pulled to save you?"

I shook my head, feeling a little guilty.

"Aww, seriously?" April groaned. "It was awesome! I grabbed that wolf by the tail when it went to finish you off and slammed it into the ground, and it totally exploded! I didn't even know you could deal damage like that!"

"What happened to the pixie?" I said, looking around suspiciously, half-worried it would leap back out and attack us at any second.

"I think it flew off when the wolf died," April said. "Probably drops something really rare when you kill it, so the devs made it act like a total B, if you know what I mean."

"You think?" I said. "That kinda sucks." It would've been cool to see what drops that asshole pixie would have given us if it had stuck around to let us kill it… but it did make sense for a support enemy to jump ship once its tank died. Once again, the little details in this game did not fail to impress me.

"Well, anyway! Check this out!" Bouncing giddily, April turned on her Milestone display once again, this time revealing three boxes.

"Have I really healed you that much?" I said, surprised. I had done little else but cast Cure on her over and over again for the last hour or so, but I didn't think my spell restored that much health per cast.

"I guess so!" April said.

I read through the description again, then peered closely at her.

"Uh, what's with the creepy stare?" April asked lightly.

"Are you really, uh, bigger? Do the Milestones really do that?"

"Yep!" April said. "Well, I can't really tell if I'm bigger, but I only got these pointy teeth when I got Savagery!" She grinned at me to show them off. "I think they're getting even pointier every time I level Savagery up!"

"Huh," I said, thinking back to my Milestone and the fuller lips it said it had given me. I didn't exactly feel like it had done anything, but then again the lips on this virtual body were way more prominent than my real lips to begin with. "Why do you think they do it like that?"

April shrugged. "Customization, I guess? When we know more about the game and make some new characters, I bet we could shoot for Milestones that give us whatever look we want!" She shifted her mace thoughtfully on her shoulder. "I could totally get, like, a vampire look if I had Savagery on an elf!"

I imagined April as a cool, suave vampire, instead of the overexcited beastkin that she was now. To even my own surprise, it didn't do much for me. "I dunno... this kind of suits you better, don't you think?"

She cocked her head. "Huh."

"W-wait, did I say something wrong?" I clapped my hands to my mouth, but she just laughed and waved me off.

"Nope! You're kinda right!" She turned around and gave her tail a playful wag, looking cheekily back at me. "Alright, let's get back to town!"

Chapter 2: Shopping Trip

Chapter Text

We made it back to Lumberg without any further excitement-- just a couple of encounters with the same old goblins and timber-wolves I'd gotten used to. As we entered town, I took note of the people we passed. It was easy enough to tell the human players from the NPCs, despite the astounding graphics that both were rendered with, since the humans had their characters' names, Milestone counts, and health bars floating over their heads. It looked like most people here were pretty low-levelled, which made sense, considering how recently the game had been released and how Lumberg was the game's starting town. A cluster of higher-levelled players stood in front of a stall marked with a vial and a sceptre crossed over each other in an X shape; they were all adorned in much flashier outfits than the rest of us, with things like wizard hats and brightly coloured armour.

"Here's the weapon shop!" April announced, turning me around so that I was no longer looking at the shop with all the high-level players crowding around it. "This is where I got my mace."

This shop was a fairly dingy little building, the dusty window out front marked with the icon of a sword over a shield--a universal symbol for weapons shops everywhere. As April pushed open the wooden door, whose tiny window was equally dusty, a little bell up at the top of the doorframe tinkled welcomingly.

Inside, the rickety shelves that lined the store's walls and stood in rows down the interior of the store as well were packed tightly enough that we were forced to stay in single file. They were stacked with all manner of shafts and pommels and handles, each one presumably attached to a deadly weapon. It was a tight enough fit that even I, stuck in Anne's slender body, had to gingerly avoid jostling any of the merchandise: it was a wonder that April wasn't knocking things over left and right.

"Ah! Young Miss April, yes?" wheezed a voice that sounded about as old and dusty as the store's windows. April managed to crab-walk out of my way, and I found that we'd reached the store counter. Behind it sat a wizened, skinny old man, who watched us through a horn-rimmed pair of spectacles with remarkably bright eyes. He had the crafty look of a man with a lifetime of experience under his too-loose belt.

"Ah!" he continued, seeing me peek out from behind April. "And who's your little friend?"

April nudged me pointedly, and-- after trying and failing to say my actual name a couple of times-- I resignedly introduced myself as Anne. April gave me a weird look, but let it pass without comment.

"Anne," the old man said thoughtfully. "That name is almost as pretty as you are, young miss."

I flushed red and rushed to correct him. "A-actually--"

"We were wondering if we could get a weapon for Anne here," April said at the same time, not noticing my distress. "Something with a, um, something for weaker people?"

"A weapon for an adventurer with a low Strength attribute?" the old man asked, smoothly translating April's lame attempt at roleplay into proper game terms.

"Yeah," April said.

I half-expected the old man to stand up and start rifling through the shelves of weapons in the store behind us like Ollivander in the Harry Potter movies, but he simply waved his hand over his (also very, very dusty) countertop and produced five simple daggers, all with plain black hilts. "A dagger is likely your best bet, if your Strength is too low for other melee weapons… but if Anne has a serviceable Dexterity attribute, perhaps she would be better off purchasing a weapon from my nephew's store."

"Your nephew's store?" April asked.

"Yes… he specializes in Dexterity weapons, such as bows and slings," said the old man. "I'd hazard a guess… that those would fit young Anne a touch better."

April turned to me. "How's your Dexterity?"

For the first time since "creating" my character, I checked on my attributes… and I grimaced at what I saw.

"It's… not good," I said. "Does the dagger have any requirements?"

The old man shook his head. "Not at all, young miss."

"Then I'll take one, I guess," I said. "How much?"

The old man tilted his head. "Is this your first weapon, young lady?"

"Uh, yeah, I guess," I said. What, was he going to give me a tutorial on how to stab things with a knife? I was pretty sure I could figure that one out without any help.

"First one's free," he wheezed with a smile, leaning back on his stool. He gestured at the five daggers lying on the counter in front of him. "Go right ahead, Anne."

"Oh!" I said, surprised by his generosity. Maybe this was the game making up for not giving me a weapon in my tutorial?

"Oh my gosh, that's so nice!" April said, her tail wagging distractingly behind me. "Thank you so much!"

"Yeah, thanks," I said awkwardly. I hovered my hand over the daggers. I could see a couple of minor differences between them, in length and thickness and so on, but I didn't really know enough about daggers to make an educated decision either way. Eventually, I just picked one up at random.

"Now, Miss April," the old man said. "Can I do anything else for you?"

April pursed her lips thoughtfully. "Well, that mace I got earlier is still really great… maybe I'll go check out the other stores I want to see first, and if I have anything left over, I'll come back here for an upgrade?"

The old man chuckled. "You're a lovely girl, Miss April," he said, and she beamed, her tail wagging so hard it almost threatened to knock over the rickety shelf behind her. "You girls have a nice day."

"You too! Bye, Mr. Albus!"

We squeezed awkwardly back through the shelves as old Mr. Albus gazed fondly at our retreating figures, then spilled out onto the street. I winced and held up my hand to shield my eyes at the sudden brightness as the sunlight welcomed us back into the outside world. It had had to fight through six layers of dust and grime to get through the windows of Mr. Albus's store, and now that we were seeing it unfiltered again it was almost blinding.

"Alright!" April said. "Where should we go next?"

"Back to monster hunting?" I suggested, quietly eager to try out my new dagger and actually contribute to killing things with it.

"No!" April shot down my idea. "We came all the way back, it would be a waste not to spend some time here!" She scratched her chin pensively, looking up and down the cobbled street. "Oh, I know! I wanted to do some clothes shopping before, but I didn't have enough money. Let's go to the fashion district!"

Like with the weapons store, April led the way, ignoring my weak protests that this wasn't exactly what an MMORPG was for. Secretly, I was a little excited-- not so much about the clothes themselves, but because dragging a guy along to "help" with clothes shopping was straight out of the girlfriend playbook.

The fashion district was far more vibrant than the boring old street the weapon store had sat on, which was about what I'd expected. Flags and banners emblazoned with a variety of logos and designs adorned the buildings, which were taller than most of the buildings I'd walked past in the rest of Lumberg, and even the alleys between the buildings seemed to bustle with colour and life. Most of the NPCs here stood in front of storefronts, waving at players in the hopes of enticing them in, but some wandered amongst the players, carrying vending trays attached with straps to their shoulders, laden with stuff like hot dogs and steamed dumplings.

The players themselves were perhaps the most impressive thing. There were far more here than in any other part of Lumberg we'd passed through yet, and on average they looked much higher level as well-- I noticed that one person had a staggering Milestone count of fifty-five. There weren't quite enough players to constitute a proper crowd, so it wasn't hard to pick our way past them, but I did almost lose track of April a couple of times as she wound her way forwards.

"Jeez," I said as we finally came to a stop in front of a store that was named, as far as I could tell, Elisegey's. "I didn't realize the fashion district would be so popular."

April snorted as she walked up to a strange orange box that was about the size and shape of an ATM machine, complete with a "screen" of black glass. "Half of an MMO's appeal is getting to show off your cool look to other players, you know! Can't do that without a cool look in the first place!" She glanced at me appraisingly. "You know, it couldn't hurt you to get some new clothes too."

She waggled her eyebrows. "Maybe even some more manly clothes, hmm?"

I narrowed my eyes and huffed at her, but she did have a point. The robes weren't feminine by any means, but I could definitely afford to go for a much less androgynous outfit. Ignoring April's snigger as I walked up to the orange box next to hers, I glanced furtively up and down the street. Similar boxes, in various colours and with various different designs on them, were placed outside most of the physical stores.

I glanced back at April, looking for a clue as to how to operate these things, and my jaw almost fell to the floor as her plain green top and beige skirt instantly transformed into a floor-length strapless gown that looked like it was woven out of molten silver. She caught me looking and gave me a cheeky wink, then tapped the screen of the orange box. Her outfit transformed again, this time into a striped white-and-blue blouse and a pair of tight black yoga pants.

I gave my own orange box an experimental tap on the screen. Luminous blue-white GUI elements sprung into existence and whirled into place around me at an almost dizzying speed, falling into an arrangement that reminded me of VALKYRIE's character creator-- but unlike the character creator, I found that I was able to interact with it. I moved my hand over the first item that caught my eye (a fancy fur-lined coat that cost ten thousand gold pieces), and almost jumped when it appeared on my upper body. Like everything else in this game, the soft fur of its inside felt positively lifelike against my skin. Silently, I examined my arms: from what I could see, the coat looked pretty good on me. I looked back at the GUI for any sign of a mirror, so that I could better see how I looked, and found it hovering near the top of the clothes selection pane that the coat had been on.

"Shit!" Seeing myself made me realize that the coat had replaced my robe entirely, leaving my underwear situation embarrassingly public. It wasn't so obvious that everyone passing by would have seen it, since the coat at least did a good job of hiding my back, but the front was wide open, revealing the stupid pink bra and panties that Anne's body had come pre-equipped with. Hastily, I tapped on the first shirt and pair of pants I could find-- a hideous floral print thing with a popped collar, and a pair of black shorts that I quickly realized were made of denim-- and glanced casually over at April to see if she'd noticed anything. Thankfully, she still seemed engrossed in her own clothes shopping. With a sigh of relief, I continued scrolling through the store's catalogue, now taking great care to avoid full-body outfits and items that occupied multiple clothing slots at once. Most of the former were either dresses or weird adult-sized onesies anyway, so it wasn't like I was missing out on any prime merchandise even with this strategy.

When at last I settled on my new clothes, I didn't exit out of the shopping screen right away, and instead spent a while just admiring my reflection in the mirror. Anne's face was still as delicately sculpted and furnished with feminine features as it had been when I'd first seen it, but I'd managed to find some options for hairstyles in the store, and would be replacing her stupidly long black twin-tails with a short, spiky cut that was far more boyish. The shapeless robe that seemed to be the default for my class would be going, too, to be replaced by a sleek black trench coat, a plain white shirt with an awesome stylized skull emblazoned on its front, and a pair of dark blue jeans. I'd found a really cool pair of aviators in the store, too, but they were a little pricy for my meagre funds… so I figured I'd get them later.

"Hey! Lookin' good!" April tapped me on the shoulder and I almost jumped. Her voice was somewhat distorted through the store GUI; it sounded almost like she was underwater. I pressed the bright yellow purchase button and closed the store.

Before I could get a single word out, April blinked and stepped back. "Wow. Okay. That's… jeez! I thought you weren't into the whole 'playing as a girl' thing."

"Huh?" A sinking sensation crept into my chest. Almost afraid of what I was about to see, I looked down at myself.

Pretty much immediately, I saw the reason why April had stepped back: extending from my waist was the ludicrous, hot pink cone of a very frilly dress. The top half of it was strapless, but it clung tightly to my torso all the same, coming up to a point just above my nipples. My similarly pink bra was left plainly visible; it didn't just peek out from underneath the dress, it stuck proudly out like a strutting peacock's tail feathers. Though my legs were quite invisible beneath the umbrella of my new dress, I could feel a strange silky substance clinging to them both, like the thinnest socks I'd ever worn. To cap it all off, my head was as heavy with hair as ever. I couldn't be sure since I'd never had hair long enough to tie into pigtails before, but it did seem like my twintails had been bunched up into two messy ones behind my head.

I flushed deep red. "This isn't-- I didn't--" Furiously, I tapped back on the orange machine's screen. Instead of hunting for the clothes I'd picked out before, I went straight to the "my wardrobe" tab and immediately re-equipped the starter robe. To my disgust, the other clothes I found alongside it were the same ones that had appeared on me when I'd closed out of the shop just now: one "Frilly Girl's Dress", a pair of "Silk Stockings", and a set of "Cream Hair Ribbons" that I suspected were what had been holding my pigtails together. I unequipped the latter two with haste (since equipping the starter robe hadn't done it for me), then angrily jabbed the icon for the dress. Surely there was a way to refund it, or sell it, or otherwise get rid of that affront to good fashion. Why was it even an option to buy? None of the girls in my life would ever stoop to putting on something like that, let alone me.

I angrily fingered the greyed-out sell button several times before throwing my hands up in frustration and exiting the store once more.

"What the hell is a Gender Trait?" I growled.

April made a face, and for a moment I thought she was going to chastise me, but in the end she just shrugged. "I dunno… why, did one just show up for you?"

"You saw the outfit I was actually trying to buy, right?" I said desperately. "With the, the trench coat?"

April nodded. "Yeah, uh, what happened to that?"

"I don't know! It just--I just randomly got shoved into that dumb dress when I clicked 'buy!'"

"Huh," April said. "Is that what that 'Gender Trait' did?"

I pulled open my stats, like I'd done in the weapon store. "Hang on…"

On a hunch, I tapped the icon next to my character's name and class. It looked like a weird fusion between the male and female sex symbols, so it stood to reason that it was the symbol for Anne's weird gender-- and, just as I'd expected, two new dialogue boxes appeared before my eyes.

"Ugh!" I groaned. "I just wish this game would tell me this stuff, like, ahead of time!"

"What's up?" April, for once, looked sincerely concerned for me. I almost lost the steam to keep up my tirade right there, but I felt like she wanted me to go on.

"Apparently my gender's given me some stupid passive effects too!"

"Like Milestones?"

I read both of their descriptions out for her benefit. When I was done, she made a thoughtful noise. "I dunno… aren't these both just straight buffs for you?"

"Buffs?" I squawked. "How?"

"Being able to survive dying sounds kinda useful," April pointed out. "It sounds like I could just give you a weak heal or a potion or something, and you'd be able to get right back up again."

Though I hated to admit it, I had to agree that when she put it like that, Resilience did seem pretty useful.

"But what about the stupid clothing one?"

"I've heard that pickpocketing is a mechanic that some enemies later on use," April said, after a bit more thought. "Shouldn't that trait of yours stop them from pickpocketing any girl clothes you're wearing? Including ones that have, I dunno, magical bonuses or whatever?"

"Are there clothes that do that?" I asked.

"I'm sure there are," April said, flashing me a confident grin. "It's an RPG!"

I groaned again, but this time there was a hint of reluctant acceptance to it. "Alright, fine. But I'm never wearing anything like that stupid dress unless it buffs me to high heaven… at minimum."

April pulled a face that made it clear what her opinion of that promise was, but she didn't press the matter. Instead, she perked up and said, "Alright! Let's wrap up this visit to town with a visit to the Tree!"

The Tree of Caduceus, as I discovered, could be found in Lumberg Park. As its name suggested, it was a rather impressive tree, with a thick, richly-coloured trunk and a veritable forest of rounded leaves sprouting forth from its many branches. The park around it was populated mainly by a sort of tall, wildly unkempt grass, with a few small berry bushes dotted around its edges. I recognized Madam Humbert's cottage and its small courtyard on the lot next to the park, and repressed a grimace as I was reminded of the way she'd spanked me.

"So what do we do here?" I asked as we came to a stop in front of it.

"Just put your hands on it," April said, demonstrating.

I sighed and followed along. Just like the orange boxes in the fashion district, a menu appeared on my screen, filling up my vision completely. This one seemed to consist of a wall of boxes, each one attached to a white branch that extended from a central trunk: a literal "skill tree". Most of the boxes were a dark grey, with text in a slightly lighter shade of grey that rendered them largely illegible. On a hunch, I tried to interact with one, only for a dull red X to appear over it. The X faded away after a few seconds, but the message remained clear: these boxes were disabled. As I scrolled through the tree, gesturing with my hands to move it around, I found only three boxes that were lit up, all right next to each other at about the halfway point of the scroll bar.

I grimaced as I read the cosmetic changes attached to the spells. Massively increased breast size? I didn't exactly want to see how that worked on a person as flat as me, since it sounded like it had a pretty good chance of just straight-up giving me boobs. Getting to experience back pain for the first time was not what I wanted out of any video game. The buttock size from Firesong seemed like a bust for similar reasons, which meant I only had one realistic option.

I squinted at Glitterdust. It was obviously a supportive spell, since it went out of its way to specify it did low damage, even as a first-level spell, but on the other hand dealing any damage with my spells at all was already a huge step up from where I had started. The "wider hips" cosmetic change was slightly perturbing, but not nearly as badly as the "massive tits" or "massive ass" one, so I just sighed and clicked the learn icon on Glitterdust, half-expecting to suddenly grow a D-cup rack and learn Starlance anyway.

A warm sensation, similar to but not exactly the same as the sensation I got from healing in this game, filled the base of my navel. I let out a yelp of shock as the alien but unmistakeable feeling of my pelvis painlessly expanding outward, shifting the bones and muscles around it to accommodate its new girth, struck me: and then, as swiftly as it had come, the feeling vanished, leaving me with my newly widened hips.

I looked down nervously. My shapeless robes had once again come in handy, completely concealing the change from prying eyes. I twisted around experimentally, and immediately noticed a change in how my body was moving. It was... strange. I didn't exactly feel heavier, per se, but my weight seemed to shift around strangely as I turned. I was immediately thankful that I hadn't chosen either of the other options. If wider hips felt this different, there was no way I was ever going to be able to get used to having breasts or a giant ass.

Sighing, I gestured to close the menu for the Tree of Caduceus, and saw that April was only just now stepping away from the tree herself. I made as if to follow her out of the park, still very unsteady with my new hips, only for April to burst out laughing.

"What is it?" I asked, looking around.

"Why're you walking so weird?" she snorted, wiping a tear from her eye.

"The—it's the spell I just got," I said, a touch defensively. "It made me grow wider hips."

April chuckled again. "Must be a pretty good spell, if it's going to make you walk like that from now on. You're shaking your ass like Miley Cyrus."

My face went hot with embarrassment at the mental image of myself twerking on a stripper pole. "It's—I'm not walking that weirdly, am I?" At this point, all I had left was the vain hope that Glitterdust really was worth having to relearn how to walk like a normal person. I wished fervently that the developers of Valkyrie hadn't put quite so much work into making their VR experience feel so immersive.

"I wish I'd installed some kind of screen capture software," April chortled. "C'mon, keep going! This is great!"

The flush in my cheeks got even warmer, and I planted my feet resolutely in the grass of Lumberg Park. "No," I said firmly.

"Aww, c'mon," April wheedled. "Just a little more?" When I refused to budge, she sighed. "I just don't get this thing you're doing, man."

I looked at her, curiosity momentarily outweighing my indignation. "What thing?"

"I mean... this thing," she said, gesturing vaguely at me. "With the girly character and everything. You're so... you talk like you're so upset about it, but at the same time it kinda feels like you like it. You know?"

"I don't like it!" I said hotly, feeling my blush creep back up my cheeks and pointed ears. "I don't—the game keeps being weird about things for me! I'm not the one doing that! I thought you—I thought you knew that!"

April looked at me appraisingly. "What about in the store? You introduced yourself as Anne."

"That was—I can't—it doesn't let me say my name!" I blurted.

"The game doesn't let you say your name," April repeated sceptically. "I don't think this game can do that, dude. I don't think any game can."

"I'm serious," I protested, sounding whiny and feeble even to my own ears.

"It's okay if you want to play as a girl, you know," April said with a shrug. "I'm not gonna think, like, less of you. You're a pretty good guy... when you're not being weird in a videogame."

Tears pricked in my eyes. Dimly, I wondered if those tears were on my real body, or the virtual one Valkyrie had given to me. Was that really what she thought of me? Did she really think I... that I was pretending to not want this stupid character? I felt a sob rise up in my chest, but despite my best efforts, I couldn't force it back down. With only the thought that I couldn't burst into tears in front of April over a freaking video game on my mind, turned tail and fled, as fast as I could, no longer even concerned about the way my ass was surely wobbling all over the place.

Chapter 3: Solo Adventure

Chapter Text

To my faint surprise, my new hips weren't as much of a hindrance when I was running as they were when I was walking, and in short order I found myself deep in the forest surrounding Lumberg. As I realized this, all the virtual adrenaline in my character's body seemed to vanish in an instant, and I slumped against a tree, openly panting. I looked around furtively, half-worried and half-hoping that April had followed me, but the forest around me seemed to be deserted. She'd probably just stayed in Lumberg Park to let me run out my anger.

Still panting, I shook my head at VALKYRIE's devs again. They'd even managed to convincingly simulate the feeling of being out of breath. I tried to pull myself off the tree, but a new pop-up appeared in my field of view.

"HUD up," I muttered on a hunch. Underneath the green bar representing my life points, a pulsing, orangey-red bar had appeared. It was about halfway full, but swiftly filling up, and as it filled up its colour slowly shifted towards a bright yellow. The moment the bar was full, it blinked green once and then vanished, and suddenly I could stand again.

Realizing something, I turned around slowly. In my blind rush to get away from April, I had neglected to note down any identifying landmarks. And my cursory examination of my surroundings confirmed what I had feared: I had absolutely no idea how to get back to Lumberg.

After spending several minutes fruitlessly picking through my character menus for some kind of map, and finding absolutely nothing, I heard a low growl that made the hairs on the back of my neck shoot up. I closed my menu and, after a bit of thought, drew my girly star wand. I probably didn't want to go mano a mano with anything in this forest, short of maybe a goblin or that pixie thing April and I had fought earlier, which meant I would want to stick to the ranged Glitterdust.

A timber-wolf materialized from a particularly tight copse of trees, and I almost stumbled back in surprise. The camouflage these things had when pressed up against trees was almost unfairly good—and as it slowly padded forward, its growls dying down to a low rumble, I felt my spike of shock give way to mounting dread. Without April or her mace to protect me, I was suddenly much more conscious of just how large these things really were.

"Gl-Glitterdust!" I yelled, jabbing my wand furiously in the wolf's direction. As if taking its cue from me, the wolf snarled and suddenly lunged forward—only to be met by a brilliant multicoloured stream of sparkles. Stunned, it gave a surprisingly high-pitched yelp and veered to the side, missing me by a wide margin. Before its momentum could carry it too far away from me, it dug its heels into the loamy dirt, and whirled around to face me again with another angry snarl.

I stifled a snort. The sparkles from my spell had stuck fast to the monster's lupine head and shoulders, coating it in a veritable rainbow of glittering colours, and now it looked a little silly.

The wolf charged me again, and missed me completely. This time, I hadn't even needed to cast my spell. I surmised that this was the "sharply reduced accuracy" that Glitterdust caused. Maybe—just maybe—I was going to be able to win this.

"Glitterdust!" I shouted, more confidently this time. The wolf took the hit with barely a flinch this time, then surged forward. This time, however, as it bore down on me, it suddenly slowed down. I barely had a moment to hurl myself out of the way before it spun towards me, and its jaws snapped shut over where my chest had just been.

"Glitterdust!" I yelped, scrambling away from it. The wolf roared in pain as yet another puff of glitter caught it in the eyes, and it took off again, this time in completely the wrong direction. When it realized its mistake, it stopped short again and began to sniff the air. For a moment, my heart stopped—did the glitter work against the sense of smell?--but then it sneezed violently and growled in frustration. It shook itself furiously, but before it could shake off too much of the dust, I cast Glitterdust at it again, giving it a fresh coat.

I pulled up my HUD and glanced at my mana. To my pleasant surprise, I'd barely put a dent in my mana pool with those four Glitterdusts: and as I studied my opponent, I thought it looked like it wasn't in particularly good shape. Beneath the rainbow of sparkles on its front, there were a few furrows in its bark that hadn't been there before, and as it slowly advanced on me once more, I thought it might be favouring one leg.

"Glitterdust!" I shouted. The wolf growled and shook itself again, this time more out of frustration than any dedicated effort to get the dust off it. I had to hand it to the devs: their monsters were remarkably quick to adapt to players' strategies. This wolf had given up on trying to charge me entirely, stopped bothering to try to shake itself clean, and had even tried a less telegraphed attack, all in an effort to get around my Glitterdust. It was almost scary how smart this thing was, when I didn't have April handy to smash it in two or three hits.

Seeing that it was getting a little too close to me for comfort, I hopped back a few steps. "Glitterdust!" I shouted as I withdrew. The wolf grumbled and suddenly shot forwards, right into the cloud of dust—but this time, it didn't flinch and break off the attack. I grunted in pain as it struck me right in the stomach with its open mouth, and in the top left of my vision my life points shot down to almost zero.

"Cure!" I gabbled, pointing my wand at myself as the wolf drew back for another hit. My health shot back up to the green, though not to full, and I wasted no time in shouting "Glitterdust!" again.

The wolf exploded into a puff of sawdust. I stood there for a while, scarcely able to believe what had just happened. I'd just won a fight. I'd just taken down a timber-wolf, by myself, on probably the single weakest character that had ever existed in this game.

"Whoooo!" I roared into the empty woods. "I am the best!"

The next few solitary timber-wolves I encountered, I dispatched in much the same way. Though it was slow going, and I was starting to run low on mana, I'd managed to take out the last two without even taking even a single hit, yet another boost to my ego. I was feeling very pleased with myself when I happened upon a lone goblin, who bristled as I approached.

This was a little green thing that almost would have resembled a monkey if it weren't mostly hairless, except for some kinky black fuzz on its back that almost resembled pubes. Its ears were long and bat-like, its eyes were large and solid red, and its mouth was packed to the brim with jagged, twisted yellow teeth. It held a rusty dagger that looked small even for its tiny size, and wore only a filthy brown loincloth that might have once been another colour.

April and I had encountered a couple of these guys before, and they weren't exactly impressive. She'd been able to squish them with a single swing of her mace, and the one time one had managed to strike at me with its rusty goblin blade, it had done a laughable amount of damage. Sensing a chance to conserve some mana, and get some practice with my side-arm in, I stowed away my wand and drew my dagger.

Seeing me draw my weapon, the goblin let out a wild, high-pitched cry and sprinted at me, jabbing its own dagger forward furiously. I deftly stepped to the side and swung my dagger at it... and we both missed each other completely. I shrugged, my good cheer from winning the earlier fights with the timber wolves enough to keep me from getting frustrated. I would get the hang of this dagger eventually.

The second time the goblin charged me, I decided not to bother with sidestepping at all, and just slashed at it as it reached me. I felt a brief spike of pain in my shin, where its blade had struck me, but as I consulted my HUD I saw that it had done next to no damage to me at all. On the other hand, the goblin stumbled woozily back from me, a massive diagonal gash across its already-ugly face rendering it somehow even more foul and misshapen.

A sudden draught blew over me. I blinked and looked down at myself. My lacy pink lingerie was out in the open. Dumbly, I patted myself down as if to confirm it was true, and found that I couldn't feel my all-concealing robe any longer. Somehow, it had vanished.

I looked behind me. Sure enough, there was a second goblin, in much better shape than the first one, clutching my robe under one armpit and looking up at me. Rather than sniggering, which I figured would have been the natural response, it seemed almost slack-jawed as it stared at me.

"G-give me that back!" I shouted, holding out my free hand urgently while I tried to shield myself from their eyes with my other one. The thieving goblin cracked a grin, and only then did it let out a mischievous cackle.

Then, before my stunned eyes, it whipped off its loincloth, revealing what was unmistakeably a penis. Disproportionately large for its size, it was long and thick, with a deep green foreskin and a bulbous, fleshy purple head. Prominent blue veins ran down its length, and at its base was a tangled forest of the same kind of kinky black hair that covered both the goblins' backs. With a stab of disgust, it occurred to me that this hair really was pubic hair.

"Log out!" I shouted to the sky. I was done with this game. This game SUCKED! Why, why, WHY on EARTH would ANYONE decide to model some freakishly large goblin cocks, then stick them into a professionally made MMORPG? I brought up my menu, my every move to leave this game now made more urgent as I realized that the goblin who had stolen my robe was beginning to run both of its horrible little hands up and down its absurd shaft.

The logout button was greyed out. I jabbed it several times, but to no avail, and groaned in frustration. Of course: I couldn't even log out from this freaking game. I reached up to my head and tugged at what felt like empty air, in an effort to remove the Phantasm helmet directly, but it seemed that there were either features built into the game or the Phantasm itself to keep that from working. I groaned again and closed the menus, then swiftly stuck my hand out again, this time to block out the sight of the furiously masturbating goblin on the ground in front of me. With my other hand, the one clutching my dagger, extended I lunged forwards and jabbed twice. The goblin's head, still visibly bobbing even as I buried my dagger in it, popped in a shower of yellow-green mucus. A touch nervously, I lowered my hand. The rest of the goblin, including its absurd gag penis, had thankfully vanished along with it, leaving behind only my robe.

I turned around, and found the first goblin also furiously jacking off: this one, I just slashed at once. It too exploded in a burst of mucus, and I finally sighed and plonked myself on the forest floor. I hadn't exerted myself physically at all, but that ordeal had left me drained. What was that? Some kind of horrible easter egg for losing all your outer clothes to goblins? A prank between devs that had accidentally been left in the game's code?

Whatever it was, I thought as I absently picked up my fallen robes and re-equipped them in my inventory, it was filthy. I couldn't log out yet, but when I did, there was a pretty good chance that I was never going to log back in again—and I was definitely going to report all of this to VALKYRIE's support department. Especially the masturbating goblins.

I took a step forward, and realized that my robes weren't brushing against my ankles. I looked back down, and desperately wished I hadn't.

If I'd thought that Anne's hot pink lingerie had been embarrassing before, what I was wearing now was easily ten times worse. My new outfit was baby blue, but it was genuinely hard to tell, because this colour was localized to three miniscule triangles of baby blue fabric attached to my body through only the thinnest of gossamer white threads. Two of them were over my nipples, just barely managing to cover them, while the third was desperately trying—and failing—to contain Anne's cock.

I leapt back into my inventory and thumbed through to my outfit and outfit slots.

I buried my head in my hands. Apparently, picking up my own stolen outfit off the ground counted as "acquiring" it, which meant that my fantastic, androgynous robe had just been permanently rerolled into the sluttiest bikini I'd ever seen in my life. I sighed and looked at the other clothes sitting in my inventory. If it was a choice between the abomination on me and the... serviceable, if not exactly modest, outfit I'd accidentally purchased in Lumberg... I sighed again and equipped it all.

The hair ribbons I left alone, reasoning that they wouldn't cover anything up anyway. I grimaced as I looked myself over, the wide pink cone of the Frilly Girl's Dress no less absurd to me than it had been when I'd first accidentally bought it, but there wasn't much I could do about it. I set off once again into the woods, noting with some minor contentment that my mana had recovered significantly during the fight with the goblins (and the ensuing time I had spent frantically going through menus for various reasons).

I proceeded through the forest in my backup outfit, hoping that I was slowly closing in on civilization. Though the leafy canopy above me blocked out the sky, the way the forest was darkening around me suggested that night was falling. I encountered a few more solitary timber-wolves, and another gang of two snickering goblins: the goblins, I blasted with Glitterdust before they could pull anything disgusting, killing them instantly. A few minutes after dealing with them, I ran into a third goblin. Before I could wipe this one out, a tooltip popped in front of my face.

"Glitterdust," I said casually as I read through my newest Milestone. Losing Fortitude made me wince: I didn't know exactly what it did, but I'd only started with 8 points in it to begin with, and it sounded like levelling this Milestone up all the way would cost me 6 of those points overall. On the plus side, all I had to do to not level it up any further was avoid cosmetic potions, which seemed easy enough. And if I remembered correctly, the Charisma this Milestone provided would make all of my spells stronger, hopefully including the damage from Glitterdust.

Before I closed the window, I squinted at the line that said how I'd obtained the Milestone. Had the masturbating goblins been a game mechanic after all? I glanced down at my dumb skirt again. I'd killed the other three goblins before they could do much more than notice I was around, but maybe it would be worth leaving the next one alive for a little bit to see what would happen. Obviously it was still gross, but if I could "arouse" a more powerful enemy somehow and have them basically stun themselves by jerking off, I'd be able to get a couple of free shots in at them.

Another growl shook me from my thoughts, and I whirled around to jab my wand in the direction it had come from.

"Glitterdust!" I shouted, illuminating the timber-wolf that had just growled at me.

A new tooltip appeared in front of me. This one had a flashing red header.

I stared at the tooltip faintly. The glitter-coated wolf in front of me tried to shake the dust from itself; when that failed, it lifted its head and howled. All throughout the forest around me, the baying responses of other wolves rose from the trees in a haunting refrain. I turned to run, but it was too late—wolves began to spring out of the darkness, hemming me in with an almost tangible wall of snarls and slavering. I was mildly surprised to see that none of these new wolves were timber-wolves; most of them were coated in a shaggy mane of stark silver fur, with a couple of black ones that seemed to pour sinuously from the murky darkness of the forest floor. Their eyes were a variety of colours, but each pair was bright in the gloomy twilight that now overtook the forest, and each pair glittered with a malicious intelligence.

Perhaps it was because I'd already initiated combat with my offhand Glitterdust, but they did not wait for me to make another move: the timber-wolf still behind me surged forwards and struck me in the back, knocking a massive chunk out of my health bar. I stumbled forward and fell to my knees, and the silver wolf closest to me lifted one matted paw and, with an almost dismissive swipe, slashed me across the face.

My healthbar was empty. I slumped forwards, no longer able to even try to muster the strength to get back on my feet and run away. The raw, earthy scent of loam and the steadily decomposing detritus of the forest floor filled my nose; cold, moist soil stuck to my face; but I did not die.

The wolves took pause. The wolf who had dealt the finishing blow leaned forward, as if to inspect me. Its fearsome snout pressed up against my forehead, and I found myself scarcely able to breathe, my lungs overwhelmed by the sheer stench of a wild animal in the midst of its own natural habitat. It sniffed at me, and its black nose was so close to my ears that even its sniffs were almost deafening.

Left dazed and woozy by the onslaught on my senses, I didn't notice when the silver wolf stepped back from me until I felt a clumsy tug at the edge of my skirt.

"H-hey! What're you—HEY!" Unable to turn to see what was happening myself, I was left to piece it together based on the sensations assaulting my rear end. My skirt was being jostled, increasingly violently, until at last I heard the sound of tearing fabric. The tension around my waist died, and after a moment the torn remnants of my stupid skirt fell by the side of my head. Deep tooth marks had been left in it.

Something wet and warm pressed up against my rear end.

"H-HEY!!" I shouted, only for that something—one of the wolves' snouts—to push my hips forward and lift them up at the same time, until my knees were practically unfolded at a right angle and my ass was right in the air.

A terrible thought struck me. Ripping the skirt off... lifting my ass up...

Something hot, heavy, and bristly climbed up over my waist. It wrapped around my rear end like a glove, and moments later the same sensation pressed down against my mostly bare back and paralysed arms.

"H-hey!! Stop it! Stop it! Log out, log out, log out!!" I chanted desperately, unable to physically perform the gestures I needed to open any of the game's menus.

The wolf laid its heavy head on mine, and I found my face crushed further into the moist soil. The bristly thing on my waist began to bump up and down, blindly searching for something I did not want to think about. Something hot and hard jabbed up against the small of my back, and my thighs, and my butt cheeks.

"April!" I cried out. "Please! Anyone!" I strained every fibre of my body, but my muscles refused to budge. The hot, hard thing jabbed up against my lacy pink panties: they had never felt more flimsy and ridiculous. Sensing it was getting closer to its goal, the wolf crushing me began to thrust its hips harder. The pointed end of its thing prodded against the inside of my cheeks, stinging my bare skin with a series of burning kisses.

"No!! Get off! Log out!!"

Agony shot up my spine. My teeth slammed together. Tears were streaming out of my eyes, but I could barely register them: the monster had managed to work its cock underneath the meagre protection of my panties, and its tip was now lodged in the entrance to my asshole.

I could barely read my new Milestone through the tears and the agony erupting in my lower gut as, with its foothold inside me established, the wolf inched itself forward. Its cock felt like a searing hot fist driving up inside me, and I could only whimper in pain and fear as it wormed its way deep inside my body. After what felt like hours, I finally felt the wide base of the monster's cock press up against the rim of my weeping hole, and it momentarily drew its hips back.

"AH!!" I screamed as it thrust back forwards, then pulled back again, then thrust forwards again. It was fucking me. A monster was jamming its cock back and forth inside my body, and all I could do was cry. The wolf started panting, and its tongue lolled over the side of its slavering maw and slapped me wetly in the face. "OW!!"

Slap. Slap. Slap. It grew increasingly forceful as my ass bent and warped around its cock, the sharply tapered end of its cock finding new and more painful spots inside my body to impale and abuse as I sobbed underneath it.

"G-GET--OFF--ME!!" I cried out between sobs, scarcely able to breathe through the monster's violations. It ignored me completely. Still holding out the vain hope that I would be able to regain control of my body if I just fought hard enough, I tried again to writhe off the end of the beast's cock, but still my body stayed stationary. The only thing I could do was scream.

By the time the cock buried deep inside me started throbbing, my throat was raw and my lungs were exhausted. I could only let out a feeble gasp of disgust as it bulged inside me and then exploded with something wet, burning hot, and obscenely sticky. There was only one thing it could be: and as the wolf pulled its cock back out of me with a moist shclup, its exit distinctly less strained than its entry, I felt its essence leak out of me and down my ass cheeks and thighs. The wolf lifted its weight off me.

I lay there and wept, feeling broken and used and pathetic.

Then the next wolf mounted me.

"N... nnoo," I moaned. Its own hot cock prodded at me; this time, it found my entrance in only two swift strikes, and forced itself down into my depths with little resistance, aided along by the semen left behind by the first wolf. I couldn't do this again. I tried, yet again, to muster up the strength to struggle against my rapist, then resigned myself to another whimper. "P... please..."

Thrust. Thrust. Thrust. The next wolf bucked its hips furiously against mine, going even faster and pushing itself even deeper inside me than the first one. I started hiccuping through my tears-- the wolves barked excitedly in response, and the one on top of my shifted its grip on my shoulders and began to rotate its hips as it drove itself in and out of my body, twisting and churning up my guts in a way that sent fire racing through my goo-filled belly.

The new wave of pain restored some of my lost energy, and despite my sore throat I was soon screaming and shouting in earnest again, this time through my hiccups. "N-no!! *hic* S-STOP!! *hic* PLEASE!! N-no MORE!! *hic*--"

It was then, tortured and in the midst of having my cum-filled guts plundered by a ferocious animal, that the cock ravaging me struck something inside me and I felt the unthinkable: an electric surge of pleasure. My cock, until this point as soft and shrivelled as it could get, suddenly grew rock hard, and I felt a pulse of something warm balloon out of that tender spot inside of me and shake my core.

"Ah!!" I couldn't stop the pleased squeak from escaping my mouth-- nor the ones that followed it as the wolf went on to focus its rabid fucking on that spot. In embarrassingly short order, the waves of pleasure pushed me straight into orgasm, and I felt my cock shudder and spew more cum than I'd ever released before in my life, directly onto the forest floor between my stockinged knees. Realizing what had just happened, I whimpered and scrunched up my eyes, more sobs rocking my abused frame. I'd just came from having a wolf rape my ass.

Before I could do much more than register that thought, my mind flew into disarray again as the wolf raping me redoubled its thrusts. Again and again it drove its boiling hot spike inside me, and this time I recognized the way it throbbed as it neared its own orgasm.

"Nonono please please please," I pleaded, my voice thin and weak with humiliation and pain. Half of me was terrified of having a second load of wolf cum shot into my violated body--and half of me was even more terrified that it would find that treacherous little sweet spot deep inside me and make me cum again. As the wolf's bucking gave way to another explosion of monster cum inside me, I let out a pathetic squeal. The same warm pulse rose up inside me, almost like a wave of nausea but pleasurable rather than sickening, and I desperately strained all the muscles I could think of in an effort to fight it off. I was not going to cum for these monsters again.

My defiance went unheeded as the second wolf extracted itself from me and, once again ignoring my pleas for mercy, a third wolf clambered up on top of me and--after a few misses--managed to spear my gooey, aching hole once again. Tears sprung to my eyes. As I thought of how wide and red my ass must have already looked, I looked fearfully around at all the wolves that had gathered around me. Five, six, seven...

"AHH!!" This wolf's first few thrusts went straight for my core, and an explosion of delirious joy rocked my body, shaking me out of my attempts to count up how many more wolves I was about to be raped by.

"NnononoNoooo--!!" As heedless of my pleas as the wolves had been, my body betrayed me with yet another pathetic dribble of my cum, which spurted out of me in shaky drips and drabs. The wolf atop me howled, as if in triumph, and began to jerk its hips chaotically against mine. Almost immediately I realized it was much, much, much longer than the first two, and I found myself once again trying to struggle free of my virtual restraints.

Over and over again the infernal tooltip popped up in front of my eyes, invisible to my rider and all its fellow monsters ringing me. Electricity raced through my mind, my hips, up and down my spine, as the extra monstrous member of the third wolf mashed up against that sweet spot inside me again and again. A shudder ran through my body as I squirted yet again--this time, the drips that left me were a miserable trickle, the contents of my balls already largely wrung out by my last two unwilling orgasms.

"Please," I sobbed into the dirt, my whole body getting shoved back and forth by the force of the wolf's thrusting. "Please..."

The only response was a chorus of howls from the wolves still waiting for their turns.

Chapter 4: The Walk Back

Chapter Text

Over and over again, the wolves who had captured me continued to use me. Each one forced its cock deep inside my asshole and ground its body against mine until it filled my guts with its filthy goo, then climbed back off me to allow another member of the pack to have its turn. A few of them discovered that maddeningly sweet spot inside me again, but the first three orgasms had spent everything I had, and all they managed to pound out of me was a twitch in my still-soft cock and a fresh dribble of tears from my eyes.

It was with dull shock that I saw a new milestone appear. I could scarcely read it, the wolf atop me taking no pains to hold me steady as it rutted me, but I managed to piece it together. Eight. The game had been tracking how many wolves had raped me--and with eyes blurred with tears, and a mind fried by pain and burning shame, I watched the underlined numbers slowly, agonizingly, tick up.

And then, eventually, night gave way to day. Dimly cognizant that my ordeal had somehow lasted only a single in-game night, I gave only a short whimper when the wolf currently riding me fired off its load and allowed yet another one of its brothers to replace it.

"Unh," I grunted as the new cock impaled me.

"There!" shouted a very familiar voice. My heart leapt--and then, a moment later, my blood froze in my veins. April had finally come to save me... which meant that she was about to see me on all fours with my skirt torn off and my panties ruined, a wolf riding my ass and filthy monster cum smeared all over my backside and legs.

The wolves encircling me pricked their ears and lifted their heads, assuming battle-ready stances, and even the one on top of me stopped bouncing on me, though it didn't climb off either. A whistling noise tore through the air, and several of them let out howls of pain, then suddenly vanished in flashes of white light. A handful of items tumbled to the ground in their place.

I heard April gasp, and I didn't need to know why. Something slammed bodily into the wolf on top of me, hurling it to the side, and I screamed as I was dragged along with it, attached to it by the giant cock currently occupying my rectum. April gasped again, and then the whistling returned, and then finally the wolf I was attached to vanished. Now facing upwards, blearily aware that I was practically buck naked but incapable of doing anything about it, I hacked out a dry cough.

"Is this your friend?" asked a voice I'd never heard before.

April rushed over to my side. With one arm, she lifted me up and cradled me against her breasts: with the other, she pressed something cold and round to my lips. I let her tip it up against my mouth, and when a familiar sweet nectar poured out, most of it down my chin, I gratefully gulped every drip of it that managed to make it into my mouth.

A tiny splash of green appeared in my health bar. I tried to lift my arm, and--almost to my astonishment--watched it move.

"Wand," I mumbled. April gestured to something out of my field of view, and after a moment she pressed the thing into my hand. Weakly, I pointed it at myself and said, "Cure. Cure."

Warmth and energy filled my body. It was like a pall had been lifted from my eyes. In an instant, the world was transformed: brighter, more beautiful, more present than before. I looked back at April, and with a start realized that she was crying.

"It--it's all my fault," she bawled, still clinging tightly to me. "I didn't--I shouldn't have--I'm--so, so--I'm so sorry! I'm such a fucking idiot!"

"It--it's okay," I said softly, reaching up to hold on to her hands. "You... you saved me, April."

This triggered a new wave of sobs from her. "I'm sorry! You--you got—r-r--" She broke off, unable to even say the word. "B-because of ME!!"

"It's... it's not your fault," I tried to reassure her. "Y-you didn't know... this game was so f-fucked up."

Even after the healing, I could feel the dull ache in my rear end, and the wet sludge still oozing in my guts, a potent reminder of exactly how fucked up this game was. Masturbating goblins was one thing, but a rape simulator?

April let out another anguished cry and buried her face in my chest, drowning it in her tears. As harrowing as the last ordeal had been, it was rapidly becoming quite snug in April's teary embrace. A touch awkwardly, I laid companionably against her, moving from holding on to her hands to stroking her messy mane of hair.

"H-here," April said finally, prying herself away from me with flatteringly visible effort. "I--*hic*--I know you c-can't wear boy clothes, b-but--*hic*--h-here's an outfit f-for you. H-hopefully it's not too--*hic*--girly."

I clicked "Accept," opened up my inventory to equip the two new items, and marveled at how warm and comfortable they were when they appeared directly on my body. April let out a shaky laugh and gave me another tight hug. If I'd had it my way, I would have enjoyed the moment all day long, but an expectant cough interrupted us. I whirled around to look at the source of the cough, and April made an awkward cough of her own.

"O-oh! Um, this is David. David, this is... you know."

"It's good to meet you," said David cordially, getting on one knee and extending his hand to me. Awkwardly, I took it. His character was a tall, spindly elven male, with comically high cheekbones and long, almost needle-like ears that evoked a distinct sense of superiority. He wore a rather ornate set of armor, made of an auburn material with a consistency more similar to leather than it was to metal, and strapped to his back was the long black shaft of a polearm, tipped with a beautiful and intricate silver head. A holster was strapped to his hip, and from it jutted a long, curved blade of some kind. Above his head floated his character's name, healthbar, and Milestone count. My jaw almost dropped when I saw that he had a whopping 38 Milestones to his name.

"Um... thanks for coming to help save me," I said. "I... I don't know what to say."

"I'm sorry about... this," David said, bowing his head contritely and releasing my hand. "I never thought that... the goblins were one thing, but this..."

April bit her lip. "There's something we need to tell you."

"About what?" I asked.

"It's... Dave can explain it better. Something's happened. Something... really bad."

David nodded grimly. "I know you've been through a lot today. And... and maybe we should let you recover a bit before you hear this. But I'm afraid you must know this. We all do."

"Okay," I said guardedly. "What... what is it?"

He drew a sharp breath. "We're all trapped. In this game. We can't log out."

The gears stopped turning in my head. "Trapped?" I repeated stupidly.

He nodded again. "Yes. Trapped, stuck... you know. For the last twenty-four hours, everyone who's logged in to this game has been incapable of logging back out. We can't switch apps on our Visions, we can't communicate over the Internet using any means except for the game, and none of the emergency fail-safe features the Vision has have let us force quit it and take it off."

"That's why I couldn't talk to you when you... ran," April added sadly. "We got disconnected from our voice chat ages ago, without even realizing it."

"So--so that's why I haven't been able to log out?" I asked. "We're all stuck in here?"

"So, you noticed as well," David said. "Yes. I've been going through town all day, asking everyone who'd bother to talk to me, and not one person has been able to leave the game. I've never seen anything like it."

"So we're stuck like this?" I looked down at my body, clad in April's loaned maroon sweater and forest green ankle-length skirt. "I'm stuck like this?"

I paused for a moment. "W-wait, what happened to my voice? It's so... so high-pitched!"

"You don't know?" April sniffed. "I... I was gonna ask later."

Images of last night flashed through my mind. "Oh... oh no... the Milestone."

"You got a Milestone last night?"

More images. Memories. I shook my head vigorously. "Uh, I mean, yes. I just--that's not why I shook my head."

"Can I... see it?"

I shook my head again, this time more purposefully. "It's... my healing is just stronger, is all. And... and I talk like this now."

"O-oh," April said. "That's... that's good."

"Would you two like me to escort you back to town?" David asked, perhaps sensing that we weren't going to go anywhere with our conversation.

"Um..." April looked at me. I nodded. "Yes please, thank you. That would be great."

Our walk back through the forest was tense, but surprisingly short. April grabbed onto my hand and didn't even lighten her grip (let alone let go) for the entire time we were in there. We encountered a couple of loose packs of monsters, but a single throw of the whistling blade at David's waist--which I discovered was almost like a silver boomerang, in that he threw it at enemies and then it flew back into his hand--obliterated each one handily. Between these encounters, he offered us some advice about Lumberg.

"You should be able to afford any of the inns in the tavern district indefinitely, as long as you're regularly going out and hunting monsters," he said. "The NPCs say that the Lustrous Heart is the best one as far as quality and enjoyment is concerned, and it's certainly the most expensive, but I haven't exactly toured the other ones yet. Haven't had to. Hopefully we can contact the devs and get this logout issue, uh, resolved before any of us actually need to sleep in one of these things, but just in case it drags on... well, it's important to have a plan."

"Right," April nodded grimly.

"You two shouldn't have any problem with healing, since you're a druid and a priestess, but if you get hit by some kind of status effect you can't fix, the church should be able to fix it for you."

"The church?" I asked.

"You've been to the Tree, right? The church is near there." David sighed. "I'd take you there myself when we get back, but I still need to get the word out about the logout issues."

"It's no problem," April reassured him. "We'll manage."

"There's a low-level dungeon in these woods that you two should be able to clear for some solid loot too, by the way," David went on. I must have made a nervous face, because he quickly elaborated. "Don't worry--unlike the overworld, dungeons don't get more dangerous at night. You won't get swarmed like last night."

"How do we get there?" April asked. Unlike David, she seemed oblivious to my worries about the prospect of fighting monsters again so soon after the wolves.

"Ah, it's been a while since I cleared it, so I can't remember exactly," David said. "But if you're interested in it, I believe I got the map to it from the Adventurer's Guild."

"Oh, I know where that is."

"Yeah. The Adventurer's Guild is really the best place for pretty much all your information needs," David added. "I think there's a library in Lumberg as well, but I assume that's just fluff and lore, not practical dungeoneering advice."

"Wow, they even added a library?" April said, sounding inordinately impressed for someone I knew for a fact had trouble getting through word problems, let alone reading books.

A thin smile appeared on David's face. "Yeah. Game of the year material... except for the one little problem."

As he said this, the trees of the forest gave way rather abruptly to a line of squat grey houses with thatched roofs. We were back in Lumberg. I felt April finally relax her grip on my hand, and despondently allowed her to release me. Like with too many good things, I'd forgotten what I'd had until I'd lost it. The thought that she might hold my hand again if I got myself raped again crept into my head, but I quickly banished it. That was... an awful idea. There was no way I was ever going to let that happen again.

"Hey, you okay?" April said, apparently noticing that I'd drifted off.

"Yeah. Sorry." I shook myself, and--mostly to avoid locking eyes with April--looked at David. "Um, thank you... sir."

David raised an eyebrow. "Hey, there's no need to call me 'sir'. I'm just glad we're all okay." He turned around and surveyed the vast expanse of the forest behind us. "I'm going to head back in there and see if I can track down any other players, alright? You two just go into town and take it easy for today."

April and I nodded, almost in unison, and April bowed her head. "Thank you so much!" After a moment, I followed suit.

"No worries," David said. He gave us a mock salute and then disappeared back into the forest

"Soooo," April said, having regained some of her usual perkiness. "What do you wanna do now?"

I blinked and looked down at my body. My head still felt like it was stuffed full of cotton, and just as the sperm that filled my guts refused to be forgotten even after our walk back to Lumberg, the memories of how it had got there were still fresh in my mind. My body didn't exactly ache, thanks to April's health potion and my own Cure spells, but... I was bloated and tired.

"Let's go to one of those inns," I said.

April, still extra accommodating, nodded energetically and took hold of my arm again. "Alright, let's go!"

Half-walking, half-pulled along in April's wake, I followed her down the cobblestone streets of Lumberg. I might have been imagining things, but I felt I could already sense the difference in the bearings and postures of the few players we walked past. Most of them didn't even seem to notice us, and the few that did just stared furtively at us and at April's purposeful stride and then looked away, with no smile or greeting to be had. Logically, everyone still in town would have had to have heard the news of the bug by now, if people like David were already leaving to spread the news. That had to be a hit to everyone's morale.

"Here we are!" April announced, rousing me from my troubled thoughts. I looked up, surprised that we had arrived so soon.

Although the inn didn't have a sign indicating its name, it was immediately clear that this was the Lustrous Heart. Unlike the humble wattle-and-daub or cobblestone of the buildings we'd passed by on the way, this building was a proud font of rich browns, dark greens and gleaming gold. April pushed through its ornate mahogany doors ahead of me, and held one open so that I could slink in after her.

"Hello!" chirped an NPC from behind a counter with a lacquered black top. She wore a strangely modern suit and a bow tie, both in a deep forest green. "How can I help you two?"

"We'd like a room, please!" April told her.

"One bed or two?" asked the NPC, with all the air of asking how many lumps of sugar April wanted in a cup of tea.

April glanced at me, and I felt my face heat up as she turned back to the NPC. "Two," she said, after what seemed to me to be lengthy deliberation.

While April handled the rooms, I sneaked a look around the inn. It was every bit as spacious as the opulent exterior had led me to believe, with maybe a dozen and a half identical tables spaced evenly across the carpeted floor. There was a bar, complete with stools and an oily-haired bartender, at the far end of the room; the bartender noticed me looking at him and gave me a roguish wink, then went back to cleaning glasses. I blushed again, then cringed internally. What was wrong with me? Had being attacked by those horrible wolves really reduced me to… to freezing in fear when people so much as looked at me?

"Let's go," April said softly. She put a reassuring hand on my back and guided me through a small doorway by the front desk, then up the staircase behind it. "I think this is our room."

The door we stopped at had a little silver 1 printed on it: April stuck the key the receptionist NPC had given her into its doorknob, and pushed the door open.

"Ooooh!" April came to a halt in the doorway, and I had to peer around her broad shoulders to see what had drawn such a reaction out of her.

"Huh." As little as I knew, or cared, about interior design, even I could see that this place lived up to its reputation as the best inn in Lumberg. I'd been picturing a couple of beds and a set of drawers, but this place was fully furnished. On top of two identical beds, it had a table, upholstered chairs, a sofa, a wardrobe, and even a window with drapes that matched every other piece of furnishing in the room.

"Ooh, it even has an ensuite!" April had found a door by the window, and all I could see of her as she stuck her head through it was her furiously wagging white tail.

"I, um, may I use that?" I asked falteringly. Unconsciously, I put a hand on my belly. I'd grown used to it over our wilderness walk, but the prospect of getting rid of the monster semen still caking my thighs-–and sloshing around inside me-–was definitely enticing.

"Of course!" April deftly stepped out of my way, and I awkwardly stumbled into our bathroom.

I blinked as I closed the door behind me. While there was something mildly toilet-shaped in the room with me, I had been expecting it to be made out of porcelain–-but instead, the seat was made of burnished wood, and rather than having a bowl beneath it, there was a lacquered black box attached to the back wall. Even here, in the bathroom of an inn that nobody would have ever visited if the game hadn't broken, the devs were showing off their attention to detail.

I tugged down the dress that April had loaned me and sat down on the wooden toilet seat. It was remarkably cool and pleasant against my sore ass–but before I could marvel much more at that, I felt the hideous ball of humiliation still simmering inside me begin to ooze its way free of my body.

"Hhhohhh~!" A cry halfway between pain and pleasure escaped my throat as the first gooey seam passed through my still-gaping asshole, then fell heavily into the toilet water with a sickening splash. I clapped my hands over my mouth. Had April heard that? The walls of the inn suddenly felt all too thin.

"I-I… I'm okay!" I called out weakly, not sure if I wanted her to be able to hear me or not. Perhaps to spare me any further embarrassment, there was no response from the other room, but I decided that I wasn't going to make any more noises like the first one.

"Nghhh…" With a deep grunt that, at the very least, didn't sound dangerously close to the sound of an orgasm, I continued to strain my guts. "Fhuuuck…"

Compared to the first load, the next one took a while to pass. It almost felt as if it had congealed inside me, hardening into a thick gel designed to be impossible for any womb to expel. Tears beaded in my eyes, brought on more by my emotions than the physical stress of trying to shit cum. They'd treated my ass like a womb.

I let out a sniffle, then another grunt as I strained harder. I rolled up April's sweater and, after blanching slightly at the sight of my swollen, cum-stained belly, tried to knead some of that thick gel out of me.

"Hnghhh…" Plop. A stiff chunk of wolf cum fell free of me, and I just barely managed to keep myself from crying out with joy. It was working! Again and again I kneaded myself, pushing and pushing, desperately trying to work out as much of the remains of my assault as I could.

A familiar bolt of lightning ran through me again; all the fine hairs on my body stood on end, and I just barely managed to hold in another euphoric squeal.

"Nononono…" I paused, trying to deny the sensation that was still sending tingles up and down my spine, rapidly awakening my still-soft penis. My efforts had gotten a semi-solid knot of cum lodged right up against that same sweet spot that the wolves had abused so much last night. As I sat there, on the toilet seat, I felt as if I had suddenly been charged with defusing a bomb. The slightest false move could turn this horrible, thick mound of cum inside me into yet another anal orgasm, another layer of humiliation piled on after all the other dribbles the wolves had pounded out of me.

"Please," I pleaded softly to myself, screwing my eyes shut. I could feel my heart hammering in my chest. I had to get this thing out of me. Even if… even if…

"Nghh…" Refusing to open my eyes, I gingerly put my hands back on my stomach. I gave a tentative push… then a slightly firmer one… then an even firmer one. The pleasure inside me buzzed and shivered, and I hesitated. One big push. Maybe, if it came as a surprise, it wouldn't make me cum again.

I squeezed as hard as I could. "UWwoooH!!" A truly orgasmic cry of delight, in my squeaky new girl voice, flew from my mouth as the thick lump of cum inside me was squeezed past that most dangerous part of my gut and then, helped along by the convulsing of my intestines, slithered its way through the rest of me. But before I could celebrate, I felt more thick cum slithering after it, taking the same route over that accursed sweet spot. It was like a seal inside me had been busted open.

"HnghhH!! Nnhhooo!!" Now able to maintain some level of control over my own volume, I hunkered down on the toilet seat and tried as hard as I could not to cum any more than I already had. "Fuuuuuckkk…" Wave after wave of pleasure, brought on by each particularly bumpy chunk of hardened semen flowing through me, rocked my mind.

By the time it had all finally passed, and I felt I could risk standing up from the toilet without spewing wolf cum all over the bathroom, my cock was totally limp. I had completely lost count of how many times I had been driven to orgasm.

When I left the bathroom, having showered and now smelling like the pink flower I didn't recognize that had been printed on the front of the shampoo bottle in there, April was nowhere to be seen. Not wanting to face the wider world just yet-–with a flush, I realized that I'd walked all the way here from the forest while stinking of monster semen, and leaking a weak trickle of it down my legs-–I decided to throw myself down on one of the beds and take stock of my stats.

I flinched as I read through my two newest Milestones, the fruits of last night's ruined adventure. Just the fact that they name-dropped rape and penetration as mechanics made my stomach turn involuntarily. Was… was what had happened to me in the forest supposed to happen? Was that something they'd really programmed into the game? Why? It-–it had been awful! And how had nobody noticed that this was a thing yet? I was hardly one of the first players of the game… but even David, who'd been playing long enough to accrue 38 milestones, had looked astonished at the… state I'd been left in.

I shook my head. In need of a distraction, I exited out of my milestones and clicked on the first icon on the menu next to it. A number of tooltips popped up in the air in front of me.

This was my inventory. I'd opened it before, to switch between my wand and my dagger back in the forest, but this was my first time really reading through it. I let my hand linger over the box for the Stardust Potion that Madam Humbert had given me for a few seconds. She'd said something about saving it to use in a pinch… advice that was vague and unhelpful, but-–knowing how badly VALKYRIE seemed to have it out for me-–I decided to humour her for the time being. I wasn't in any rush to turn this virtual body of mine into even more of an embarrassment.

I kept scrolling.

Amid the small collection of feminine clothes I'd already amassed, I found two splashes of red–-the clothes I'd been wearing when I was… attacked. More out of curiosity than any actual desire to put either of these things on again, I tapped the repair button, only to be greeted by another red-crowned tooltip.

Well, that wasn't a problem. I had no intention of ever putting the stockings or the dress on ever again. I dismissed my menu and sat up on the bed–-then practically jumped out of my skin as my stomach grumbled furiously. I looked down at myself. I was hungry. Was that my real body, inaccessible to my mind thanks to the stupid bug that had trapped me here… or was it my virtual body, which I hadn't actually fed since logging in one in-game day ago? Another rumble got me on my feet. I wasn't going to find out just sitting there. I'd get a meal, and if I was still hungry, then all that meant was that those devs had better get us all out sooner rather than later.

I walked downstairs, only hesitating briefly at the doorway, and coughed awkwardly to get the receptionist NPC's attention.

"Yes? How may I help you?" she said politely.

"Is there, umm, food here?" I said weakly. My voice still sounded foreign to my own ears, considering most of my experience with it so far had been shrill moans forced out of me.

"Of course, dear," she said. Inexplicably, her voice had taken on a cloying tone, just a few short steps from being outright baby-talk. "You see that big guy over there?" She pointed at the roguish bartender across the room. "Ask him for anything off the menu, and he'll make it for you!"

"Um… thanks," I said uncertainly, feeling condescended to but not wanting to start anything right at that moment. Awkwardly, I sashayed across the room, suddenly as keenly aware of the way my newly womanly hips forced me to shake my ass as I was yesterday, when I'd first been cursed with them.

"Hey, little missie," said the man in a deep baritone. His ears were pointed, just like mine, and as he set down the glass he'd been drying he gave me a smile that sent thrills coursing down my spine. What was happening with me?? "What'll it be?"

"I, uh, um, uhh…" I looked around desperately for a menu, or a sign, or anything that could give me an idea of what to order. In the real world I was a cheeseburger guy, but after seeing how dedicated VALKYRIE was to authenticity-–to the point of not even using porcelain for their toilets-–I somehow doubted that they would be serving any here at the Lustrous Heart.

He held up a long, spindly finger. "Hold on, let me guess. Hmm. You look like a… cheong-su kinda girl."

"I'm not a-–" I'd meant to say 'girl,' more as a reflexive response than anything, but the word didn't come out. It was like trying to say my own name instead of 'Anne.'

He peered at me curiously. "Ah, so you're an adventurer! Many pardons, miss. You would not have heard of cheong-su then, yes?"

"Um… no," I said, truthfully, though it wasn't what I'd been trying to correct him on.

"Ah, you'll like it! It's an elven delicacy. Very good. And I make the best in all the human lands, haha," he boasted. "Not that that's very hard."

"A-alright," I said. "I'll have one… cheong-su."

He smiled crookedly at me. "Very good. I'll be right back, little missie!" And with that he vanished into the back room, where I presumed the kitchen was.

As he clattered around in there, I picked at the sweater April had given me. It was supremely soft and comfortable, but–-when I took a sneaky whiff of it–-it didn't have that same intoxicating scent that she had. So she hadn't gotten around to wearing it when she'd given it to me.

I fingered it thoughtfully as I read its tooltip. Why was it a feminine clothing item, anyway? It looked-–and felt–-pretty androgynous to me. Nervously, I checked the design on the front, but it just seemed to be a brown sleigh being drawn by a reindeer with a bright red nose.

"Here you go, little missie!" The bartender had returned, and with a flourish he deposited the "cheong-su" he'd whipped up on the bar in front of me. It was a little red lacquered bowl filled almost to the brim with what looked like gooey cheese and noodles, flecked with green sprigs of some herb, or maybe seaweed. A thin wisp of steam rose up from it, a testament to just how fresh and piping hot it was.

Just looking at it was making my mouth water. "Um, thank you!" I said.

He handed me a pair of chopsticks. "Dig in!"

I practically fell into the cheesy bowl like a man possessed. I was hungrier than I'd thought. Even the suave bartender took a step back as I obliterated his handiwork, though he was quick to laugh it off.

"Haha, you eat like a tiger!" he beamed. "You like it?"

I nodded enthusiastically, mouth too full of cheese and noodles and soup to risk saying anything. This dish was like a decadent, greasy love letter to fast food in the real world; once again, I had to applaud VALKYRIE's devs. How had they even managed to simulate this?

All too soon, I slurped up the last errant strand of thick cheese, and stretched back on my barstool. I felt fuller than ever before, and it felt great. Just as I was closing my eyes to let out a deep sigh of contentment, I felt a long, spindly finger on my cheek.

"H-huh?"

"Apologies, little missie," said the bartender, holding up a finger. "You had a little cheese on your face." True enough, there was a bit on his finger, which vanished into his mouth with an exaggerated pop. "Delicious."

Before I could do much more than babble in his general direction, flustered and irate, April called out to me from behind. "Oh, there you are!"

I spun around on my barstool, and the bartender craned his neck to see past me. "April!"

"Ohh, you can eat food here too?" April bustled over to me, looking stunning–-well, more stunning than usual-–with a new black choker around her neck. There was a paw print embossed over its latch, on theme with her character's dog ears and tail. "Hi! My name's April!"

"Hello," the bartender said in turn. "You know the little missie?"

"Mhm! He's my partner in crime here!"

The bartender raised an eyebrow. "He?"

He glanced my way. Far from looking disgusted or mocking, as I'd feared, his eyes shone as if he were even more intrigued by me now.

"Yep!" April said proudly, either not noticing or pretending not to notice the electric look that had flashed between me and the bartender. "He might not look like it right now, but he's a man, through and through!"

Warmth flooded my chest. "Y-yeah!" I agreed.

Suddenly, she inhaled deeply. "Wow, you smell good!" This was directed at me. "Is that the shampoo they have in the shower?"

"I, um, yeah," I said. My mind immediately went to the... Doglover Milestone I'd 'earned' last night. Did the... pheromones it gave me work on canine beast-kin too?

"Yes, we use safrigha flower shampoo here," said the bartender. "A local specialty, I hear."

April made a suitably impressed sound, though I was pretty sure she had as much idea of what safrigha was as I did. Less, since she hadn't seen the pink flower drawn on the shampoo bottle yet. "Hm. I'm kinda hungry now!" "Then, would you like to try cheong-su as well?"

"Is it any good?" April asked me.

"Um, yeah!" I nodded.

The bartender smiled slyly. "Yes, the little… man here tore through his bowl at quite the pace."

"Alright! One cheong-su, please!" As the bartender withdrew back into his kitchen, April took up a seat next to me.

"I didn't know there were NPC elves here in Lumberg!" she remarked. "You know, he seemed kinda into you!"

"I-into me?" My heart spiked in my chest. "Wh-what do you mean?"

It was April's turn to raise an eyebrow. "You know, like he found you attractive."

"W-well–I–y-you're–"

She put a reassuring arm on my shoulder. "Hey, no worries. If anyone tries anything on you, I'll knock 'em flat."

Her beautiful green eyes bored into mine, and I deflated. "Thanks, April."

"Don't mention it," she said with a small smile. "I know you'd do the same for me." If you could, I silently added for her.

"Here you go, Miss April!" A second helping of cheong-su clattered onto the bar in front of her, and she audibly oohed and aahed at the sight. The bartender crossed his arms, basically preening himself as she admired his handiwork.

"Oh, this is good!" April squealed as she took her first bite. With her pointed teeth and an appetite that was seemingly even more ravenous than my own, she made short work of the meal.

The bartender looked between us. "You eat alike! Or perhaps my cooking is just that good?"

"It's delicious!" declared April. She hesitated for a moment, and then let out a burp that rumbled like a thunderclap. "Oops, sorry!"

"Haha, very good!" laughed the bartender. "Is a sign you enjoyed my meal very much!"

"I did, I did!" April beamed. She turned back to me. "Um, do you mind paying for this? I, um, went a little overboard in town earlier."

She smiled a little guiltily, and I tried to school my expression in such a way as to conceal the elation that I felt at being asked to pay for her dinner. Yes, it was in a virtual reality, and yes, it wasn't actually food, and yes, it wasn't actually going to cost me money, but it felt the same way!

"Seven noughts," the bartender told me.

April and the bartender looked at me expectantly.

"Did you get the prompt?" April asked.

I blanched. "I, um, I got a prompt. But, I, uhh… I don't have enough money for that."

"Is that so?" Although the bartender's words remained pleasant, his face had become thunderous. As he picked up our empty bowls, I was struck by the mental image of him bringing them crashing down on my head.

"I, um, I have six!" I gabbled, hoping that it would in some way alleviate the wrath that was about to come down on me. I looked pleadingly at April-–surely she had one gold piece left to her name, right?--but she just shrugged helplessly.

The bartender sighed. "Six, huh? Very well."

Gratefully, I pressed 'pay.' "O-oh, thank-–"

"But I'll need you to make up the last nought another way," the bartender interrupted me. He looked between us both. "How about a kiss from the pretty lady?"

April blinked. "A kiss?"

I swallowed thickly. He wanted April to give him a kiss? That was… bizarre. Well, not in the sense that someone wouldn't want to have April kiss them, because of course they would, she was gorgeous, but in the sense of… an NPC going as far as to offer the option to us, in lieu of a single gold piece. What was going on with this game?

"Yes," the bartender said smoothly. "I promise, I will not bite."

April stared at him, then looked at me. "Well… I guess we wouldn't be in this situation if I hadn't gotten one of those chong-thingies too…" It sounded more like she was trying to talk herself into it than actually enthused about it.

"W-wait!" I said. "I… um… h-how about me?"

The bartender looked at me, a touch too shrewdly for my taste. "From you? Are you a pretty lady?"

No, I tried to say, but my mouth wouldn't even form the word. "...yes," I said through gritted teeth.

"What are you doing?" April hissed at me.

"Don't worry," I whispered back. I was going to be damned if I let April kiss another man to pay for her meal in front of me, especially after she'd asked me to cover her tonight. "It's not a big deal."

"Very good," said the bartender. "Come, then." He beckoned me closer with a finger–-I flushed with embarrassment as I realized it was the same finger he'd used to clean that strand of cheese off my face earlier. With a gulp that I hoped wasn't audible, I closed my eyes and leaned forwards, and saw for a millisecond him doing the same.

Our lips touched… and then it was over.

"Lovely." I opened my eyes to see that the bartender was standing up straight again, holding our dirty bowls as if nothing had happened. I looked at April and saw a glimpse of concern in her face before she went back to her usual bubbly smile, but for some reason all I could feel was… disappointment. I knew I'd told her that it wasn't a big deal, but… maybe some part of me had expected that it would be.

"Well, that was weird," she said. "Let's go back to our room!"

My heart did a backflip in my chest. It had been lost on me earlier, but now that I was clean, refreshed, and well-fed, it finally dawned on me that I was sharing a room with April. Who cared that I'd just touched lips with some weird NPC? As she grabbed me by the wrist and practically dragged me back up the stairs to our room–-our room-–I found it hard to care about anything else at all.

Chapter 5: Into the Breachwood (Pt. 1)

Chapter Text

"Alright!" April said when we were back in our room. She sat me down on a bed and started rifling through her inventory, which from the outside looked more like she was drawing invisible lines in the air in front of her at random. Stuff started popping into existence on the covers beside me: a couple of dusty old tomes, a crumpled and yellowed sheet of what could only be described as parchment, and a small fur pouch.

"These are yours," April said, taking a seat on the bed beside me and pushing the books and the pouch to me. I picked up one of the books, and a prompt popped up in my face.

"I hit up the Adventurer's Guild while I was out, like Dave said to!" she explained, as I pressed 'confirm.' The book vanished in a dusty puff and I was promptly bombarded with a wall of tooltips.

A chill ran down my spine as I read through the second and third tooltips. These must have been the other wolves that had shown up last night--the fiercer, stronger, and… larger ones. I swiftly exited out of their info boxes and tried to tune back in to what April was saying.

"...and he said that they'd update as we fight them more and discover what their weaknesses are and stuff! Cool, right?" April beamed in my direction.

"I, uh, yeah!" I tried to match her enthusiasm with some of my own. Were we really going to go back out… there so soon? I tried to steel myself. If I was going to impress April, I'd have to face my newfound fears sooner or later. But… saying it here, in the safety of the Lustrous Heart, was one thing. It was another altogether to brave the woods again. To risk another brush with… yeah.

"C'mon, read up!" April picked up the second book and pressed it into my hands.

"So, this is the dungeon David mentioned?" I hazarded a guess.

"Mhm! Sounds really cool, right?" April's voice took on a haughty tone as she read out what must have been her own copy of the knowledge book. "'Here abound unseelie and plant monsters galore… bringing poison, illusions, and enchantment most insidious!'" She broke off into a fit of giggles, and my heart skipped a beat.

It must have shown on my face or something, because she sobered up suddenly and put a reassuring arm on my shoulder. "Don't worry. It's not nearly as scary as the game makes it sound! I asked around and they said the first floor will be perfect for our level. Plus, we'll be able to find treasure chests in there!"

"Treasure chests?"

"Mhm!" April nodded emphatically. "I heard there's all kinds of great loot in 'em!"

I steadied myself with a deep breath. "Alright. Then shall we go now?"

"Not yet not yet!" April said hurriedly. "I also got you a gift! Check it out!"

My eyes fell on the small fur pouch she'd pushed my way with the books, and I picked it up. It fit comfortably in the palm of my hand, and I realized that whatever was inside it was radiating a strange warmth through the pouch's fur exterior. Like everything else in this game so far, it had a heft and a texture to it that felt almost disturbingly lifelike.

"Open it!" She sounded more excited about the gift than I was. Obligingly, I tugged it open by the drawstrings and emptied its contents onto my palm: a small, glassy marble with a strand of dull iron suspended within its core, like a tiny ribbon caught in amber, tumbled out.

"Oh," I said, reading the tooltip and turning it over in my hand. Enchantment, huh? Unlike a regular marble, it was quite warm--the only real sign that anything magical was going on with it. I wondered if Marbles of Greater Enchantment were perhaps flashier.

"It's an enchanting marble!" April gushed. "You just touch a weapon or a piece of gear with it, and it'll enchant it!"

"Oh!" I pulled out my girly little wand, ribbons and all--only cringing slightly this time--and tapped it against the marble.

"Huh," I said. "Wands don't work, I think."

"Then how about your dagger?" April suggested. Her bushy white tail was wagging again, brushing audibly against the sheets we were sitting on. I swapped out the wand for the dagger and tried again. This time, I was rewarded with immediate action. The marble's dull core lit up, until it was an almost blinding white. The light flowed down the blade, like molten metal being poured into a new vessel--and then it winked out of existence, leaving the marble as a perfectly transparent glass sphere, and the dagger seemingly unchanged.

I turned it over in my hand to inspect it. If I really squinted, I thought that maybe there was a bit of a silvery sheen to the blade when I held it at an angle, almost like a holofoil trading card or something.

"What was it?" April crowded up close to me, and I was suddenly keenly aware of her breath, warm and sweet, over my side. Her impressive cleavage, still snug in her default green top she'd switched back to at some point, bulged precariously close to my arm: my face grew hot as I imagined reaching over and grabbing her, right then and there. What would she do? Yell? Smack my hand away? Or would she… be into it…?

"Um, hello? You in there?" April shifted back on her haunches a bit, bringing her breasts back out of total-brain-shutdown territory.

"Um, yeah, yes, I'm fine," I jabbered, hoping my face was not nearly as red as it felt. "I was, uh, just reading the, ah, effect." I swung the dagger a couple of times. "It gives me shield points! I, um, I hit something and get shield points. With the dagger."

April raised an eyebrow. "Okay. Cool beans." Sparing me any further awkwardness, she picked up the last item on the bed--the crumpled up sheet of paper. Smoothing it out somewhat, she laid it between us, and beckoned for me to come look at it.

On it, in ink that looked more crusted on than drawn on, were the spiderweb scrawls of a fantastical map. In its centre sprawled the stone-brick towers and towering Tree of Caduceus that signified Lumberg, along with a faithful rendition of the bridge to the east that I'd already crossed several times in my twenty-four hours here in VALKYRIE. Past that bridge was an expanse of trees labeled the Silverwood--and, along a thin track that wound and wrapped its way in a squiggly path through the north of the Silverwood, a skull and crossbones over the word "Breachwood."

My gut sank, and for a moment my mind was filled with thoughts of that thick white gunk it had been pumped full of last night. I didn't want to rain on April's fun, but… I took a deep breath. I was going to have to say something.

"Hey." April spoke up first. She put her arm on mine, and I automatically turned to face her, as if my eyes were magnetized to hers. One of her little pointed canines worried at her bottom lip, and her beautiful green eyes wobbled, sincere and worried. "I know this has to be scary for you, after what you went through, but I really think this will help you recover. Just remember that I'll be right there by your side, every step of the way. If… if that's not enough to make you feel comfortable going out there, then… then we'll just stay here for now. But…"

She trailed off, but I had some idea of what she was going to say next. I'd really like to explore that dungeon with you. I let out my bated breath in a sigh.

"Let's go," I said.

"Really?" The way April perked up banished all doubts from my mind. Her tail made a furious thump-thump-thump against the covers behind us.

"Really."

"Yes!!" April snatched me up into her arms, and I let out a surprised yelp. With enough force to make my ribs groan, she buried me in her embrace. A heady whiff of her lavish, down-to-earth scent put to rest my shock; for one magical moment, it didn't matter that she was holding me bridal-style, or that I was wearing one of her dresses over a set of pink lingerie, or that we were both trapped in a video game for the time being. She was hugging me. April was hugging me.

All too soon, the embrace ended and we set out, back to the bridge. The bartender and the receptionist in the Lustrous Heart's main lobby waved us off, though I made sure to avoid eye contact with either of them. As we wandered back down the lovingly rendered crumbling flagstones that made up the street to the inn, I noted the signposts at every corner in the city for the first time since I'd logged in. April--her hand wrapped firmly around mine--was leading me in the direction of Samson Bridge, which I figured was the proper name of the bridge that had been drawn on the map.

As we walked, April talked my ears off about all the other shopping she'd done in the city. It hadn't just been data books and enchanting marbles; she'd loaded her inventory with a full complement of healing potions, including remedies for every status effect under the sun… or at least the ones they'd sell her, at her low Milestone count.

"I can't believe you got three whole Milestones while you were solo!" she complained, though there was a carefree smile playing about her lips. "Now I've gotta play catch-up!"

"I wouldn't be too excited about it," I warned her. "They pretty much all just boost my healing." I thought about adding on you especially, but the thought of explaining--or worse, showing--April my Doglover Milestone put an early end to that idea.

"Oh, I'm sure--Oh!!" April broke off mid-sentence, then suddenly switched directions. "We should hit up the Tree first!"

Lumberg Park was only a short detour away from Samson Bridge, and soon I was laying my hand on the wizened bark of the Tree of Caduceus. The world melted away into a black void, and a number of boxes popped into existence: spells for me to learn. This time, along with Firesong and Starlance, there were two other boxes that were lit up. These two branched off from Glitterdust, my previous selection--probably unlocked by my growing collection of Milestones. Since I emphatically still did not want to experience what VALKYRIE meant by "massively increased" breast or ass size, I skipped straight to the new options.

As I was starting to realise was a common theme at this tree, the choice wasn't really between the effects of the spells at all. I lingered on the word 'compulsion' for a while. If I took it, was I going to suddenly feel like wearing high heels? How was that meant to work? As realistic and, at times, terrifying as VALKYRIE could be, it was still just a video game. It might be able to trick my senses into seeing and smelling and hearing and tasting this vibrant, fleshed-out world, but at the end of the day, it was limited to the capabilities of the Phantasm Vision I was playing it on.

I flicked over to the other spell, Starcharge. Clitoris. I was admittedly a little shaky on the finer points of human anatomy, but I knew that I didn't have one of those--and Anne didn't either. There was a dangerously high chance that the game would substitute a certain other part of my body if I picked this… but, mulling it over, it didn't particularly matter, did it? This wasn't my body. I would be free of it as soon as the devs fixed the logoff bug and we could take off our Visions. It was definitely better to risk this than the… compulsion mentioned in Skybreath.

Confident that I was making the right choice, I selected Starcharge, and watched my Milestone points at the top of the screen go down by one. To my surprise, two more options immediately lit up, branching off from Starcharge. Right--Starcharge and Skybreath would've been unlocked by reaching my second Milestone, so these would be the spells unlocked by reaching my third Milestone.

I grimaced and closed out of the Tree's menu, mostly thankful that I didn't have either of the pearls that the tree wanted for my spells. I was not in any hurry to have my cheek branded with a heart for all the world to see… or to learn what anal lubrication meant.

I let out a low hiss as a spike of cold washed over my groin. My c-clit was shrinking, as I'd suspected when I'd made the choice. Although I'd convinced myself that I was ready to accept this outcome, I did feel a little surge of disappointment. Anne's c-clitoris had not been very large to begin with--what if things went well with April, and we got a little hot and steamy in our inn room before the game had been fixed, only for her to discover just how small--

"Wait a minute."

"Hm? Did you forget something?" April, without any Milestone points left to spend, cocked her head.

"Cock," I blurted.

April raised an eyebrow. "What?"

So that worked. "My c-clit."

"What are you talking about?"

"I… I can't say my c-clit." I felt my jaw. This wasn't like when the game stopped me from saying my own name until I gave up and used Anne. This was… it felt like the game was hijacking my mouth completely. And not just my mouth. I thought very hard about my c-clitoris. Not just how it looked, but thinking of it as a c-clit and not a clitoris. "What the hell?"

"Pretty sure that's my line," April said. "Is everything okay, buddy?"

"I…" I briefly entertained the notion of coming clean and explaining to April that the video game was actively suppressing my ability to talk, or even think, about a c-clitoris attached to my own body. "Yeah, I was just, uh… yeah. Let's just go."

"You got all your spells?"

"I, uh, kind of," I said, already on my way out of the park. April caught up with me easily, her long-legged lope more than a match for my pace. "The higher level spells need pearls, or something, to unlock."

"Pearls?" April nodded in understanding. "Mine are like that too, yeah."

Thankfully, she didn't press the matter any further, and we ventured off into the forest without any more ado.

Our first couple of encounters in the forest were just goblins. I was relieved to see that the outfit April had given me was conservative enough that they weren't getting 'aroused', or whatever that game mechanic was officially called; they just ran at us with their grubby little fists and dented weapons, and were handily flattened by April's signature mace. I sighed--the tiny sliver they'd taken off April's health bar wasn't even worth the mana for a single Cure.

And then we walked into a pack of timber-wolves. For a moment, the whole world seemed to freeze. Me, April, the wolves--even the air was deathly still, holding itself like a held breath. Then the wolf closest to us lifted its snout and sniffed the air. Slowly. Deliberately. It turned to stare directly at me, and in that instant I knew it wanted me. Behind it, the rest of its packed echoed it in eerie unison.

Unbidden, my c-clit stirred in my panties. The only thing I could think of was how grateful I was for April's skirt. If I'd been in that microbikini, there would've been no hiding the fact that I was rock hard from having a pack of wolves stare hungrily at me.

"Let's go!" April leapt into action, bringing her mace crashing down on the first wolf's head. The wolves reacted immediately, lunging not for her but for the healer behind her--me! The ice locking up my body evaporated, and I stumbled back, hurling a Glitterdust at the closest beast. It barked in dismay and tried to shake itself clean, knocking aside the wolf next to it, and giving April enough time to vault over and rugby tackle one of the un-dusted wolves from behind.

"Wild Aspect!" she roared, now full-on grappling her new target. Bark and twigs sprouted from nothingness over her skin, and the fluffy white of her ears and tail blurred into a dappled brown. With a ferocious howl that made my clitty shudder like a leaf in a hurricane, she squeezed, and the timber-wolf she held exploded into sawdust in her arms.

The other wolves, now realising that to get to me they'd have to take her out first, rounded on her. I could only watch in a mild stupor as they descended into a vicious melee together--the three surviving wolves against the lone juggernaut of April. One managed to work its jaws around her bark-clad forearm and bit down; I flinched at the bone-shattering crunch that followed and almost threw out a Cure spell, but the wolf whimpered and slumped to the ground, a jagged crack right through the top of its wooden skull. Another tried to body slam her, only for her to catch it with a grunt and give it the same wood-splintering bear hug that she'd killed the first one with.

Pretty soon, the wolves were dead and dusted.

"AwoooOOOO!!" April's victory cry, a howl even more haunting and wolfish than the first, nearly made me--and my c-clit--jump. "Whoo! How was that?"

She loped easily over to me, the bark melting away from her flesh, and gave me a crooked smile. Her health was still in the yellow, in spite of all the clawing and biting that the wolves had subjected her to; I raised my wand and gave her a Cure, noting with some mixed satisfaction that after my Milestones from last night it sent her straight to full.

"That was pretty… wild," I said, still feeling somewhat shell-shocked.

"Right? Oh, this spell is so good," April gushed. "I can use it while thinking about any animal I've ever seen before, and it changes effects based on that! So when I used it and thought about those wolf guys, I got their armour effect, which makes them take less damage from biting and slashing and stuff! And since their only attack is biting and slashing stuff…"

"You're the perfect counter."

"Exactly!" April beamed. "See? You don't have anything to worry about here!" She puffed her chest out, an action that made her breasts bounce in a way that I found it hard not to stare at. "As long as you heal me after every fight, every fight in this forest will be a cinch!"

True to April's word, we steamrolled through the rest of the forest with ease. She collected a new Milestone, while I tried my hardest not to imagine the process of levelling up one of mine, no matter how desperately the wolves we fought were trying to reach me.

"It's gonna be impossible for anything to chew through my health bar now," April boasted, as I dutifully gave her yet another Cure. "Oh, is this it?"

Before us sprawled a thick, knotted wall of brown. From a distance and through the sea of trees that had been between us, I'd thought it was a short cliff face, or a boulder--but now that we were up close to it, free to drink in the perfectly rendered bark and moss that covered the object, I saw that it was an enormous forest of roots. Thicker in places than some houses in Lumberg were tall, it nestled in the loamy earth with an ancient majesty.

"Whoah." The trunk in the midst of all these roots was just as thick and towering; it vanished into the leafy canopy overhead, dwarfing all the trees around it through sheer girth. At its base, just a gentle slope ahead, a strange gash had been clawed into it. It was filled with an inky black gel of some kind; tiny flecks of all colours swam within this gel, moving like motes of dust dancing in a sunbeam.

"That must be the entrance," April said confidently, striding ahead of me to check it out.

"That?" I said, a touch dubiously. "It looks kinda… gross."

April shrugged. "There's some lore about why, I think. Hmm." She held her hand out towards me, and I stood there dumbly in response. "Take my hand."

My heart rate shot up. Scarcely able to keep myself from trembling, I reached out and put my hand in hers. What had brought this on? Was she as nervous about going into this weird black mass as I was? Was this like when girls went into haunted houses with their boyfriends? I managed not to give in to my urge to basically grope her hand from within her grasp, but it was a near thing; while I'd held hands with her earlier this morning, I hadn't exactly been able to enjoy it. Now, with both of us in fighting condition and without anybody else around, it amazed me that I'd been distracted from this amazing sensation at all. Her hand was so warm, and big, and it had this incredible coarse texture to it, almost like putting my hand up against a tree but far softer and finer.

"I, uh, not that I'm complaining, but, uh," I babbled out loud, when I thought that maybe this moment had dragged on longer than April would be comfortable with. She was looking at the black gel, and I got the strange impression that she'd half-forgotten about me.

"Hm? Oh!" April snapped out of whatever fugue she was in and gave me a cheeky grin. "Don't get too used to this. I've heard that dungeons are instanced, so you need to be in physical contact when you touch the gateway… but…" Her expression clouded, and she went back to staring intently into the black gel of the dungeon entrance--its 'gateway', I supposed.

"I… everything good?" I asked after a while, still enjoying having my hand in hers.

"Yeah, yeah," she said quickly. "Well, um, it looks like we can just party up like this." She stabbed the air ahead of her with a finger, and a prompt blossomed up in front of me.

"What's a… slave party?" I asked suspiciously.

"I dunno," April admitted. "There was a hint popup about it, but it was, uh, hard to understand. I, um, think you might have to do what I say once we're partied up like this? Maybe?"

"Huh." I deliberated for a bit, pointedly ignoring the way my c-clit twitched for some reason at that last remark.

I pressed Accept.

"Oh, wow. I think I see what you mean. With the, uh, glitched text and stuff?"

"Yeah," April said. "I tried my best to read it, but… yeah."

Still holding onto my hand, she reached out with her free hand and looked back towards me, as if silently checking if I was still onboard with this dungeoneering expedition. It wasn't wholly unwarranted. There was a part of me that had been set on high alert by the glitch we'd just seen, and wanted to turn right around and head back to Lumberg. But more of me remembered how happy she'd been in the inn when I'd agreed to come here in the first place. How even now she was clinging on to my hand, and how many times she'd already hugged me since I'd started playing this game. There wasn't a chance in Hell that I was going to jeopardize my chances with the most gorgeous, sweet, brilliant girl in the world over some glitched text. So I nodded, and she touched the inky gateway, and in an instant the world around us melted away, leaving us in a starry void.

Chapter 6: Into the Breachwood (Pt. 2)

Chapter Text

We stepped out into a forest entirely unlike the one we had left behind. The Breachwood traded verdant greenery for thick walls of electric blue, rubbery, fronds that would have looked more at home in an aquarium than in a forest. They glowed faintly in the dark; where the sky should have been, there was only a ceiling of shadows, deep and threateningly inscrutable over our heads. The air here was still and dead, with not a breeze or gust to be felt.

"Ooooh," April said. Belatedly, I realised that she'd let go of my hand at some point to inspect the strange blue plants up close, leaving me hovering nervously near the entrance. I turned, scared for a moment that, like the protagonist in a horror movie, I was about to find our way out had vanished--but breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the same inky gel, sitting snugly in a gash in a purplish grey cave wall.

"C'mon!" April had already lost interest in the bizarre flora, and was now a fair distance ahead of me on the path that gently wound its way from the dungeon entrance. Her mace was drawn, and I mirrored her by drawing my wand as I hurried to catch up with her. In a dungeon, trouble could be around any corner.

I wasn't a moment too soon--as I reached April, a snarling hiss fell upon us from overhead, and before I could do much more than yelp in my stupid, high-pitched voice, a writhing mass of something grey and angry dropped on April's head.

"Whoah!!" April shrieked and barrelled headfirst into one of the thick, rubbery fronds beside us, only to bounce off and trip over a dimly glowing root. The thing on her head spat contemptuously, still firmly attached to her face.

"Oww!! Get if off!" Her voice suddenly much more muffled than before, April's cry spurred me into action. My spells weren't going to do much here--I rifled through my inventory and pulled out my newly enchanted dagger. With it in hand, I leapt to April's aid… and hesitated for a moment, not sure if I wanted to risk stabbing her in the face.

"Hggh--ggaAAAHH!" Letting out a roar that put the monster to shame, April took two meaty fistfuls of its roiling, sinewy coils and yanked at it savagely, managing to work it off the bottom part of her face. "Dude!!"

"H-hahh!" I gave my own, much thinner, battlecry and lunged with my dagger. A juicy squelch and a rattling hiss told me that I'd hit my mark--the beast's coils loosened, and April finally tore her head free of its grasp, then hurled it down the path in front of us.

Now on the dark floor of the dungeon, the creature reared back and hissed at us, giving me my first clear look at it--well, as clear as it could be in the half-light shed by the blue fronds around us.

True to its data entry, the breach viper's body was long and slender, with a serpentine snout and two beady, unblinking slitted eyes. About halfway down its mottled grey length, however, its body split into a forest of tails, just as long as and only a little bit thinner than its neck. It sat perched on these, almost like an octopus, as it stared us down, as if deliberating on its next move.

April stumbled toward it, waving her studded mace drunkenly in front of her.

"Wh-what are you doing?" I hissed, ringing my hands as I thought of trying to pull her back, and immediately realised that she would have no trouble fighting through my 5 Strength.

"Where is it?" April growled. "It's dark! Shoot! You have a light spell or something?"

The monster entry had mentioned venom--and, I realized with a start, there was an icon of an eye with a diagonal line through it next to her health bar. Had it blinded her? Eyes trained on the viper--it was steadily bunching its nest of tails together, like it was about to lunge for April's face again--I pulled out my wand again and said, "Antidote!"

This time, as the snake lunged for her, April was ready. Her vision restored, she swiped almost dismissively at it with her mace catching it in midair and reducing it to a fine paste in a single hit.

"Whoo! Nice one, man!" April turned around and clapped a hand on my shoulder, hard enough that I worried it was going to deal damage to me. She bent down to pick up what the monster had dropped--a tiny vial, filled with some unidentified murky liquid--and handed it to me.

I peered at the liquid curiously. It almost looked like the stuff that made up the gateway into this dungeon, although it was more a very deep violet than outright black, and it had an oil slick sheen to it.

"There ya go. First drop in this dungeon." April beamed at me, and I felt a surge of pride well up in my chest. I'd accomplished so much more in two minutes here than I had in our whole journey through the forest outside: I'd thought quickly and managed to get April back into action in the nick of time.

"Let's go!" I said, my zest for exploration renewed with this latest triumph.

We continued on through the winding tunnels of the Breachwood as a pair, April holding the front with her massive wall of life points and me supporting her. Now that she knew to keep an eye on the cave ceiling, the next couple of solitary breach vipers that fell upon us were caught and dispatched with ease; although their venom was dangerous, they weren't particularly impressive fighters. April copped a bite that left her with a stony rash spreading across her skin, but a quick Antidote fixed it in an instant.

"Eep!!" Something snagged on my foot and sent me tumbling head-over-heels into April's back. I clapped my hands over my mouth, more to stifle my girly squeal than to protect my face--and then whatever my foot had caught on tightened around my ankle, and I scrabbled to get on my back and see what was happening.

A solitary, electric blue vine was curled around my left foot, and as I skimmed through the tooltip that popped up alongside it, it coiled further along until it was wrapped around the entirety of my lower leg. With shocking strength, it yanked me back towards it--away from the safety of April!

"Monster!" I yelped, only to hear a wet thwump from behind me.

"DAMMIT!" April yelled, once again partially muzzled by the coils of a breach viper. I spun around, as much as I could with a plant monster intent on burying me in its lair, to find her once again trying in vain to pry the dozen tails of her attacker off her face.

"Glitterdust!" I cast my first spell against the viper, only for it to shrug the attack off completely and deliver a bite into the side of April's exposed throat.

"Ugh! G-glitterdust!" I stabbed my wand at the surl creep still dragging me along the dungeon floor. When this, too, was ignored, I switched to my dagger and tried to reach down to my leg to slash wildly at it, but with the way I was being shaken about and hauled, I couldn't manage to double over far enough to get to it.

In desperation, I twisted back around to face April and switched back to the wand. "Starcharge!!"

A golden glow suffused her struggling form--and then she, and the viper wrapped around head, vanished in a dizzying blur. She reappeared a moment later, her head half-buried in the flesh of one of the blue fronds, and the viper nowhere to be seen. The golden glow vanished, and with some effort, she managed to plant her hands on either side of the tree her head was stuck in and tear herself free of it.

"What the heck was that?"

"A little help here!!" The surl creep had dragged me all the way to an earthy gash in the tunnel wall, between two of the Breachwood's weird plants. The gash swallowed up my leg, and I let out a girlish shriek--and then a pair of thick arms shot under my armpits, and yanked me back. A jolt of tension ran through my body, for a moment the rope in a tug-of-war between two tremendous forces--and then there was a resounding snap, and April and I flew from the wall in a tangled heap.

"Whooof!" panted April, once she had extricated herself from me and gotten to her feet. I followed suit, brushing myself off. "Oh, gross."

I looked down, to find the blue tendril of the surl creep still wrapped around my leg. The bottom end of it was a tattered stump, oozing a viscous white fluid over the dungeon floor… and my foot. I yelped and shook it off. A faint rustle from behind made me spin around, just in time to catch the tattered stump still attached to the surl creep vanish back into its hidey-hole. All that, and we hadn't managed to kill it.

"I hate these stupid ambush monsters," I grumbled, stomping extra hard on the piece of tendril we'd torn off. To my surprise, it vanished into my inventory, accompanied by a text box.

"Hey, uh," April slumped back against a blue frond, one hand shielding her eyes, and I suddenly realised that her face--no, every inch of her skin--was beaded with sweat. There was an icon I'd never seen before next to her health bar; a pink heart on a red square. "Antidote?"

"Right! Antidote!" I jabbed my wand at her, and she let out a relieved sigh. The pink icon vanished, and--seeing as the repeated encounters had ground away at her health bar, even with her Spring Hide shielding her after every hit--I followed it up with a Cure.

"That's better." April clasped her hands and raised them up over her head, in a stretch that made her already-impressive cleavage even more pronounced. "Oooof! All these poison effects are getting old!"

"It's like it's a different one every time, huh?" I commented.

"Yeah, that's the move they use," April said. "Entropic Fang. 'Gives the target a random status effect.'"

I cocked my head. "Are you reading that from somewhere?"

She nodded. "Yeah, the monster entry. Didn't you check that out when we saw the first one?"

"How do you see it? All I saw was some stuff about, like, unstable venom."

"Yeah, and after it there's the moves. Pounce, Entropic Fang, Coil?"

"What?" Although I tried not to let the flash of annoyance show on my face, April must have picked up on it, because she put an arm on my shoulder without saying anything. "How come I can't see that stuff?"

It was getting ridiculous, how unfair this game was. I couldn't deal any damage, I couldn't wield any weapons that could deal damage, I couldn't wear proper clothes, and now I was getting less information on my tooltips? April had given me copies of exactly the same knowledge books she'd used! Why did she get to see all the monsters' attacks and abilities?

"Maybe it's a druid thing?" April suggested, not particularly convincingly. "I mean, I'm meant to know stuff about nature, right?"

"I guess," I huffed, only just stopping short of crossing my arms over my chest and pouting outright. "Let's just keep going."

Any lingering frustration I felt soon melted away as we proceeded through the dungeon, my focus spent on watching out for signs of further ambushes and supporting April as she chewed through every monster that crossed us. Not all of our encounters were ambushes, too: a few times, we rounded a bend and happened upon a gaggle of monsters in plain sight, who politely waited for us to make the first move, like the timber-wolves and goblins of the regular forest.

The deeper we went, the more varied the monsters got. They went from nothing but breach vipers and surl creep to a menagerie of mutated forest creatures--deer with poison-tipped antlers, giant bees and bugs, birds with six pairs of wings and razor-sharp beaks--and bizarre plant monsters that came in a brilliant range of neon colours. Our collection of drops grew in turn, and I even picked up a Star Pearl, dropped by a chittering black spider with a clam-like shell clamped tight around its fat abdomen.

The treasure chests that April had mentioned were few and far between, but we came across a few of those, too. Sniffing them out was practically a game in and of itself: they were often nestled away in overgrown nooks, or buried in the dirt with just the slightest gleam of gold trim showing, or--in one case--planted upside down on the cavern roof, so that when April smashed it open its contents spilled over us like a pinata of precious metals.

Without the sky to judge time by, it was hard to tell exactly when we finally made it to the end of the Breachwood's first floor--but it was obvious where we were when we got there.

April took a deep breath, like she wanted to inhale the memory of this seminal moment in our quest. "Here we go. The boss battle."

A stony arch with a skull etched atop it loomed before us. Through it, I could just about make out a round chamber, much wider than any of the tunnels we'd had to fight through to get to this point. It looked empty, but that meant precious little, after seeing all the ambush monsters that infested this place.

"You good on everything?"

"Yeah." I'd cast a lot of spells--Cures, Antidotes, the occasional Starcharge--to keep April in fighting shape, but she'd stocked up on mana potions in Lumberg, and I was close to topped up.

"Then let's do this. Wild Aspect!"

The moment we stepped through the stone arch, there was a series of resounding cracks from up above. A nest of jagged black lines spiderwebbed out from the centre of the chamber's stony ceiling; from these spilled out dust and debris, copious and rough enough that soon April and I were coughing into our hands, our eyes tearing up.

Then, carried by a force that I could only see rather than feel, the cloud of dust withdrew to the very centre of the chamber, and coalesced into a swirling, brown ball of dust and dirt. From there, it danced frenetically in place, shifting and flowing from one shape to another until finally it drew back into itself one last time and from it emerged a gigantic, earthen, spider.

Automatically, April took up a stance in front of me, the bark-like skin she'd chosen from her Wild Aspect spell fully formed. The bottom of Orias's fat body hung at her eye level; each of the eight legs that sprouted from it arched up half of the way to the ceiling, towering over us both. Dozens, if not hundreds, of beady little eyes were scattered across what passed for its face, and beneath them clacked two pairs of formidable black mandibles. Even from the entrance to the chamber, I could see the wicked way they gleamed in the faint light cast by the blue fronds around the edges of the room.

"Alright," April started. "Try to dodge as best you can. If you go down--"

Orias raised an earthen leg and brought it crashing to the floor with a thunderous sound, interrupting her. It sunk into the dirt, and from it bulged a wave of soil that raced up to where April was braced, hurling her off her feet.

"Crap!!"

I winced at her health bar; that attack had knocked her to the low orange, well below half health. "Cure!" I said.

April leapt back to her feet, renewed by my spell, and sprinted for Orias, her mace in both hands. "Get me in close!"

"Starcharge!"

Her body blurred and, as Orias raised another of its legs to repeat the attack it had just used, April appeared at its side and landed a crushing blow on the one beside it. It reeled back from her with a hideous screech--and then, with surprising agility, lifted every leg except the one already planted in the earth and spun with its body, smashing April in the chest and once again flinging her to the side.

"Cure!!" I managed to catch her with my spell before she even landed, and she managed to spin around mid-air to put herself in a sprinter's pose as she hit the floor. "Starcharge!"

This time, as April raced forward, almost invisible to the naked eye, the spider tugged its buried leg free and reared up on its four rear legs, ready to make another attack--only for April to lunge up at its exposed underbelly, cleaving into it like her emerald-studded mace was a baseball bat. It let out another tormented screech… but, just as my Starcharge ran out and April returned to normal speed, managed to bring its forelegs down on top of her with bone-shattering force.

"APRIL!!"

Her health bar rocketed straight into the red. Pinned down by the spider's full weight, she grunted and tried to pry herself free. I sent a Cure her way, only to see the spider dip down and--with surprising tenderness, almost like it was planting a kiss on her--sink its twin pairs of mandibles into her chest. This attack didn't do a lot of damage, but an icon that looked like a rock appeared on her health bar, and some kind of rough, stony growth began to spread across her skin.

"Antidote!" The stony growth and the rock icon vanished thanks to my spell, but April remained trapped, her fearsome strength still no match for Orias's crushing weight.

"Get it--off me!!" April grunted, as Orias leaned forward for another venomous kiss.

Starcharge wasn't going to be any use with April pinned down, and obviously healing or removing her poison hadn't done the trick either. "G-glitterdust!"

A stream of multicoloured sparks flew from my fingertips and into the spider's face. A truly harrowing scream split the air, and it lurched back, releasing April. She whirled to her feet and, capitalising on Orias's distraction, smashed her mace into one of its hind legs before retreating back to my side.

"Nice work," she puffed. She held herself taut as she watched Orias stumble back into position, ready to leap back into action if it made any sudden movements. "He's one tanky bug, huh?"

"Yeah," I said, keeping my wand outstretched. Despite the spider's big reaction, my Glitterdust hadn't stuck for long; and this time, when it turned to face us, its dozens of beady eyes almost looked like they were fixed on me.

"Again!" When Orias raised its front legs again, I gave April another Starcharge. This time, instead of charging directly into its waiting legs, she sped around behind it, and lashed out at one of its hind legs. The spider shrieked, but brought its legs back down regardless. As they fell, one after another, they kicked up twin waves of churned-up dirt--and I suddenly realised that this attack was hurtling towards me. My body locked up. Left? Right? Jump over it?

WHAM. The first wave was enough to blast my healthbar to empty. The second just threw me up against the dungeon wall, showering me in a thick coat of soil. The spider lumbered forward, black mandibles clacking with menacing intent, and my mind shot back to last night, the last time I'd been immobilised and entirely at a monster's mercy…

"HEY!!" From my vantage point on the floor, all I saw was a towering wall of black sweep up from the floor, shielding me from Orias. There was a deafening crash, and then suddenly a pair of strong arms was thrust under my armpits and scooped me out from my bed of soil. The angelic visage of April greeted me, a playful smile on her lips. "Here ya go."

She tipped a health potion up to my own lips, and I gratefully drank it down in a single gulp. Warmth filled my body, and I could move once again. "Cure," I said, pointing my wand at myself. "What happened to the--oh."

The spider lay in a heap across the chamber, legs frantically crawling through the air. April crossed her arms smugly, and for the first time since taking Orias's attack I noticed that she'd ditched the bark skin from her Wild Aspect spell. Instead, her forearms were a mottled brown, specked with little pale blobs.

Before I could ask her what was going on, Orias let out another shriek and, with all eight of its legs in unison, launched itself up on the ceiling.

"Whoah! Is this its second phase?" April said, craning her neck up to face it. "Huh. How are we supposed to get up there?"

Her answer came in the form of Orias slamming all eight of its legs--pair by pair--into the soft earth of the cavern roof. Huge columns of dirt shot forth from the ceiling around it, burying themselves in the floor at steep angles--perfect for a particularly athletic adventurer to run up.

"Awesome! Wish me luck!" Before I could advise caution, April took off up the nearest dirt spear, waving her mace and yelling at the top of her lungs. The spider twisted around in its upturned nest of dirt and hissed--and around it, the columns began to rotate, spinning both in place and shifting positions around the spider so that April soon had to plunge an arm into her column just to stay aloft.

"April!" I thought about throwing her a Starcharge, but before I could act on it, the chunk of earth directly beneath April began to move on its own, her arm still buried in it. "APRIL!!"

Towards the spider she hurtled, hunched with tense determination. Her grip on her mace didn't shift an inch--and then, as the motions of the column and her little island of the column combined threw her directly into the spider's waiting face, she leapt. In a single motion, she tugged her trapped arm free and brought her studded mace crashing down on the monster's upside-down face, and it let out a howl of fury. The eight columns of dirt retracted back into the ground, bringing April with them, and she padded back to me, grinning ear to ear.

"How was that? Pretty cool, right?"

I tried to close my jaw, with middling success. "How'd you do that?"

"Weeeell--" April's explanation was cut short as another salvo of columns shot out from the ceiling. This time, they were accompanied by a new attack--like a turret mounted on the ceiling, the spider spat out ball after ball of viscous white sludge, which exploded into person-sized webs as they smacked into the ground. "Let's finish this first. Starcharge me?"

"Starcharge!"

Accelerated by my spell, April practically flew up the nearest column, easily ducking past the first few web balls. When the spell wore off, she sunk her fist into the earth beneath her again--and once again, the earth beneath her tore along the rest of the way up the shaft, bringing her into striking distance of the spider's vulnerable face.

This time, as she brought her mace crashing down on the spider's head, she twisted her body mid-air, managing to avoid the simultaneous burst of web it tried to match her with. Once again, the columns sank back into the earth. April fell to the floor between them in a heap, and I hurried over to heal her.

"Thanks." Randomly, she let out a wild howl. "Oh MAN this game is good! Third time's the charm?"

As she raced back up the next set of columns, I had to admit that it looked pretty fun. Ducking and dodging beneath all the spider's projectiles, having to make use of all three dimensions just to get to the boss, the way the spider's tactics seemed to evolve in real-time as we fought it… the developers had really pulled out all the stops to make this the best game it could possibly be.

But even as April landed another crushing hit and fell to the floor again, cackling with glee, I couldn't help but let a wave of frustration wash over me. That could have been me! Why did I have to be stuck with this useless excuse for a character, and all these ridiculous Milestones, and getting ravaged by wolves? Why me?! It just... it just wasn't fair.

Chapter 7: Into the Breachwood (Pt. 3)

Chapter Text

It took rather more than three more hits to finally finish off Orias, Blackheart, but we eventually made it. As it fell to the floor of the chamber with a thud and disintegrated, leaving behind a number of glass bottles and vials, a pile of fine-looking white sand, and what almost looked like a cross between the husk of a rotting plant and a human heart, April fell back on her tailbone and heaved a long sigh of relief.

"Whoof! That was fun, wasn't it!"

"Yeah," I nodded.

"What's all that stuff?" She gestured in the direction of the loot and, in the absence of anything else to do, I started picking it all up.

"Cool!" April's eyes were like adorable dinner plates as I pulled open each tooltip and she scanned through them, mouthing the words of each description. "I wonder what a sekh is?"

"Um, I'm not sure," I said, hoping that she'd been absorbed enough in reading that she hadn't noticed me watching her rather than the tooltips.

"Oh!" She pointed over my shoulder, and I turned around to see that the back wall of the boss chamber had changed. A stony arch, much like the one at the entrance, now sat squarely in it, and through this I could see the faintly lit outline of a set of spiral stairs, descending into the darkness below. Rather than a skull like the first archway, this archway had a simple arrow pointing down carved into its crown.

"Is that the way to the next floor?" I asked, unnecessarily.

April looked at me, a devious light in her eyes. "Shall we?"

I gulped. "I-I dunno…"

"C'monnn!" April flattened her fluffy white dog ears and pouted, going as far as to sink down to her knees so that she could look up at me at the same time. "As soon as it gets too dangerous, we can just turn around and go back home…"

Something about the way she said dangerous made my blood spike with heat. While it wasn't patronising, exactly, there was something in her tone that some part of my still very much male brain took instant issue with. "Okay, fine!"

"Really?" April uncoiled herself back to her full height, once again towering over me, and took my hands. "Awesome! You're the best!"

With a definite spring in her step, April bounded ahead of me. The whole way down the spiral stairs, her fluffy tail didn't stop wagging for a second.

The second floor of the Breachwood was far more spacious than the first. While there was still a cave roof overhead, and twisted narrow egresses that led who knew where off to the sides, the primary corridor was almost as wide as Orias's boss room had been, and perhaps twice as tall.

The plant life was more varied, too; on top of the same rubbery blue fronds that had dominated the first floor, there were also thick purple vines that cascaded from the ceiling, and flat pink flowers that squatted, frog-like, at ankle height on the earthy floor. Down the centre of the cavern burbled a shallow brook; on its banks there grew dense clusters of vibrant reeds, a mixture of vermillion and bright blue and ochre.

"Oooh!" April immediately squatted down on her haunches and started picking samples of every plant in reach. I gave the area a nervous scan, expecting a spider or a snake or some other monster to drop on our heads and attack at any second--but when one failed to materialise for several seconds, I knelt down and joined her.

"When we get back to town, we should look up making potions!" April said conversationally. Her hands, strong but graceful, made quick work of the reeds--the Breachroot--nearest to her, and soon it had all vanished into her inventory. "Seems like a lot of these drops and herbs and stuff are meant to be used that way."

"Yeah, I guess." I couldn't help but wonder if, like with the monster tooltips, she was seeing more than I could on her item tooltips too.

"You okay?"

I glanced up to see her looking at me appraisingly. "H-huh? Y-yeah, why wouldn't I be?"

April shrugged. "You just seem a little quiet, is all."

"I-I'm just on the lookout for monsters," I said, a touch defensively.

She paused and looked around, as if the thought of getting ambushed by monsters hadn't occurred to her at all since we'd beaten the boss. "Oh, right."

With one last fistful of dungeon herbs, she stood back up and stretched luxuriously in place. I composed myself and managed to look away discreetly, only sneaking a couple of glances at the way her cleavage jiggled and shifted with her movements.

"You good to go?"

"Yeah."

We set off once again, loosely following the stream in the centre of the path. It didn't take long before monsters struck out at us again.

"Agahh!!" All around us, little red creatures holding muddy black clubs burst forth from clumps of reeds. On top of being short, they were hunched over, too, so that they barely reached even my--Anne's--knees. Like the goblins in the Silverwood above, they wore nothing but tattered loincloths, and as they circled us, chittering in their strange language, I thought it sounded a little similar to the grumblings and mutterings that the goblins made to each other.

One suddenly darted forward. I scrambled back in shock, but before it could do much more than raise its club, April brought her own mace crashing down on its skull, and it collapsed with a whine. The other red goblins immediately went to swarm her.

"Uhh, Starcharge!" I shouted, electing to buff my tank instead of finishing off the goblin she'd wounded. This goblin peeled itself off out of the river and lunged at me with its empty hand, cackling madly--and then frowned as its hand came away with nothing.

"Glitterdust!" A stream of sparkles smacked it straight in the face, and it reeled back, dropping its club to claw at its eyes. I glanced over at April, who was laying in to the mass attacking her with her club and her timber-wolf skin active. Her health looked fine; what little damage the goblins had managed to sneak through her defences was hardly a sliver of her overall health pool.

The blinded goblin fell to its knees and plunged its face into the river. The moment it pulled its head back out, I fired another Glitterdust at it, and it shrieked in frustration and charged me, point blank. A bony shoulder jammed into my knees, hard, and I gave an embarrassingly girlish squeal and toppled over.

"Gahghgaa!!" The red goblin let out a cry of triumph and, now towering over me, gave me a savage smack in the face. I swivelled to point my wand at it again, and gasped--our tussle had torn his loincloth clean from his twisted little body, and the throbbing red thing that had just clapped my face wasn't its hand at all.

"Ogghaa." The goblin leered down at me, its pinched face ridiculously small behind the enormous red log that dangled from between its spindly legs. It thrust its hips forwards, and suddenly the log wasn't just big--it filled my field of view, all seven or more inches of raw, meaty, bright red goblin fuckmeat. I inhaled sharply, and caught a nauseating whiff of goblin body odour, thick and tart enough that it had my eyes watering in seconds. Through the haze of tears and the acrid smell of goblin cock, I watched as a single, sticky bead of clear liquid oozed from its crown.

"G-glitterdust!!" I screamed, jabbing my wand up at the goblin, but my spell went wide. The goblin scowled and stamped down on my wand arm with astonishing strength--try as I might, I couldn't work myself free. I reached up with my other arm, hoping to sucker-punch it, but it simply grabbed my flimsy wrist in one hand and held it in place. Toppling the goblin was totally out of the question. Despite its small size, it felt like a ton of bricks was sitting on the arm it was standing on, and the arm it held might as well have been trapped in the claws of an industrial strength vice. The tears in my eyes deepened, and my lips quivered, treacherous as always: I was getting easily pinned by a little freak not even half my height.

Back to leering, the goblin began to squat down, bringing its dangling cock closer and closer to my face. I tried to kick up at it, tug myself free, anything to avoid having this horrible thing scraped up against my lips, but the goblin seemed implacable.

"Get--off--me!!" I growled, practically baring my teeth. The goblin paused, apparently reconsidering its plan of putting its most precious organ in danger of being bitten off, and for a moment I thought it was going to give up--but then it reached behind it and pulled its black club out of the water, and raised it over its head. It was just going to beat me into submission and then rape me when I was helpless.

"Nonono--" A sickening whack made me wince… and then the weight on my arms lifted, and I cracked open an eye to see the far more welcome sight of April standing over me, one Amazonian arm reaching out to help me up. I took it gratefully, and looked around to find a collection of small clubs and scraps of bone littering the river around us. While I'd been struggling with my opponent, April had cleaned up the rest, and come to save me. Again.

"You alright?" April asked, brushing herself off. She'd ditched the timber-wolf bark and returned to her usual, gorgeous self--a look that I vastly preferred.

"Um, yeah." While shaken, I was far better off than the goblins. And the tiny stream, which had been torn up in several places, as if someone had picked up its rocky bed and shaken it like an actual bedsheet. "What happened here?"

"Oh, right!" She held up her forearms, which I saw were mottled brown and speckled with pale spots again. "This is what I got from using Wild Aspect on that spider boss guy!"

"So you can use his moves?" That didn't sound balanced in the slightest.

"Kind of, but not really," April said. "It's hard to explain. It's like… when I touch dirt and soil and stuff, I feel like I can move it better? Like it clumps into one thing, and then I can move that."

"And that's how you did the, like, earth surfing? Against the boss?"

April grinned. "Yep. Pretty cool, right?"

I nodded, threw a Cure her way, and we set off again. The next couple of fights were similarly tough--we ran into a strange blue pixie that ordered around a giant six-legged crocodile, and fled when April managed to crack the crocodile's skull in two; and then we were ambushed by a purple variant of surl creep that even April found difficult to tear apart, until she cast a spell called Woodland Might.

"Wait a second," I said, as we picked up the last of the 'ravage vines' that this newest monster had dropped.

April looked up, the rippling musculature of her spell already fading back into her normal lithe frame. "What?"

"We haven't gotten a, uh, monster thingy in a while. A data entry?"

"Hmm." April thought for a second. "That's probably because we only read volume one."

"Volume one?"

"Yeah. Like, Twixt Breachwoode, Volume One?"

"There's other volumes?"

"Uh, yeah!" April threw back her head and laughed. "What, did you think it was just a fluff thing?"

Heat rose in my cheeks and the tips of my pointed ears. "W-well, yeah, kind of!"

"Heh. Well, it's not, I guess!" She looked around thoughtfully at the multicoloured plant life of the second floor of the Breachwood, and at the churned-up earth that was the aftermath of our fight with the purple creep. "Do you want to go back to town and pick that up, then?"

"Volume two?"

"Yeah." She stared down the tunnel ahead of us, her lips pursed slightly. "This is getting pretty tough. We could head back and upgrade our gear--we've got the gold for it."

Between the treasure chests we'd found on the first floor and the random bounties we were collecting for every monster we killed as a team, she wasn't wrong. We were closing in on a thousand pieces each.

"Yeah," I said, after I felt enough time had passed that it didn't sound like I was immediately on-board with retreating here. "Let's do that."

"Cool!" April slung her mace over her shoulder, something I was getting increasingly used to seeing her doing, and turned to saunter back up the way we'd come--but froze.

The blue pixie from earlier had returned. It hovered gently above the burbling stream before us, its beady black eyes fixed on us both. April took a battle-ready stance, and her skin melted into bark. I drew my wand, ready to give her a Starcharge the moment she started moving.

"Shouldn't we just charge it?" I asked, at the same time as April said, "Something's off."

"Off?"

"The pixies, they run away when they're alone," April elaborated, still facing our opponent. "This one's not running away, so…"

"So it's not alone," I said sagely. Duh.

Just like that, a writhing purple mass of creep dropped from the ceiling, directly on top of us. Easily large enough to cover the short distance between us and then some, it swiftly entangled us both, pinning arms and legs both in its hungry coils. April gave it a few whacks with her mace, that arm having escaped the initial attack, then cursed and switched tactics. "Woodland--"

Like it had been waiting for her to start speaking, the pixie's slender arm shot out in a chopping motion. A red circle with a line through it appeared next to April's healthbar--her mace fell into the river with a dull splash and a thunk, and she clutched at her throat. Still deep in the creep's embrace, she twisted to face me. Her lips moved, but no sound came out.

My heart stopped. Did that mean she couldn't cast her spell? I fumbled against the still-tightening coils of the creep for my wand and, against all odds, managed to work it so it was angled at her.

"Starcharge!!" The golden glow of my buff spell suffused her body, and she visibly grimaced, straining with her super-charged muscles against the unyielding flesh of our captor.

The pixie said something in its garbled-but-melodic voice, and the coils of creep around my arm tightened around my elbow, jerking my wand so that it pointed uselessly up at the ceiling. I tried in vain to twist my wrist to target April again, but its slimy, smooth coils were even more implacable than the grip of the red goblin.

The pixie gestured at April, and a swirling white jet of water shot up from the stream beneath us to pierce her body. Her mouth flew open in a silent scream, and I screamed in turn as jet after jet of water shot through her, and the ever-tightening coils of the creep around us choked the very breath out of our lungs.

Even with the blasts of water taking chunks out of her healthbar every few seconds, April almost managed to outlast me on our agonising journey to zero life points. It was impossible to say what hurt more; the crushing force of the purple tendrils around me, the sight of April's silent screams, or the steadily mounting horror of knowing what was going to happen to me next. April was going to die and then respawn in Lumberg. I was going to 'die' and then become a helpless plaything for whatever horrible things this pixie and its plant minion wanted to put me through.

Except that, when April's healthbar reached zero, she didn't die. The red circle with a line through it vanished from next to her healthbar, and--ready as ever to capitalise on a new opportunity--April shouted hoarsely, "Woodland Might!"

Nothing happened.

My stomach fell all the way into my feet, even as my own hit points reached zero and paralysis locked up every inch of my body. Oh no. Oh no no no no no.

I didn't need to be able to read the tooltip to know that it meant bad things for us both. A timer appeared next to my empty healthbar, mirroring the one under the tooltip. The time we had until we--well, April--died properly? I tried in vain to parse the garbled text above it before it went away, but didn't make much headway.

The pixie had its head cocked when the tooltip vanished, reminding me eerily of the reaction I'd gotten from the wolves when the same thing had happened. It gestured imperiously at the purple creep, which lowered us unceremoniously into the shallow water below. April's teeth were gritted--even now, she was trying to break free of her intangible restraints. She was just so… stubborn. I couldn't bear to even imagine seeing that broken by… by…

"Let us go!" April growled, not a trace of fear in her voice. Sweat beaded on her brow--or perhaps that was just water from the river.

"Y-yeah!"

Ignoring us both, the pixie curled its hands together and swept them aside. The water around us rose up over our bodies for a moment--and then, like an amorphous hand, it snatched up my sweater and dress and tore them from my skin, leaving me naked except for my pink lingerie. My face flushed as I saw that the same thing had happened to April--her underwear was rather more drab and practical than mine, but she more than made up for it with the prodigious bounty of the assets within. My blush deepened. This was the most skin I'd ever seen her show... at least, not counting her Instagram account!

The pixie said something else, and the purple creep slithered over us again. This time, however, it was rather more delicate and deliberate in its positioning; it wound itself around our wrists and our throats and our ankles and our waists, but left the rest of us exposed. Carefully, like it was a child playing with dolls, it lifted our bodies up so that we were on all fours, and positioned our arms and legs so that they at least had the appearance of supporting our weight.

And then, trudging through the water, they came.

Goblins. Not just the red kind we'd fought at the entrance to this floor. Green ones like there were in the forest above. Mottled teal ones with aquatic fins that sprouted from their cheeks and chins. Eyeless, pale ones with enormous, batlike ears and fingers like the roots of dead plants. And as the horde lumbered forward, their ratty loincloths fell aside, revealing a bristling forest of rock hard… ridiculously oversized… goblin… cocks.

"N-no…" I could hardly tell if it was me or April who'd said it. I could only just make out her dark skin and sculpted physique from the corner of my eye; and, of course, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't move my head even a fraction of an inch to face her. Whoever had said it, their voice was quavering, and feeble, and white with terror.

The goblins came upon us in droves. Though they were too short to stand in the river and reach our mouths and the… rest of our bodies that way, they were cunning and agile enough to find ways around it. Like twisted little apes they clambered up our paralyzed limbs and the limp tendrils of creep wrapped around us, cackling in their shrieking voices. Soon even the view of April from the corner of my eye was obscured; a damp wall of sneering, multicoloured goblin bodies rose up between us.

SMACK.

"A-ahowW!!" The first goblin to reach my face opened their vile festivities by slamming its cock against my face. The goblins around it, clearly delighted by the sharp, stinging impact it had made against my delicate skin, immediately joined in, and soon I was being battered every which way by savage, clammy goblin cock-slaps. Cries and shouts from my left told me that April was being subjected to identical treatment, and the tears beading at my eyes grew thicker.

"L-leave--ah!!--leave her alo--mmfHH!!"

In response to my attempt to speak, a goblin clinging to the side of my face rammed itself right into my open mouth. I let out a muffled shriek, but that was all I got out--the same force that immobilised me when I reached zero life points kept me from even trying to bite down. Not that, as the goblin thrust its hips further and further forward, and my jaw was forced painfully wide by its meaty girth, I was sure I even could bite down on such a fat intruder.

Before I was even done gagging on the first leg of the goblin's cock, its bulbous head mashed up against the back of my throat, and I learned what it was like to have every muscle in my face, jaw, and neck screaming in protest as the goblin's cockhead forced its way down my moaning gullet. It shifted its hips, bringing its scraggle-haired chest up against my eyes and flattening my tongue against the floor of my mouth, and suddenly an explosion of tart, sickening pain blew itself over my cock-flattened tongue. I squealed pathetically around the head of the cock in my throat, but the goblin simply snatched up two tiny fistfuls of my long hair and began jerking its hips back and forth against my face.

"MfhfH!! Mfhhh!!" A second set of muffled cries soon rose up from my side, and I knew that the same was being done to April beside me. Helplessness and humiliation filled me as I realised that there was no way she couldn't also hear me gagging on my goblin's fat rod--and the shame redoubled as I felt my little clitty stiffen in my panties at the thought. In vain, I tried to pull it back down. No!! I was not going to get erect over my crush listening to me choke on goblin cock!

The goblin slammed itself all the way down my throat, squeezing a choked shriek from my lungs, and for a moment I was thankful for the thick wall of goblins between us both. At least… at least we weren't going to see each other like this.

"MfhHh!!" A higher-pitched squeal bit into my eardrums, and a few seconds later I discovered why as the grasping fingers of the goblins at my rear end found their way under my panties and hooked them aside. My clitty popped free of its home, and bobbed weakly between my thighs as what felt like a horde of cocks and palms and fingers fought to be the first to invade my poor rosebud. I flashed back to the horrible anticipation of my night with the wolves--and then one thick, unwieldy pillar of flesh found itself thrust past the dry opening to my ass.

"Mfhfhghg!!" I let out a high-pitched squeal of my own. A cock!! A goblin cock was inside me!! It was just the slightest bit thinner than the awful cocks of the wolves, but I squealed and cried as I discovered that this cock, whatever goblin subtype it belonged to, was covered in thorny barbs. As it pushed deeper and deeper inside me, they dug into the tight walls of my already overstuffed breeding tunnel, sinking like hooks as if they never wanted to leave me. Shame filled me as my hole tightened and squirmed around this barbed attacker. Silently, I prayed that it wasn't long enough to reach what was now the part of my body I hated the most--that infernal little button, deep inside me, that made my c-clit leap every time a cock stabbed it.

"HnghgH!!" A surge of pleasure shot up my spine, and I gagged extra hard on the thick member still breeding my throat. For one twisted moment, I was grateful for it--at least April wouldn't have to hear the lewd, desperate moans I made when I was getting fucked. "NghghH!!"

My clitty jumped and twitched freely as the goblin continued to rape me. Against all sense and reason, the barbs of its cock somehow magnified the pleasure that radiated through me each time it struck my weak spot, and in tandem with the fat pole choking the breath from my lungs they soon had my eyes rolling back in my head. Again and again my clitty spurted, unable to keep up with the assault from both ends.

Despite having started later, the goblin embedded in my ass was the first to blow its load. A euphoric screech came from behind me, and an explosion of ropy heat shot into my guts. Up my hole it raced, filling me to what felt like the brim in a matter of heartbeats. I felt my stomach distend, bulging humiliatingly outwards--but then the thick spear inside me fell limp, and the goblin peeled off my behind, allowing its steamy goo to leak freely from my gaping hole. I scarcely had time to let my ass relax before the scrap to be the next to claim me started up again, and soon another throbbing shaft was plunged inside me.

Mercifully, this one was unbarbed, but it seemed to reach further into me than the last one, and its owner--driven into a frenzy by the wait for my ass--slammed in and out of me twice as fast and hard as its predecessor. Each impact hurled my body forwards, spearing me even further along the shaft of the goblin in my throat, and soon that goblin was cumming too, seemingly straight into my roiling stomach.

If I thought having cum shot directly into my guts was harrowing, the sensation of having my stomach pumped full of spunk in an instant was almost worse. Nausea far stronger than what my first taste of goblin cock had brought on filled my body like a physical substance, and my gagging turned into a genuine effort to vomit up every drop of goblin cum and inch of goblin cock inside me all at once. This goblin took longer to soften, and I swore I could hear it cackling softly as I heaved and sputtered around its monstrous load.

"GHhgghgkgh~!!" The moment it pulled itself free of my aching throat, with a horrible, wet squelch that I could only pray April hadn't heard, paroxysms wracked my chest as I tried to spit out what cum I could at the same time as my starved lungs struggled to suck in as much air as they could. My coughs and grunts and splattering moans filled the cavern--but then a second goblin, sallying out from the horde upon me with ape-like dexterity, cut me off by slamming its own cock as far down my throat as it could go in a single stroke. My eyes bulged, and a sticky, retching croak billowed up from my lungs mid-breath, but there was no fighting it. The shaft stretched its way into me, squashing the cum in my gullet all the way back into my stomach, and my throat was once again a pussy for goblin cock.

The clotted mass of cum in my stomach added a gruelling new layer to my humiliation. Though I soon stopped gagging so hard on it, my body swiftly acclimating to having such a grotesquely full belly, each merciless thrust from both the goblin in my throat and the one in my ass churned it like fetid butter inside me. I could feel my swollen belly sloshing around beneath me in time with their rapid-fire fucking. The same was doubtless happening to April, just five feet and a swarm of obscuring goblins away from me, and a shameful trickle of my own seed, watery and thin, fell limply from my c-clitty just thinking of it.

The gangrape continued on for what felt like hours, despite the timer on my HUD's insistence that it was just one. As soon as one goblin finished, I scarcely had time to drool or spit out any cum at all before the next one forced itself in--and as the hour wore on, more and more of the goblins awaiting their turn atop my body worked themselves to a finish against my skin, and spurted hot cum directly on top of me. Painted white inside and out, throat and ass and skin and stomach and hair so sticky and clotted with foul-smelling sperm that, in my half-strangled state, I couldn't help but imagine that it was going to be part of me forever, indelibly etched into every inch of my soul.

And then, at long last, the timer reached 00:00.

The dungeon, the goblins, the purple creep, the river all melted away, and we fell unceremoniously on to loamy soil, face down. I whimpered weakly. I was still drenched in goblin cum, and bloated with goblin cum, and utterly reeking of goblin cum--and, when I snuck a glance at April, who lay unmoving by my side, she looked much the same. I looked down at myself and let out another teary moan. Both our bellies were bulging--I'd seen my biology teacher in the last stages of pregnancy last year, and our stomachs put her to shame.

A sniffle roused me from my stupor. April! I tried to climb up onto my feet, but a combination of exhaustion and the weight of my cum-bloated tummy kept me woozy and unsteady, and instead I crawled over to where she lay.

"A--" Moaning and sniffing hadn't triggered it, but the moment I opened my mouth and actually tried to speak, a tide of renewed nausea rose up inside me. Like a vat of sludge being upended into a sealed pipe, something had to give--and the pipe was my throat. Clutching the ground for dear life, I felt my mouth fall open. There was no choice involved; just instinct. What felt like every muscle in my whole torso combined seized up--and then, accompanied by a cacophony of my own gagging, a torrent of horrible, acrid goblin spunk spewed out from my throat. If it was even possible, it was even worse going out than coming in, the sperm worked into a thick, knotted paste after all that time being pounded from both sides inside me.

And then, just as my own retching started to abate, April propped herself up on her arms and joined me.

Eventually, when we were finished and most of the cum that had been left inside our bulging bellies now littered the forest floor around us, in a horrible, rancid pool of sludge, we managed to curl up together and sob in each other's arms. For once, April's prodigious size advantage over me was something I leaned into without shame or jealousy--her body was warm, and her muscles were strong, and when her tight embrace made my exposed clitty stir in appreciation, I didn't feel the slightest pang of guilt or embarrassment.

It was impossible to say how long we cuddled, but it was all too soon when April sucked in a shaky breath and her grip on my bare skin loosened. "We should… we should go. Back to the city."

My first thought was to protest. April's skin was so soft, and she smelled so earthy and nice, and with her arms around me I finally felt like I was… I was safe… but then, as I raised my head to speak, I saw that the dapples of sunlight that broke through the treeline were slowly turning orange. The sun was setting.

"Okay," I said softly. "Cure. Cure. Cure."

I topped us both up with my wand: two Cures for April, and one for me. The familiar warm rush of healing flowed through my body, washing away my weariness and putting to rest some of the anguish that yet remained. I glanced at April's healthbar--there was a sliver of health left to heal. "Cure."

She turned and smiled down at me. Her beautiful face caught the light of the setting sun as only a masterpiece could, and I felt my face grow pink. The way she'd just made me feel, she may as well have just planted a kiss on my lips. "Thanks."

Then she took off into the undergrowth, and I followed close behind her. Her long-legged lope, even slowed by the ordeals of today and the sticky cum that still clung to our skin, was difficult for Anne's small body to keep up with, but I managed--the last thing I wanted was to be caught by wolves for the second night in a row. The lone few monsters we came across, April dispatched with ruthless efficiency; the even fewer hits they landed on her, I patched up with Cures. As humiliating as the process of earning and using my… Cum Guzzler milestone had been, it had totally refreshed my mana pool. Not that I ever hoped to use, or even think about, any of its features ever again.

We came upon the bridge back into Lumberg just as the last embers of the setting sun played out across the sky, but April stopped at the treeline. She was staring at the guards on the bridge, and the few souls filtering back into the city past them.

"Let's… let's clean up a bit."

I nodded. I'd grown a little used to it, but we were still absolutely filthy with goblin cum--so much of it caked our skin that . Together, we gingerly picked a path down to the banks of the river between Lumberg and the forest, and then slipped straight into the water.

The icy bite of the river was a shock at first, but shivers soon gave way to luxurious groans. April did a swan-dive forward, submerging herself completely, that I copied; and when we rose up out of the water, winnowing streams of fresh water running down our bodies, I found myself staring at her, slack-jawed. Under all the cum that had caked us both, we were totally naked. April was totally naked.

It was more beautiful a sight than I had ever even dared to imagine. She was dark curves and clear skin and taut muscle, wound together by some artistic goddess into a tapestry that could only be described as her magnum opus. My lifelong fantasies about what lay beneath her clothes suddenly seemed to be flimsy, pale, forgettable; they were nothing compared to the real deal. The confident swell of her bare breasts, which gave way to the daring dip of her pelvis, which led the eyes on a dangerous path down to that most sacred part of her body, which was maddeningly close but just out of sight under the surface of the river… I could barely breathe, for fear of disturbing this perfect sight.

On some level I knew that this wasn't really her body, no matter how close to her it looked. This was just electrical signals and clever programming, designed to create an approximation of reality in the safety of my own head. But as I stared at her, drinking down every detail of her nudity, and the rivulets of water still trickling down her silky, olive skin… there was something in me that wondered.

"You good?" My eyes snapped to her face, chagrined--but she was smiling. And not in a mocking, or cruel, or confused way, either. She… was she enjoying this? The thought of easing my own hips above the water, exposing my c-clit as a way of… repaying the favour, flitted bravely across my mind--but then she spoke again. "C'mon. Let's go."

"Uhhh…"

My eyes must have flicked down to my own crotch for a moment, because she laughed. "I've got backup clothes for us! Here."

We climbed back up the banks and put on our clothes; April had a white-and-blue striped blouse and a pair of white shorts that hugged her waist and thighs in a way that made my clitty positively throb, while I found myself in a familiar green sweater and what looked (and felt) like tight black yoga pants. I nervously glanced down to see if the gentle bulge of my clitty was visible, but in the half-light cast by the streetlights above, I couldn't make out a thing. I didn't know whether to be relieved or even more embarrassed than before.

"You got two of these?" I asked, plucking at the thick fabric of the sweater.

"Mhm," April said languidly. "I was going to use it myself after you took my last one, but…" She grimaced.

"Right. That's… yeah."

We crossed over the bridge, and none of the guards on it batted an eye. Either they hadn't been paying attention to us down in the river, or they were used to seeing adventurers skinny-dipping at dusk. I turned to head back to the Lustrous Heart, but April hesitated, looking the other way.

"You coming?"

"In a bit," April said. She worried at her lip with one cute little fang. "I think I'll go to the church first."

"Should I come with you, or…?"

"No!" April clapped her hand over her mouth, seeming more taken aback by her own outburst than I was. "It's fine. It won't take long. You just go ahead."

I stared for a little longer than I perhaps should have. "You sure?"

"Yeah." She smiled cheekily. "Get me one of those cheesy bowl things!"

I couldn't have stopped the wide smile from spreading across my face if I'd tried. She wanted me to get her a meal, and there'd be no need for weird kissing this time: I had plenty of gold pieces from the dungeon. "Alright!"

We parted ways, a new skip in my step, and I practically floated my way over to the Lustrous Heart. All in all, today had been surprisingly good! The end to our dungeon crawl had been… awful, admittedly, but I'd gotten to see April naked out of it, and now I was getting her dinner, and… a shiver that had nothing to do with my damp skin ran through my body. We were sharing a room tonight. Not a bed, but… still. A room. That was like the first step, right?

"Ah!" The pretty receptionist's eyes lit up when I walked in, and she stepped out from behind her desk to greet me. "There you are, miss. We've been waiting for you all day!"

I was nonplussed. "You… have?"

"Yes." She nodded emphatically, more animated than I'd ever seen her before--which wasn't saying much, considering I'd only met her that very morning. "Would you please come with me?"

The word 'quest' flashed up in my mind. MMORPGs had those too, right? This must have been triggered by embarking on our adventure for that dungeon, or defeating that spider boss, or reaching a certain number of Milestones, or something.

"Alright," I said, trying on an air of confidence, like I was the bold hero, ready to help this hapless maiden with whatever job she needed done. As the receptionist led me through a narrow door in the wall beside her desk, I wracked my brains for possibilities. We were still low-level, so it was probably something like killing five goblins, or collecting herbs from a lady in the woods…

The door, as it turned out, led directly into a staircase down into a cellar. There was a strange, almost cloying scent down it, and a pink light that shone hazily from within the room below. This room had a rather low ceiling, though it was still plenty tall for Anne's short body, and half of it was packed wall-to-wall with hefty-looking wooden barrels, each one probably large enough to fit even my real-life self if I curled myself up. There was a bed in the corner opposite the door, weirdly, and the receptionist ushered me to it.

"The Madam will be here soon, miss, so if you would just sit tight for a few minutes…"

I quirked an eyebrow, in a way that I hoped was dashing or at least not silly-looking. "The Madam?" That was probably the woman who ran this inn. So she was the one who'd be doling out this quest. Was this part of VALKYRIE's main plot?

"Yes, miss. She's just doing the accounts right now, but she'll be here soon."

"Alright. Cool."

The receptionist gave me a grateful curtsy, and slipped back up the stairs. With a gentle click, the door to the cellar fell shut behind her.

Chapter 8: The Madam's First Lesson

Chapter Text

With the door shut, and no more light filtering down into the cellar from the main room above, the only source of light was a circle of frosted pink glass set into the ceiling. In the absence of anything else to do in the cellar--I didn't want to touch the kegs, and the bed I had been sat on was hardly an attraction--I studied the light for some time. How was it illuminated? If this was a standard medieval fantasy world, they wouldn't have electricity. Just… magic?

The clinking of a key in a lock interrupted my musings, and the door swung open again. This time, in place of the mousy frame of the receptionist, I was confronted with the proud silhouette of a truly statuesque woman. The dim light cast by the disc on the ceiling revealed little of her face, but I could just make out the fiery red hair that cascaded down her shoulders in sultry waves.

"Wait, was that door locked?" The woman--the Madam, I guessed--ignored me, striding into the room on glittering pointed heels that caught what little pink light reached them and threw it boldly back up into the air. Behind her, the door flew shut. The slam it gave off had a certain air of finality to it.

"Did you think we would stand by?"

The Madam's voice was deep, but by no means masculine: it had an alluring, sensual quality to it, with all the underlying gravitas of a seductress or a siren.

"I… what?"

"Don't play the fool with me, little man." The Madam loomed forwards, and more of the pink light spilled across her face. Age had lined her skin, and deep bruises of eyeshadow kissed her eyelids, but under it all I could still make out a face of uncommon beauty. There was an angular symmetry to her that was difficult to turn away from.

"Little… man?" It took a moment for the gears to turn in my head, and to piece together what felt off about those words.

Since I'd started playing VALKYRIE, every NPC I'd interacted with had, without fail, called me a woman. The Madam leaned even closer, until the wreath of smoky perfume she was wrapped in--the perfume that, I realized, had given this cellar its distinctive smell--almost brought tears to my eyes with its intensity.

"Little man," she breathed into my face. "I know your type, you spineless little weasel."

"W-wait--"

"Silence, " she cut me off, neither raising her voice nor changing her expression. She rose back up to her full height. "I see the way you cling, like a vile limpet, to that poor girl. Lurking… waiting… praying for your chance to strike."

"My chance to… strike?"

"You dress as a woman, you play the frail little flower for her, all to lull her into trusting you. All so that you can ravish her, while she sleeps alongside you." She spat at the floor by my feet, and lunged forward with a heeled foot to grind it in. "Disgusting."

My heart hammered in my chest. "I, no! You've got it wrong! That's--I'd never--April's my--no way!"

"Oh?" She dragged the word out with agonising patience, drawing me along her path of conjecture. "Then what is this?"

She pointed down, her finger tipped with a painted claw, and I cringed on the bed. Through my form-fitting tight yoga pants, my clitty had raised its hopeful head, roused into action by the thought of sex with April.

"Th-that's just--I'd never--Even if I tried, she's so much stronge--"

The Madam reared her head, leonine. A scornful smirk played at her scarlet lips. "So you've considered it? Forcing yourself upon her?"

"No, that's not--"

"Silence." Again she brought my protests to a halt with one word, and not even a gesture or a threat to accompany it. Was that a spell, or was she just that intimidating? "I'm not here to listen to your feeble excuses."

She retrieved a small, purple pouch from some mysterious part of her sequined and quite clearly pocketless dress, and held it out imperiously for me to take. Wordlessly, I held out my hands, and she dropped it in my waiting palms.

"Open it."

I swallowed thickly and did as she said. Somehow, I felt sure that this was going to be a far less favourable gift than the enchanting marble April had given me that morning.

Inside the pouch was a metal… thing. It was small, scarcely bigger than the marble, and it consisted of several slender metal bars, crisscrossing and warped into a sort of curved tube-cage. At the very opening to the tube was a metal ring, about as wide as the entrance it was attached to; at the other end was some kind of pink disc, from which the bars of the tube radiated. Altogether, it looked uncomfortably like a penis… or my c-clitty.

"Take it out." Her gaze was cutting. I bit my lip. "Take it out."

I took a deep breath and put my hand in the pouch. The tip of my middle finger brushed ever so slightly against the cold metal within… and then several things happened at once.

A black-headed tooltip popped up, but a sudden icy grip around my clitty made me double over before I could read it. I let out a high-pitched yelp, and immediately plunged a hand down the front of my yoga pants, more out of instinct than anything--only for the Madam to deliver a smack to my face that made my ears ring.

"OW!" I cringed back, shielding my face with both arms. The Madam simply crossed hers and smiled thinly down at me.

"It is unladylike to be shoving your hands down your pants willy-nilly."

"I thought you kn-knew I wasn't a--" Even with an NPC who knew what my situation was (even if she had it in her head that I was doing it on purpose to rape April…) I still couldn't complete any attempt to assert my real gender out loud.

The Madam sighed and held up five fingers. "Punish."

As soon as she said the word, the cage wrapped tightly around my clitty bit down hard. Like a vice it squeezed me, shooting from uncomfortably tight to agonizing in an instant. Tears didn't just well up in my eyes--they spurted, hot and thick, in a pained river down my cheeks, and as my face dropped down to my knees, my whole body contorting in response to the crushing torture, I barely noticed that I'd kneed myself squarely in the nose.

"AHHH!!" An ear-splitting screech of a cry poured from my throat, and it only grew in length and pitch and volume as the biting force on my clitty got tighter and tighter.

"Release."

And then, at another word, the agony vanished. I looked up blearily at the Madam, chest heaving and tears still running down my face. Her eyes remained trained on me, sharp and ruthless and more than slightly amused, if the slight curl at the corner of her lips was anything to go by. The five fingers she'd held up before were closed into a fist; had that really been just five seconds?

"As long as you wear that cage, any misbehaviour will be punished." She began numbering things off. "Talking back to me. Tardiness. Refusing to follow my orders. Lying to me. Speaking out of turn."

She stared at me for almost a minute after saying the last item, as if daring me to do it right then and there and suffer through another round of punishment.

"Good," she said finally. "Perhaps you will be… easier to train than I thought."

It was clear that she'd expected me to bristle as this last remark, but I held my tongue, any hint of pride still squashed flat by the memory of the cage, still fresh in my mind.

The Madam gave me another little half-smile. "You shall respond to orders and comments by saying, 'Yes, Mistress.'"

"Yes, Mistress," I said quickly, though my throat was still raw.

"Very good. Stand up."

I practically jumped to my feet, and sidled yieldingly out of the way when she made to take my seat on the dingy cellar bed.

"Punish."

The cage constricted before I could even register what she'd said--and then, a blinding wave of pain later, she said, "Release."

"Get up," she tutted.

My legs shaking, I obeyed; I hadn't even realised that I'd fallen over. "Y-yes, Mistress," I said belatedly.

"Good girl." The Madam regarded me for a moment. "Now bend over on my lap."

She gestured imperiously at her thighs, and for the first time since I'd met her I realised what she was wearing: a flatteringly tight bodice, dyed a deep velvety purple, and matching stockings and gloves that left only the tiniest sliver of her thighs and upper arms visible. The stockings were sheer, though only faintly so, and there were tantalising channels of similarly sheer fabric that ran down the bodice, giving me the slightest glimpses of her flat stomach and very much not flat breasts.

Despite its predicament, my clitty began to stir at the seductive sight--but then, accompanied by a wince and a whimper, it pressed up against the unyielding iron bars of its new cage. Though it was far from the crushing agony of the cage's punishment mode, it was distinctly uncomfortable, and I desperately fought the urge to reach down and adjust it, or grind my thighs together, or push my hips back in a vain attempt to get the cage loose.

Gingerly, I lowered myself down over her lap, so that her legs were supporting my stomach. She was far enough back on the bed that only one of my legs could remain on the floor, bent somewhat awkwardly in place--the other I had to kneel with on the bed.

"Eep!" I let out a girly squeal as she grabbed me by the waist and pulled me closer to her; her grip was coarse and strong, and I knew immediately that, like April, she was far more than a match for me. Why did Anne's stupid Strength score have to be so low??

Another squeal escaped me as she tugged roughly at my tight yoga pants, exposing my ass to her in a single stroke. Not even a mote of hesitation kept her from running a tough hand over my rear, or from cupping both of my cheeks in turn, or from giving me a light smack with the tips of her fingers.

"Ah~!" Deftly, she put two fingers between my cheeks and spread them. Her weight shifted, and I flushed, realising that she was actively inspecting my asshole.

"You've lost your virginity," she noted.

"Y-yes, Mistress," I squeaked, cringing internally.

"How very promiscuous." She gave me another light tap, drawing out yet another squeal. "Yes, you shall do nicely."

I bit my lip, half to stop myself from asking what she meant by that. Do nicely? For what? After everything that had happened in this cellar, I was pretty sure she wasn't about to send me on a quest to kill twelve rats.

"Starting from today, I shall be training you." The Madam played with my naked ass as she spoke, and I flushed red as my c-clitty throbbed uselessly in its cage in response. Whether it was her words or her touch, getting aroused here was just… humiliating. "As penance for your crime of impersonating a woman, you shall receive instruction on living as a woman."

She squeezed my cheeks, one at a time, giving them little jiggles and tugging them like she wanted to stretch them out. "Every night, at dusk, you shall report to Miss Wilhelmina at the receptionist's desk. She will lead you into this room, where I will give you the night's lesson."

Another spank, which drew out another squeak. "Am I clear?"

"Y-yes, Mistress!" I chirped immediately.

"Good." She gave my ass a firm rubbing. "Now, then: tonight's lesson."

"T-toni--" I bit my tongue to stop myself from finishing the question.

The Madam fell dangerously silent. Thoughts bubbled up frantically in my mind. Was I supposed to apologise? Or would she just treat that as speaking out of turn too? I-I hadn't expected there to be more for tonight!! What was she going to do to me?!

"I won't punish you for that one." I felt her lean heavily over me, squashing me for a moment between her lap and her impressive breasts. "But you'll take ten seconds on your next lapse."

A cold sweat broke out over my body. Ten seconds?!

"Y-yes, Mistress!!" I babbled.

"Now. Count for me." Before I could ask what she meant by that, or even think if it would be okay to ask what she meant by that, a whip-crack blow came down on my naked ass.

"OW!!"

"Ten seconds," she breathed into my ear.

"O-one!!" I cried.

"One, Mistress," she corrected me. A moment later, a second whip-crack split the air--and my ass.

"One, Mistress!"

Once again, her hand came down on me with the speed of a bullet. Fire surged out from the point of impact, lacing my skin with what felt like a hundred tiny needles packed into an area the size of the Madam's steely hand.

"T-two, Mistress!!"

Again. My ass quivered, and I bit my lip as I felt my clitty stir in its ironclad prison.

"Th-three, Mistress!!"

"FouR, Mistress!!"

"Five, Mistress!!"

It hadn't been a coincidence. Each wicked strike sent a new twitch careening up the tiny, squashed length of my c-clit, even as my swiftly pinkening ass screamed in protest, and tears trickled from the edges of my eyes.

"HAhH!!" The next blow fell perfectly upon the spot of soreness left by the last, and my clitty didn't just twitch--it jumped, straight into the bars of its cage. Attacked by pain on both sides, front and back, I couldn't help but feel the tiniest warm trickle leak out into the bunched-up front of April's yoga pants.

"That's not the number after five," the Madam chastised me. Another gunshot blow fell upon my skin, once again where the last two fell, and I writhed in her lap, the wires in my brain thoroughly crossed.

"F-fivE, Mistress!!"

"Do you not know how to count this high?"

"S-si--"

Her palm came crashing down on my ass again, and I howled in shock.

"SIX, M-Mistress!!"

"Better. Again." She laid into me once more, this time avoiding the circle of pain.

"Seven, Mistress!!"

The next hit fell back upon it again--my hips jerked involuntarily against her, and another trickle escaped my trapped clitty. It was throbbing constantly against the bars of its prison now, rattling at them as if to demand its freedom.

"Eight, Mistress!!"

"NiNE, MistRESS!!"

"TEN, Mistress!"

And with that, the Madam let her hand fall to my ass once more, but gently, this time. I inhaled sharply as she trailed her fingers along the raw redness of my buttocks, tracing sore shapes that I could only imagine were the outlines of the marks she'd left on my behind. Dimly, I realised that I was panting.

"Not bad, sissy," she told me.

"Th-thank you, Mistress," I moaned.

"For the next set--" she paused, and I knew that she was watching me shrewdly, waiting for me to interrupt her like before--"you will be telling me what you are. What are you, sissy?"

I gulped. "A… a-a sissy…?"

"Yes, but not quite. You are a girl." She punctuated the four words with light taps on my ass, making me wince with each one. "Say it."

"I-I am a girl," I recited breathlessly.

SMACK.

A little shriek escaped my throat, borne more from shock than the pain--which, to be clear, was just as biting and hot as the last ten spanks--but I managed to pull myself together. "I-I am a girl… M-Mistress!"

The Madam let out a murmur of laughter. "Oh, you remembered. That's a good girl."

SMACK.

"I-I'm a girl, Mistress!!"

SMACK.

"I am a girl, M-Mistress!!"

SMACK.

"I am a girl, MisTRESS!!"

We continued in this twisted rhythm for what felt like hours; the Madam's interrogating smack, and then my panting confession. Several times, she lanced from me more humiliating trickles that went straight into my yoga pants, always with particularly savage blows--and as the spanking went on, and more and more of my ass was left red and sensitive by her merciless hand, the trickles became more and more frequent.

And then, I received a new Milestone.

"Hm. That was early." I looked up from the two new tooltips that had popped up in front of me to find that the Madam had stopped spanking me entirely. Instead, she was running her hands up and down my thighs. My face grew hot: they really were bigger. Combined with my newly widened hips, and bunched up in April's now far tighter yoga pants, it was impossible to see my lower half as anything but a girl's.

And, just like everything else in this game, I could feel the difference, too. They weren't just heavier--the whole balance in my thighs had shifted, the simulated experience of fat now deposited differently along them than they had been before.

"Very well." With some reluctance, the Madam took her hands off my ass and thighs entirely. "Stand."

I rose unsteadily to my feet, my ass still very much burning and my newly thickened thighs now sitting differently atop my lower legs. Delicately, I rolled the top of my yoga pants back up my ass, letting out a low moan as they clung tightly to my raw skin… and as the sticky mess that had accumulated in the front of them climbed up over the front of my groin. I could not let April see me like this.

"How filthy," the Madam said, eyeing the same place I was and--evidently--thinking the same thing. "I suppose it bodes well for your further lessons, if you enjoyed this one so much."

"Y--" My breath caught--"Yes, Mistress."

The Madam nodded in satisfaction. "Now, I suppose I shall let you go. When will you be returning to this cellar?"

"T-tomorrow, a-at dusk," I squeaked. "Mistress."

"And, just to be perfectly clear…" She stood, and towered over me once more. I craned my neck to look up at her, for once the thought of staring at an attractive woman's breasts not tantalising in the slightest. "You will not tell anybody about these lessons, or attempt to have your little cage removed."

She held up a finger and a thumb and mimed crushing something slowly between them. "Unless, that is, you would like to experience your little worm being crushed out of existence."

I gulped. "Y-yes, Mistress!!"

"And… no healing." I stared at her, wide-eyed, but unwilling to voice the question that hung in the air. She reached around behind my rear and gave my bruised ass a pointed jiggle. "Until dawn tomorrow, you will not heal yourself."

I bit my lip. She was going to make me go through a whole night with my ass aching, and stinging, and sore, when I could so easily just point my wand at myself and fix it?

"I'll be checking tomorrow. By now, I suspect you know what will happen if you lie."

"...Yes, Mistress."

And then, with that, she waved me out of the room.

Gingerly, I tottered up the stairs, and past the receptionist--who turned and gave me the sunniest of smiles, followed by the slyest of winks--and up to the room I was sharing with April. I gave the door a nervous knock, but there was no response. When I pushed it open, I was disappointed--but also a touch relieved--to find the room completely empty. So she was still at the church in the city.

Briefly, I toyed with the idea of going out to meet her there, but the thought of waddling around town with my lacerated ass jiggling in her yoga pants the whole time killed the usual enthusiasm I had for meeting up with April. Instead, I bundled myself into the bathroom and unequipped my yoga pants; they were still sorely in need of a cleaning.

I pulled a face at the 'Sticky' subtitle--had I really leaked enough out of my c-clitty that it warranted an entire status condition?--but resolutely stepped into the shower and scoured it with my fingers and knuckles under the tap, working out the watery stain of my cum until I was satisfied that April, at the very least, wouldn't be able to notice it.

With that done, I threw them over the top of the bathroom door to dry, and returned to the room itself. April was still nowhere to be seen. The idea of going out to find her struck me again, this time with an undercurrent of worry… but I shook my head. Outside of that dungeon, she wasn't subject to the rules of a 'slave party'. Even if she had for some reason gone out into the woods after dark, the worst thing that could happen to her was dying. It probably wasn't pleasant, considering how much just taking damage could hurt in this game, but… at least she wasn't risking…

I shuddered and climbed into bed. In spite of the worries and fears swirling around inside my head, and all the ways I'd been violated, and the stinging of my poor, un-healed ass as it pressed up against the sheets and blankets, it didn't take long before a wave of drowsiness washed over me. I'd spent entirely too long driven solely by adrenaline--first from the sight of April's naked body in the river, and then from my 'lesson' with the Madam--and now that I was finally somewhere soft, and warm, and safe, all of the day's exertions finally caught up to me. Like that, I drifted off into a dreamless sleep: my first in the world of VALKYRIE.

Chapter 9: To Level Up

Chapter Text

When I awoke the next morning, I lay still for a few minutes, my eyes shut. The usual cliche of expecting to be in my own bed hadn't transpired for me: everything from the dull ache still throbbing in my backside to the plush softness of the hotel bedding immediately told me I was still trapped in the world of VALKYRIE. My hair was still a long, silky tress pooled upon my pillows and beneath my upper back. My body was still curved in strange places, light all over except for my hips and thighs, where it felt as if my weight had been concentrated thanks to the changes my Milestones and spells had forced on me.

And, of course, there was my cursed cage. Even without a buxom woman spanking the living daylights out of me, it was so uncomfortably tight as to be impossible to ignore. Cracking my eyes open just the tiniest bit, I reached down under my blankets and gave it a fruitless tug: my balls beneath it and tiny clitty trapped within it moved in lockstep with it, like they were fused to it. It had grown warmer since it had first appeared on me, likely because of my body heat… or, well, VALKYRIE's simulation of my body heat… but there was still an unyielding rigidity to it. Dimly, I thought of taking it somewhere to get the curse broken without having to fulfil its crazy escape clause.

I swallowed thickly. Was this what the Madam had meant when she'd talked about the cage 'pinching my little worm off…?'

The cage could stay on for a while longer. I threw off my covers and hopped out of bed, with a hopeful glance at the other bed in the room. Although April was nowhere to be seen, her bedding had been churned up into a senseless pile, pillows and sheets scattered everywhere and in some cases thrown off the bed entirely. That probably meant she'd come in after I'd fallen asleep, and left before I'd woken up. I was a little upset that she seemingly hadn't bothered to wake me up, but figured that she'd been trying to be nice and let me sleep in. She was just too lovely to doubt for long.

With that, I headed downstairs (after coming dangerously close to forgetting to collect my now-dry and un-sticky yoga pants from the bathroom door). It occurred to me that I really did need more clothes than literally just what I had on my back, if they were going to be destroyed and soiled at this rate.

"Good morning, dear," the receptionist sang when she saw me. She was just as slyly satisfied as she had been the night before. "Did you sleep well?"

I bit back my aggravation, the twang in my rear and the twitch of my front enough to remind me that any misbehaviour was likely to bring the hammer of the Madam's wrath down on me. Instead, I stalked past her, and was delighted to see April, sitting on her own in the inn's dining area with a number of bowls stacked on the table in front of her. For the first time in probably twelve hours, I was grateful for the tiny cage holding my clitty hostage--the yoga pants had not been doing a good job of hiding my boners, and the jolt my clitty had made at the sight of April would have definitely been visible if it had been a free girl. Man. Free man.

"April!" I hurried over to her side, and she looked up and scooted over so that I could take a seat beside her.

"Look who took his sweet time getting up!" she beamed. "Um, did you slip in the shower or something?"

A pang of shock and panic shot up my spine. What did she know? Had the staff told her? Was I--

"Here!" April extended her hand towards me and said, "Moonlight!"

A yellow orb of light wafted gently from her hand and into my chest, and suddenly a wave of warmth flooded my body. My healthbar briefly reappeared on my screen, going from sickly yellow to bright green in an instant.

"Was that a heal?" I squawked.

"Mhm!" April preened playfully in the face of my gawking. "I hit up the Tree last night and picked up my own healing spell! That should save us some gold on health potions!"

"Oh. Um, thanks." It kind of made sense that druids, being in tune with nature or whatever, would have their own healing spells. But on top of all the other ridiculous things that April could do--dishing out tons of damage, tanking tons of damage, copying abilities from enemies--it was almost too unfair that she could do my thing, too.

"Alright!" April twisted around in her seat to face me, a serious look in her eyes. "I've been thinking. Yesterday was… bad."

I nodded weakly. 'Bad' was an understatement.

"I don't think either of us want… that to happen to us again!" Her skin darkened slightly, but she powered on anyway. "So we're going to have to get as strong as we can, as fast as we can! Now that we know we can take on the first floor of that dungeon without much trouble, my suggestion is… we run it again and again, and build up resources until we're totally overleveled for the rest of it!"

I chewed on my lip thoughtfully. Part of me wanted to object to even leaving this city again as a matter of principle, but… the more I thought about it, the better her plan sounded. She was right that the first floor of the dungeon hadn't been all too risky--on the few occasions I'd been taken down, April had been more than strong enough to bail me out. Now that she had a healing spell of her own, she'd be able to put me back on my feet without even having to stop fighting. I wasn't sure I'd ever want to go any deeper into that dungeon again, but getting stronger for its own sake, following the safe plan that April had outlined… well, it sounded better than waiting around here in the Lustrous Heart, with that receptionist snickering at me non-stop.

"Okay," I said, and I was pleased to hear resolve rather than hesitation in my own voice. "That makes a lot of sense, actually."

April beamed at me. "Awesome! Well, shall we go upgrade our gear first?"

As it turned out, April had already planned out a route for us to take through the city of Lumberg. I wondered if her visit to the city's church last night had played a part in it, because our first stop was 'La Chapparel.' Suitably for its name, it resembled a strange cross between a chapel and a clothing store: its windows alternated between elaborate stained glass mosaics of what I presumed were scenes from VALKYRIE's main religion, and plain glass showing off row after row of priestly robes hanging from racks inside.

Unlike the other clothing stores we'd seen in the game so far, this store didn't have any boxy orange kiosks: instead, it was staffed by a pair of what I could only describe as furry catgirls, who leapt from their sewing to accost us as soon as we walked inside.

"Hi hi hello!"

"How can we help you?"

Even April, usually the sociable one herself, had to take a step back as they crowded us. "Um, hi! We're just looking for, uh, enchanted robes!"

The two catgirls exchanged looks. One was a tortoiseshell, and the other had calico blotches on top of a plain brown base. Both wore plain white dresses that went about halfway down their furry thighs, and some kind of beaded necklace around their throats.

They weren't just furry--as they darted around us, I realised that their legs were bent in entirely too many places, and they shifted their weight easily atop what would have been the balls of their feet, if their legs were human. If they were beastkin like April's character, they were certainly much further on the animal side.

"Enchanted robes?"

"Enchanted robes!"

The two catgirls clapped excitedly and tore off in opposite directions. Moments later, they both returned, both bearing a veritable rainbow of shapeless robes each.

"Warding? Lukewarm?"

"Travel! Hyacinth!"

"Chameleon? Lustre?"

"Balefire! Gloomwalk!"

Without waiting for even an answer, they started piling their offerings into my arms, until I was swamped under a mountain of faintly glowing fabric.

"H-hey!" From a crack between the robes in front of me, I could see the cat-girls descend upon April with a length of tape measure. "They're for him!"

"Him?"

"Him!"

Promptly, the pile of robes on top of me vanished, and then the catgirls were on me instead. One grabbed me from behind, taking absolutely no care to avoid inappropriate contact with any part of me at all, while the other started lining up her tape measure against random parts of my body at such speed that I found it hard to believe she was actually reading anything.

"Wow, she's tiny?"

"How cute!"

"Decided yet?"

"Ahh, these hips!"

The catgirl with the measuring tape pocketed it with a snap that reminded me disconcertingly of my night with the Madam and began to bustle back and forth between shelves, bundling her arms full of sheets of fabric and sewing supplies. The catgirl behind me, meanwhile, had materialised a number of pins that she held in her lips, and a sheet of parchment in one of her furry hands. She circled me, her slitted eyes appraising, and started sticking pins in the parchment without taking her eyes off me for a second.

"Style?"

"Um," I said eloquently. It had to be feminine, or it would just end up being randomly replaced by something else. "G… girly? But not too girly!!"

The catgirl with the parchment nodded, but even though she was looking directly at me and had specifically asked for my input, I couldn't shake the feeling that she hadn't actually heard me. Pushing one last pin into her sheet, she took off for a towering wooden contraption that I could only imagine was a sewing machine of some kind. The other catgirl soon followed her, and for a moment April and I were left to assess what had just happened.

"Wow." April was the first to catch her breath. "That was… a lot."

"Yeah," I agreed.

"Um…" She thought for a bit. "Let's check out these robes, huh? See what those enchantments really mean."

Between us, we managed to partition the pile of clothes that the catgirls had left haphazardly on the floor of the store by us, and started poring through tooltips.

"Oohh, how about this one? You use Charisma, right?" April pushed a sunny yellow wad of fabric towards me.

"Yeah, I do," I said, thumbing the robe absently. I wondered if I should tell her about the new… use for my Charisma I'd learned thanks to the Madam, but decided against it. Even if the mere thought of intentionally trying to seduce an opponent didn't make my face red-hot and my clitty tremble in its cage--which, to be clear, it totally did--there was no reason we'd ever have to resort to using Seduce anyway. If… if I was ever going to get fucked by a monster again, it was NOT going to be by choice. Absolutely not.

"Then should we just pick this?" April said.

I looked over at the two catgirls, who were industriously hacking away at a blob of midnight blue fabric on their sewing contraption. "Um, sure, if they'll… listen…?"

April giggled. "Don't worry about that! They're definitely, uh, a lot, but a lot of people recommended this place! They'll be fine."

With that, we sidled up to them. The calico catgirl looked up from her sewing and cocked her triangular cat head, then beamed when she saw we were carrying the sunny yellow Lustre robe.

"Lustre!"

The other catgirl looked up. "Lustre?"

The calico catgirl rubbed her hands together with glee. "Lustre! Very good!" Still running the midnight blue robe through the machine with one hand, she started picking pins out of the mouth of her partner and popping them into the new project. The tortoiseshell catgirl teased a strand of golden thread through the eye of a needle beside her, then fell upon the midnight robe in a mad flurry. In and out her needle danced, trailing a golden stream behind it. I had to admit that despite the chaotic veneer of these two tailors, April and her sources had a point--even with their jagged, wild movements and strange manner of speaking, there was some kind of underlying precision to their motions.

They must have mostly completed the robe while we were still picking out enchantments, because they were finished within a matter of minutes; just like that, the calico catgirl bundled the robe into her arms and pushed it onto me.

"Try it on, try it on!"

I frowned a little at the flavour text--did they really have to put 'adorable' in there?--but sighed and pressed the Try On button all the same. April's jumper and yoga pants vanished; like my original robe, this 'Lustregown' clearly took up both my upper and lower body slots at once. I looked down at myself. The sleeves and main body of the outfit were billowing and flowy; in tandem with the gossamer airiness of the fabric itself, it felt almost as if I was dressed in a veil of something just the faintest bit more substantial than nothing. While it was very clearly a dress, it was surprisingly modest, too--my newly thickened legs (and clitty) were swallowed up under a floor-length train of midnight, and the gown's sweeping sleeves halted just a hair past my wrists, leaving my hands but little else visible to onlookers. Slender chains of arcane golden lettering ran down them both, and the sides of my body--this was probably what the catgirl who'd asked about the enchantments I wanted had contributed to the final product.

Overall, it was surprisingly nice, both to wear and to conceal my more… feminine features, a list that was growing every day I spent trapped in this game. My lone complaint was the neckline, which plunged down to just above my nipples, plainly in order to expose cleavage that I didn't have… but it beat wearing that slutty 'microkini', or April's skin-tight yoga pants, or the ridiculous pink dress that was still lying ruined in my inventory.

"Wow, it looks great on you!!" April gushed. Her tail was thumping wildly against everything in reach, and her hands were clasped up against her chest; it was pretty clear that she was trying her hardest to resist the urge to squeal about how cute I was again. She turned to the catgirls. "Do you have a mirror?"

"Mirror?"

"Mirror!"

The catgirls tore off, and shortly wheeled in a mirror nearly twice as tall as I was, with ornamentation in the form of coppery leaves running all the way around its border. April ushered me in front of it, gently brushing aside my half-hearted protests that I didn't need to see how I looked in it, and begrudgingly I turned to face my reflection.

A pretty girl in a chaste velvet gown looked back at me. Her features were as delicate and as elfin as before, down to the gently pointed tips of her ears and the ever-so-subtle puff of her pastel pink lips… and, framed by the little pink ties that parted her waist-length curtain of black hair into two tails behind her head, and the alluringly feminine gown she had been draped in, I found it faintly ridiculous that I had ever considered trying to disguise just how pretty she was with 'masculine' clothes. I glanced surreptitiously over at April's reflection; she still had her hands clasped, and her tail wagging furiously as she watched me drink in my new look. It was clearer now that her height and breadth over me was no illusion of perspective--the mirror made it obvious that she was two, almost three heads taller than me, and probably two Annes wide. Invisible under my new gown, my clitty stirred in its cage, inexplicably worked up by the prospect of our size difference. I wrenched myself away from the mirror and turned to the catgirls, who also had their hands clasped and their eyes glued to me, though for reasons I suspected were very different from April's.

"W-we'll take it," I said.

"Very good!"

"Pay now?"

"How much is it?" I said guardedly. Pay now? What, was this gown expensive enough that some people had to take out loans to pay for it? Had the devs gone as far as to program an actual bank into this game?

The calico catgirl scribbled a figure down on a scrap of parchment and handed it to me, and while it was steep--I wouldn't be shopping for another one of these robes for quite some time, if they were all going to be this expensive--I had more than enough for it in my coffers. I opened up the Lustregown's inventory window and tapped 'buy,' and like that, I had my first ever piece of enchanted clothing.

"Woo! Go you!"

The rest of our morning was spent bustling between various stops that April had planned out the night before. We visited the town 'enchantery,' which amounted to a dingy little room attached to the town's library, packed full of shelves laden with hundreds or thousands of the same sort of glass marbles that April had given me the day before. There, April got her hands on a rare-tier 'Storm' marble, a few cuts above my first one, and I had my empty marble refilled with another 'lesser' enchantment.

"Awesome!" April held her new marble up for me to inspect. Under its glassy surface spun a miniature tower of black clouds. Every few seconds, a tiny fork of lightning shot across them.

"What does it do?"

"I don't know yet!" Satisfied that I'd gotten enough of an eyeful, April stashed the marble safely in her inventory. "But with you and me focused so much on my defence, I thought I'd better get some offensive power, and I heard that Storm enchantments were really good for that!"

Next, just a few buildings down from the library/enchantery, we came upon an olive green storefront, with a wooden tub that almost looked like a greengrocer's stand out in front of it. Unlike a grocer's, however, there were no fruits or vegetables to be seen--instead, the tub was packed with strange, slimy ropes with a strong smell of fish, and horrible little jars packed full of unblinking eyeballs with whites in every colour but white, and tightly bound bundles of withered cerulean reeds that I recognized as blue breachroot. Through the window behind it, I could see similar wares occupying the interior of the store, too.

"Ah, hello!" A human-looking girl with frizzy red hair and a profusion of freckles dotting her pale skin was standing beside the tub; I hadn't noticed her at all until she spoke, my eye drawn by the gross assortment beside her. Her figure was best described as matronly, both shorter and heavier-set than April, and I felt my clit give an involuntary jerk in her cage as my eyes ran automatically over her breasts. Over them was a stained apron, the same shade of green as the storefront, and she wore matching (and equally stained) gloves on her hands. She bowed in welcome as we approached.

"Hi!" April, ever the extrovert, bounded over to her and shook her hand enthusiastically. "My name's April, and this is Anne! We're here to learn how to make potions!"

"O-oh!" The redheaded girl looked between us both, her mouth opening and closing in the shapes of words without saying anything. "Umm, I'm Meredith, but you can't call me Merry," she said quickly. "I mean can! You can call me Merry. Please call me Merry."

"Alright, um, Merry!" April was quick to fill the silence after she spoke, and craned her head curiously to look through the window behind her. "So, um, can we learn potion stuff now?"

Merry clapped a hand to her mouth, disproportionately mortified. "Oh, yes!! Um, y-you should talk to the professor! He's inside!!" She hurried to lead us to the door, realised it was about five feet away anyway, and that she'd just put herself in between us and the door, and then awkwardly returned to her original position at the stand.

"Thanks!" April beamed and sauntered past her, me in tow. "Oh, geez…"

While the ceiling of the potion store was technically no lower than any other building we'd seen in Lumberg, this one was home to a veritable forest of flimsy white strings. From each one hung dried leaves, and sprigs of strange plants, and weird little rocks with bubble-knobbed surfaces, and a whole host of other curious items that I suspected were potion-making ingredients. While my in-game body was just short enough that I could stay at full height and avoid having all but the lowest-hanging ingredients brush the top of my head, April--with her character's original height and her size-increasing Milestone to contend with--was not so fortunate. Practically doubled over, and with one hand reached behind her back to keep a lid on her fluffy white tail, she gingerly navigated her way through the strange-smelling maze of shelves and potion-making produce, and we eventually reached what seemed to be the shopkeeper's counter.

It was tiny. The counter itself, and the rickety little stool that stood behind it, and even the spare aprons and cloaks that hung on the wall beside that, looked like they'd come straight out of a three-year-old's Medieval Shoppekeeper playset. As short as Anne was, the counter didn't even come up to my knee.

"Sorry!" A reedy voice came out from behind the wall. "Be with you in a moment!"

April, who had been just as entranced by the tiny counter as I was, called back, "Oh, it's alright! Take your--"

There was a muted boom. Bright green smoke poured out from the cracks around what I realised was a door in the back wall--like the counter and stool, this thing was barely tall enough to admit one of my legs, let alone someone like April.

"Umm, are you alright?!" April asked, making for the door despite this insurmountable size difference.

There was a coughing fit. "Yes, quite."

The door swung open with a creak and a slam, and a multicoloured figure stumbled out of it. He resembled nothing so much as a traffic cone, in a conical red hat that barely took him to my waist, a thick robe that ballooned out into a cone near his feet, a prominent and very much conical pink nose, and even a pair of blackened metal goggles that, once again, telescoped in concentric circles such that they looked like twin cones extending directly from his eyes. Every inch of his clothes, pointed tip of his hat to the fingertips of his heavy-duty gloves to the upturned curls of his tiny boots, was splotched with a mess of colour, and as he scurried over to his counter, his every movement scattered clouds of colourful dust over everything he passed by.

"Ahem! Professor Lizzlewhizz, M-A-A-D, at your service! What can I do you for?"

"Are you a gnome?" April asked immediately, potions forgotten.

"Ho-ho-ho, I sure am, miss!" He lifted his goggles, revealing a pair of brilliant green eyes amid a sea of wrinkles deep enough to get lost in. "Ah, misses, beg pardon! What are you ladies after? Potions, ingredients, selling, buying?"

"Oh, um, we were wondering if you could teach us how to make potions, actually," April said.

"Ah! Fellow students of the alchemical pedigree! Yes, yes, that can be arranged." Professor Lizzlewhizz twisted around on his little stool and began rifling through the drawers under his desk. "Skill book, Skill book… here!"

He shot back to his (unimpressive) full height and slapped a pair of green tomes down on his counter. "Here y'are, two skill books of alchemy, ten gold a pop!"

"Cool!" April forked over her gold, and I followed suit. We collected our tomes, which in our hands looked and felt more like pocket diaries.

"Most recipes will need you to have an alchemy table handy," Lizzlewhizz went on as we 'learned' how to use alchemy. "You can use ours, near the door, as you'd please. Anything you're particularly happy with but can't use, come show me, and I might buy it!"

"Awesome! Thanks, Professor!" Even being awkwardly hunched over under a sea of weird potions ingredients could do little to curb April's enthusiasm and cheer, and she immediately began the crab-walk back to the entrance of the store to give the table a try.

"You girls have fun back there!"

The alchemy table, unlike the rest of Professor Lizzlewhizz's equipment in the store, was a comfortable size for regular human use… or, I supposed, elf and beastkin use. With its five spindly legs and fat-bellied cauldron that sat atop it, it had the distinct appearance of some kind of fantastical crab; a few glass vials and rods and odds and ends stood around this cauldron in metal stands, looking like glassy growths. April reached out to it, a tad unsurely, only to flinch back as something--a UI window, most likely--popped out at her. I followed suit.

The potion-making UI was… detailed. It was dominated by a deep black circle, but around it sat a slew of golden buttons of varying sizes, each with its own unique symbol. I thought about counting them up, but gave up after hitting fifteen with no end in sight.

After studying the symbols for several minutes, wracking my brains for any hint as to what any of them meant, I was forced to accept that I had no idea. With some apprehension, I picked one at random and gave it a tap--and jumped as it lit up and a secondary menu appeared in front of me.

This was the contents of my inventory… or at least, I guessed, the contents that could be put in a potion. The venom vials that we'd collected from the various spiders of the dungeon were nowhere to be seen, but that didn't particularly bother me. With my luck in this game, drinking a potion made out of one of those was liable to poison me outright.

I contemplated the available ingredients for a while. Knowing April, she'd insist that we both try our concoctions as soon as I came out of this screen, to see what they did. If so, that ruled out the goblin parts immediately, as well as the ash. The star pearl was out, too--although I didn't exactly want to take on the transformations that the next level of spells the tree offered, getting access to the next tier of spells after them was starting to sound really attractive. If there was some way to fix silencing in there… well, that was the kind of ability that was worth a minor adjustment.

Similarly, I decided not to risk the Umberkar Heart. From its golden name, I surmised that this was the big boss drop. While it probably did something really good for a potion, I wanted to make sure I understood the system before I used it for anything.

That left a bunch of vines, creep, roots, and bark. I stroked my chin thoughtfully. Some of their tooltips had mentioned alchemy and potions, but I couldn't remember which was which. After some deliberation, I sighed and tapped on the Wolfbark. It was the easiest thing to replenish here, being the main drop from timber-wolves.

Krrrkk. The sound of something getting ground up in a wood chipper filled my ears, and the animation of some kind of minty green paste getting poured into the black circle in the centre of the alchemy UI played out. Oh, so this was the cauldron!

The list of my inventory remained in place. I tentatively tapped on the Breachroot--this time, the grinding sound was squelchy and watery. A thin trickle of bright blue joined the green paste at the bottom of the cauldron. The two substances didn't quite mix--instead, the blue dribbled into a messy spiral over the paste, leaving behind a rather unappetizing pile of semisolid ingredients.

A piece of torn creep was next. This materialised as a viscous burgundy substance, contrary to the electric blue of the surl creep we'd torn it from, that oozed its way slowly down the walls of the cauldron of the UI. It visibly shuddered on contact with the other ingredients in the cauldron, but that wasn't the end of the weirdness. Once it had settled, it started to mix with both the paste and the blue juice… but as if it was still part of the monster that had so delighted in trying to drag me into its tunnels back in the dungeon, this mixing felt more like a concerted effort on the part of the juiced creep to slurp its fellow ingredients into its heavy red body.

I swallowed thickly. I really did not want April to make me try this thing. More out of a desire to stop watching the horrible process taking place on my Vision than any sincere belief that my potion was complete, I closed the "" menu and looked frantically for anything in the alchemy UI that vaguely resembled a 'done' button. Seeing none, my eyes flicked up to the top right--and, happily, found a red cross that let me exit out of the screen.

I closed the new tooltip to find a tiny glass vial already in my hand. As the tooltip had claimed, it was filled with a bubbling crimson liquid--and it was strangely warm to the touch.

"Oooh, cool," April said, staring at my potion. "What's that?"

"It's, uh, a 'wolfblood vial,'" I said, hoping I'd remembered the name right.

"What'd you make that out of?" she asked.

I numbered the ingredients off. "Wolfbark, Breachroot, and Torn Creep."

"Wow, and they ended up like that?" April seemed genuinely astounded by the prospect, and after a moment of thought I had to agree. Those were the three things we'd collected the most of in our one-and-a-half days of adventuring, and the vial at least looked cool. And had a cool name.

Never one to pay attention to one thing for long, April soon held up her own potion. "Look at mine!" Hers was a gloopy-looking translucent mint green, and--unlike my tiny vial--came in a bulbous glass flask that I couldn't help but notice was almost the size of one of her breasts. It had bubbles in it, like the wolfblood, but where the wolfblood fizzed aggressively, the bubbles of April's potion floated gently in the gelatinous morass around them, untroubled and sedate.

"This is wolfbark I put through that Leo symbol, some wolfbark I put in the Libra symbol, and then I used the one that does the fire on the whole thing!"

"I might have a thing for wolfbark, hehe," she added self-effacingly.

"Wait, you know what those symbols are?" I said.

She shrugged. "Some of them, yeah! They're from the zodiac."

"Huh." I looked back at my little vial of wolfblood. Zodiac or not, I hadn't even thought of trying out any buttons beyond the first. If those all did different things to the ingredients you put in them, and you could mix and match all of those ingredients to create different potions… just how many combinations were available in the alchemy system alone?!

"Let's try them out!" April gave an excited little hop, which--between her half-hunched gait and the rows and rows of shelves filled with fragile-looking merchandise hemming us both in--led to her almost toppling over, and bringing me (and Professor Lizzlewhizz's entire virtual livelihood) down with her. "... Outside."

Sighing internally, but resigned to my fate, I dutifully led the way out of the store. April wasted no time in tipping her bottle to her lips.

"You ready?"

I mirrored her with my wolfblood. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Meredith, the lady in the apron minding the ingredient cart outside, take a deliberate step back from both of us. Despite the new set of alarm bells that this triggered in my head, I nodded.

"Alright! Bottoms up!"

Like I was taking a shot, I tipped my whole head back, and the vial alongside it. The roiling red slithered along my tongue and down my throat with disturbing alacrity… like it somehow wanted to get where it was going faster than gravity was going to take it. I grimaced as its taste filled my mouth. It was like a bitter punch to the jaw, down to a metallic aftershock that I almost mistook for blood.

"Yeesh." I looked up to see April with a similar grimace on her own face, and for a moment felt mollified. Even the ever-capable super-wolf April hadn't totally aced her first ever potion.

I blinked. That thought had a surprising amount of bite to it. It wasn't like it was her fault that I was stuck like this. Really, if she'd had her way, I would be piloting a character just as overpowered as hers was.

Horror overtook me as I felt a warmth in my chest. It was exactly the same warmth that had flooded my hips when I'd learned Glitterdust--and the warmth that had filled my thighs last night, after the Madam had extracted the fiftieth confession to being a girl from my unwilling lips! Mind paralyzed, I clapped my hands over myself, as if I could somehow keep my new cleavage from ballooning up to fill the top of my new robe.

"Um… are you okay?"

April had a concerned look on her face, and her head tilted quizzically.

Slowly, like I was defusing a bomb, I looked down at myself. My hands were on my breasts. My breasts. My--ugh, it was just like with my clitty. Clit. Clitoris.

But… experimentally, I peeled my hands away from them.

Nothing. Oh, I could certainly feel a new weight attached to my upper body, giving a new heft to each breath I took, but… from the outside, under the loose, draughty robe I'd bought, my new breasts were practically invisible. A-cups, my years of secretly perusing pornsites and explicit Twitter pages told me. Maybe B. I was hardly an expert.

"Yes," I said carefully. Even at this petite size, the breasts made drawing breath and speaking feel… confronting. The thought of them getting any larger was… worrying.

April pulled a face, and I braced myself for some kind of admonition or continued prodding, but then her eyes twitched upwards, to something just over my head. "Ohmygosh!!"

"Huh?" A wave of warmth spread out over my crown, followed by twin trickles of icy cold down the sides of my head. Something--two somethings--pushed up out of the top of my head, just above my ears. I reached up to find something soft and fluffy.

"That's so cute!!" April seemed primed to follow this outburst up with a deafening squeal--but, seeing my face, coughed and choked it back down. "Um, sorry."

"It's fine."

Still contrite, April summoned something into her hand and offered it to me--her hand mirror. "You wanna see?"

I sighed. "Might as well."

My new wolf ears were pastel pink (of course) and very fluffy. They weren't quite as pointy as April's (obviously), and when I ran my hand down the side of my head, I found that my normal pointy elf ears were totally gone.

I looked up to see April squirming on the spot, her eyes darting everywhere but at that point on top of my head. I snapped her mirror shut and offered it to her; she took it without a word. After a few more seconds, I couldn't take it any longer.

"Alright, fine," I groused, answering her unasked question. "You can… touch them."

April's face was the picture of delight. "Really?"

"Yes, really. But… not for too long."

This time, April's squeal was allowed to fly free, and she promptly placed both hands on top of my head. "Ohh my gosh, they're sooo soft… softer than mine!"

My eyes flicked up to her own wolf ears, and for a moment I thought of suggesting I test that claim for myself… but with how short I was in-game, I wasn't sure I'd even be able to reach the top of April's head, and anyway it was kind of weird for a guy to ask to touch a girl's soft ears… even if she was in the middle of doing exactly that to him.

"Sofffft…" Begrudgingly, I had to admit that this felt strangely nice. She wasn't just touching them, but scratching softly, and rubbing, and fondling… and there were new nerves in the top of my head that liked all of that. Even my clitty stirred, although for once it wasn't with the verve that usually saw it slamming up against the bars of its new cage. It was just… content. All of me was.

"Ohh, did you get a new Milestone from that?" April remarked, still feeling up my ears but now looking at a point above even them. "You were at six before, right?"

"I, uh…" My brief reverie vanished in the face of a new task: tallying up all of my Milestones and trying to figure out which ones I wanted April to know about. The Cum Guzzler I'd 'earned' from the goblins was right out, both because of the humiliating way I'd earned it and the fact that it was only going to be useful if I was planning on ever drinking semen again--which I wasn't.

Except… wait, had April gotten the same one?

A forceful pinch struck my clitty at that prospect, and I knew I immediately had to stop thinking about April being forced to swallow goblin cum or risk a series of brain-melting spikes of pain as my clitty struggled to assert itself.

"Yes, I got a new one," I said breathlessly. "I, uh, Brewing, uh, something! It--" I cut myself off.

April was watching my face. "It…?"

"It makes my potions better," I said lamely. I'd almost said, 'It made me grow boobs.'

"Cool!" For a moment, April was her usual, bubbly self, but then she went back to a frown. "Are you sure you're alright?"

"Mhm," I nodded enthusiastically, even as a reel of all the expressions April's beautiful face could possibly run through if she ever discovered the extent of my predicament tore through the front of my mind. Would she be disgusted? Confused? Despondent? E-excited??

Something flashed over the real--well, less virtual--April's face, and she glanced up and down the street. Her line of sight stopped at a dingy gap between the houses opposite the alchemists' store.

Then, with a spidery, long-legged gait straight out of a cartoon, she stole furtively across the street and beckoned me to follow her. Was this… her way of distracting me from my problems? It was kind of working. I followed along, and once we were both in the alleyway she performed a whirl of a manoeuvre that saw her switch places with me, so that her imposing frame was between me and the sunlit street we'd left behind.

"Is it the… um-cay…?" April said delicately… and incomprehensibly.

"What?"

She popped another suspicious glance over her shoulder. "The cum," she whispered. "Did it give you a Milestone too?"

I swallowed thickly. The memories of her cries--and mine--lurched up in my head, and in its tiny cage my clitty lurched alongside them. "Y-yes."

"The… the Cum…"

"G… Guzzler," I finished, when she trailed off.

"Oh god," April said weakly. "So they're… that's… that's really part of the game?"

I nodded dumbly.

April took a shaky breath, and the urge to comfort her filled my body… but what was I supposed to say? It was all going to be okay? To keep fighting on? A hundred platitudes rushed out to the tip of my tongue, but… platitudes was the right word. They didn't really mean anything.

So instead of saying anything, I mutely took hold of one of her hands--noting that even these were huge compared to mine--and put it on top of my head, where it lay on my fluffy pink wolf ears.

April blinked… and then smiled. There were tears at the corners of her eyes, but she blinked them aside and gave me a scritch. My clitty jerked at the contact, but for once I didn't wince, or cry out, or give any other sign of my discomfort. Maybe I was finally getting used to the stupid cage.

"Heh. Thanks."

We remained in the alleyway like that until my transformation wore off--an event that was met with immense disappointment on the part of April.

"Aww, I thought that was permanent!"

I pulled a face. "Sorry. I can always brew another."

"Heheh, you'd better!" April took a deep breath, and this time it was rich and full. "Phew! Should we keep going?"

"Yeah."

With that, we raced through the remaining stops April had planned before noon. We got April a brand new Thorny Buckler at the town 'woodsmith' (some sort of druid NPC who specialised in growing entire pieces of druidic equipment in a sacred grove on the banks of Samson River); we got our ruined clothes repaired at a rather less magical tailor's (an undertaking that cost more than repairing it ourselves through the inventory system would have, but didn't require us to hunt down things like Fine Elven Silk); and we looked at the collection of wands, holy symbols, and spellbooks for available for sale at the local Wizards' Guild. Unfortunately, without the 'member's discount'--which April said was probably something that only wizard players got--all of that was far beyond our current price range.

It was in high spirits that we sauntered over to our last stop on our shopping trip: the Tree of Caduceus, where we would once again exchange the Milestone points we'd earned for new spells.

There were a few spells lit up this time, and I read through them all, mostly to refresh myself on what I'd been skipping and why. Firesong and Starlance still looked far too costly in terms of what transformations they "offered" to be worth taking… and while the effect of Skybreath, giving us an entire third ally to help April frontline or protect me, was really tempting, it occurred to me that having a 'compulsion' to wear high heels at all times was probably going to mean I had to learn how to walk in high heels… in terrain like Silverwood forest and the Breachwood dungeon. Night Dance looked super cool, and I figured I could handle one measly heart brand, but unfortunately I still didn't have a Rusher Pearl to my name.

That left Infuse.

I took a deep breath. 'Anal self-lubrication' was still three words I did not want to see in that order as one of my abilities, like, ever. That hadn't changed. But… it wasn't exactly visible. And didn't do… weird things to the weight of my body, like the modifications the game had made to my breasts or my thighs or my hips. My… my in-game breasts or thighs or hips. And… if I really thought about it… if… if we did end up losing again, at some point… well… it would probably be better, for me, if my ass…

There was a painful twinge in my clitty's cage. I stopped thinking about it and selected Infuse.

Two more spells branched out from it.

I was pleased to see that these new spells didn't have any special items as part of their cost, although they were both worth two Milestone points rather than just one. On top of that, they wouldn't even transform me… although the 'Milestone tracks' they unlocked would probably give me more transformations if I progressed down them.

The decision between them both was pretty simple. I already had Starcharge to give April a bit of extra mobility in-combat, and while teleporting admittedly sounded a lot cooler than just running really fast, the fact that Star Passage's milestone track was literally called Bimbo far outweighed it. Although Angel Down's Ingenue track was still decidedly feminine, it sounded far more harmless. I selected Angel Down: a whole host of spells sprouted out from it, but instantly faded as if unusable.

The list of spells went on and on; there were easily a dozen, if not more, all locked behind specific Milestone requirements. Once again, I had to be impressed at the sheer depth of VALKYRIE's character customization system--did every single spell in the same tier as Angel Down and Star Passage unlock its own unique Milestone track, and their own sea of possible unlocks after that point? On its own, this spell system would have been impressive--but if I added in how in-depth every other system in the game was as well, it was downright unbelievable. How many man-hours had they sunk into programming this whole thing?

I lingered on the spell selection screen for a while longer. After spending one point on Infuse (and its anal self-lubrication… ugh), and two on Angel Down, I did have two left over--enough to pick up Star Passage, if I really wanted it. If I ignored the risk of further transformations, unlocking a second source of Milestones was actually fairly tempting. They generally had good effects, like the extra Charisma from Pretty Face and Good Girl or… the, um, mana restoration from Cum Guzzler… so if mine and April's focus, as a team, was going to be getting as strong as possible as quickly as possible…

I took a deep breath and took Star Passage as well. Then I exited out of the Tree of Caduceus's UI, my Milestone points depleted to zero for the time being.

A wall of tooltips assaulted me as I returned to reality--well, virtual reality. One for each of the three new spells I'd learned, and a fourth one that gave a basic explanation of what a Milestone track even was. Following the directions that this last window gave me, I went into my Milestone window and found a tab that read "Roadmaps."

Unfortunately, for all six of my active tracks, trying to open the Milestone trees bore no fruit.

Of course. My character's Intelligence was a dismal 5, if I remembered correctly, equal to her Strength score that ruled out fighting with anything bigger than a dagger. It was creative to have that be reflected in the level of the tooltips I could access, certainly, but creative didn't always translate into fun. Though… at least, I had to admit, it wasn't doing anything to my mind like the transformations that were messing with my internal monologue to make me call my clitoris a clit, or forcing me to refer to my breasts as breasts and not just the gender-neutral chest.

"You done?" April interrupted my silent grousing with her characteristic buoyancy; her tail wagged behind her for no particular reason, and she had a wide smile plastered across her face.

"Yeah," I said. "I learned three more spells."

"Whoo!" April cheered. "Three? Awesome! What do they all do?"

I numbered them off. "I can give you mana, I can let you teleport, and… I can make, like, a slowing, damaging, cone thing. It's called, uh, Angel Down."

"Cool!"

"How about you?"

April grinned. "Wellll, I was here last night, remember? I got myself Moonlight, and a little something called Thunderclap!"

"What's that?"

"It's a control spell! It does a bunch of damage, and it also stuns enemies near me," April explained, briefly dipping into MMO-nerd mode.

"Cool."

"Well!" April clapped her hands together. "I think we're all set for today, huh? Shall we go back to the dungeon?"

I gave the clearing around us a once-over, my gaze lingering on the Tree of Caduceus behind us. I was definitely finished with that until I managed to earn some more Milestones.

"Yeah, alright."

"Whoo! Let's go!"

And with that, April and I set back out for the Breachwood, ready to clear its first floor--and no further--once again.

Chapter 10: Before You Walk...

Chapter Text

It took me all of one fight in the Silverwood to discover the great downside that had come of accepting Infuse and its transformation from the Tree of Caduceus. April and I were up against a pack of snarling, slavering timber-wolves--and like it had for every encounter with them I'd had since obtaining my… Doglover perk, my clitty began to stiffen. Only, with my cursed cage now holding my clitty at bay, a tight pinch stopped it in its tracks.

But then, as if the repressed eagerness of my clitty had to find a new outlet to vent itself from, all that stiffness went back, back, back, growing like an iron rod inside me, until it brushed up against that infuriatingly sweet spot inside me.

My butt grew wet. It wasn't anything like pissing myself, a small solace in an otherwise mortifying situation. There was just… moistness, as far up my butt as I could feel. Warm, slick, hungry--it was like my ass was salivating for these three monsters in front of us.

I was so preoccupied with my new predicament that, when April said something and took up a formidable stance in front of me, I didn't quite catch what she said. I watched her clap her hands together--

A deafening roar picked me up off my feet and hurled me aside. As I flew through the air, my ears ringing and the world rattling senselessly around me, I let out a cry that I couldn't hear in the slightest--and slammed bodily into what might have been a tree, and might have been the ground. In the top left of my vision, my health bar (just about the only thing that wasn't jittering madly) shot to zero.

A shadow fell over me, and my heart fell through my stomach--but then the earthy, rich scent of April filled my nose. There was some muffled noise I could just barely make out, and a faint yellow spot floated my way, and suddenly my health bar was just over half-full.

"-you okay?" A big, reassuring hand was curled around mine. I took hold of it, and just like that, April hauled me back to my feet. The messy mosaic fragments of my vision fell back into place: my brain was no longer rattling around inside my skull.

I blinked intently. Was that all part of being stunned? That was awful.

"Y-yeah," I said uncertainly.

"I'm sorry!!" One of the timber-wolves bounded up from behind April--before I could shout a warning, she spun around and cleaved into it with her mace, reducing it to sawdust. "I didn't realise it had such a long range!!" The other wolves lunged for her; without breaking her stride, she dropped her mace, grabbed one, and used it as a makeshift bludgeon to obliterate the other.

The encounter over, April picked her mace back up and turned back to me. "Anyway, did you notice anything funky about how I casted that?"

"I, uh, not really, no," I admitted, after topping myself up with a Cure spell. April's health was still full. "Your Thunderclap was kind of… a shock."

"Oh, right." April giggled, somewhat guiltily. "Well, anyway, I didn't have to say anything to cast that!"

I paused. That meant… "So even if you get silenced…!"

"I can still use Thunderclap!" April nodded, her usual grin taking on a proud undertone. "I've been on the lookout for ways to beat that silencing fairy, even if we aren't going down to fight it for a while!"

"How does that work?" I said. My jaw felt a little slack.

April's tooltip flew up in front of me, and I sped through it. "It's just a special thing that spell does!" April said.

"And it also gives you bonus Strength?" I said.

"Well, yeah. But lots of spells give stats, right? I think that's part of how you're meant to scale your character in this game. It's a bit more interesting than just getting stats when you level up, right?" I didn't have the heart to tell her that this was yet another area that the game was screwing me in. Instead, I nodded noncommittally and followed her deeper into the forest.

We fought our way to the entrance of the Breachwood: and then, still hale and hearty, we powered our way through its first floor. This time around, even the few hours of experience we'd gathered yesterday proved to be a valuable asset--only a scant few breach vipers got the drop on us, and I even managed to dodge a surl creep's tendril as it reached for my exposed ankles, purely by reflex… although April had to repress a bit of laughter when I toppled over right afterwards. April got quite a bit of use out of her new Thunderclap, to deal with large groups of enemies and, a few times, to stop goblins from rushing right past her and attacking me. That landed her a brand new Milestone, her first step on the track she'd unlocked by taking Thunderclap.

We sniffed out a few more chests along the way, too; they were in different places than last time. In fact, the whole layout of the first floor had changed. Just the game's way of keeping things fresh for each dungeon run, most likely. Fortunately, it was still fairly linear, a couple of shallow dead ends filled with monsters or treasure aside, and we made it to the boss room feeling supremely confident. April and I were working together like a well-oiled machine, and if Orias the spider boss had lost to us yesterday, it had no chance against us now.

Except, as it transpired, Orias wasn't there to be fought.

I exited out of the tooltip and looked around. Orias's black cave was empty. The doorway leading down to the second level was still there at the opposite end of the cavern. I sneaked a glance at April--she had her eyes fixed on it, a pointed tooth worrying at her bottom lip.

"L-let's just turn around, huh?" I suggested. Not getting to collect the handsome rewards for defeating Orias again for another week stung, but we didn't have to risk venturing down to the second floor again just to earn some more resources.

"Hm?" April jolted to look at me. "R-right! Back to the surface!"

When we turned around to go back through the original entrance to the boss room, we discovered that the doorway had been filled with the same starry, inky black stuff that made up the doorway into the dungeon proper. Stepping through it brought us directly back to the open air of the Silverwood, right by the enormous roots of the enormous tree that the Breachwood dungeon lay under.

"Whooo! Good stuff!"

This time around, it was far from sunset when we returned to the surface, and so we took our time on our way back to Lumberg. April played around a bit more with my Star Passage spell, which we hadn't used much in the dungeon.

"Star Passage!" I pointed my wand at her, and a shimmering golden aura enveloped her. Unlike the one from Starcharge, this aura was lined with fractal shapes, almost like an ethereal honeycomb.

"Let's see…" April cast her eyes around, looking for a place to transport herself to. "Catwalk!"

She vanished in a puff of golden motes of light, and suddenly reappeared at about head height, halfway between her starting location and a tree, the golden aura from my spell gone.

"Drat!!" She fell to the forest floor with an ungraceful whumph, but didn't take any damage.

I pointed up into the branches of the tree she'd ended up nearest. "Were you trying to get up there?"

"Yeah," April said, dusting herself off. "That spell is pretty tough to get the hang of! I'm glad you took it, though--it's really fun!"

A grin split my face, easy and honest as the sun shining above. Watching April enjoying herself didn't just make my heart flutter--it made it dance. Like clockwork, my clitty stirred in its unremovable prison… and not even the way that this caused my ass to start getting wet again, with not a single monstrous wolf in sight, could make my good mood flag.

April was happy, and so was I.

"Star Passage!"

Eventually, however, as all things do, our time in the forest had to end. The sky was beginning to darken, and neither of us had the slightest interest in getting swarmed by monsters again after the events of the last two days--even if April, at least, was theoretically safe outside of a dungeon.

As we stepped off the bridge into Lumberg, just barely having beaten the setting sun home, April halted once again. "I'm just gonna stop by the church again, alright?"

I paused. Part of me wanted to ask her what for. But the cage around my clitty, and the memories of last night that dusk had dredged up in my mind, told me not to look a gift horse in the mouth. April was peeling off on her own accord here, which meant that I wouldn't have to awkwardly explain why I wanted to go into the cellar with the receptionist lady once we entered the Lustrous Heart.

"O-okay! Have fun!" I waved her off and went on without her for the second night in a row.

The receptionist, of course, was waiting for me when I trudged through the inn doors.

"Good evening~!" She made a show of looking around. "Where's your, ah, friend?"

"At the church," I said guardedly, then wondered if I should have even let that slip.

"Is that what they're calling it these days?" she said mildly, as she turned and pulled open the cellar door for me. "You remember the way, don't you?"

I gritted my teeth and nodded. 'The way' was a single staircase and a room with no other exits. Even my preset character, with her abysmal Intellect and Wisdom, would have found it pretty hard to get lost on the way down there.

"Good! I'll just tell the Madam you're ready for tonight's lesson, then!"

As I descended into the dim pink light of the cellar and took a seat on the bed waiting for me, I wondered just how much the receptionist knew about my situation. Surely she wouldn't be so cavalier if she knew the barbaric methods her boss was employing to keep me in line, would she? Did she even know that this wasn't something I wanted?

The clacking of heels on wood roused me from my thoughts, and I listened intently. I wasn't usually one to pay attention to footfalls, but there was a lightness to these ones that I wouldn't have expected from the imposing Madam.

"Sitting down?" chirped the silhouette that materialised in the doorway. I barely had time to register that this was the waifish figure of the receptionist, rather than the Madam, before she followed it up with a gleeful, "Punish!"

The sudden constriction of my cursed cage was just as agonising as it had been last night. I doubled over on the bed, my hands leaping down to my groin out of reflex more than any genuine belief they could do anything to ease the torture. Worst of all, as if activated by the waves of agony washing over me, my self-lubricating asshole began to drool into my panties, just like it had with the wolves.

A petulant sigh broke through the scream that I hadn't even realised I'd started. "Stand up!"

I would have liked to say that it took supreme force of will to fight my way through the pain and struggle to my feet, but… the truth was, as soon as she offered a way to make it stop, my body bolted upright of its own accord. Like that, I was standing.

"Release."

My body fell limp, though not so limp as to drop back into sitting. I looked up to find a grin on the receptionist's face, clear as the sky despite the pink half-light of the cellar. It only widened as I looked at her, still panting.

"Aww, did you think that I was the nice one, sissy? How cute!" The receptionist tittered to herself. "Hehe, nope~! Sorry to disappoint you."

She paused for uncomfortably long, studying me with intent that felt distinctly predatory paired with the half-smile still lingering on her lips. If the Madam had all the stoic poise of a lioness, the receptionist had the manic cruelty of a hyena. Dumbly, I wondered which hunter a gazelle on the plains of Africa would prefer to be stalked by.

"Did the Madam tell you my name?"

I opened my mouth to tell her 'no', but caught myself. She… she had said a name last night, hadn't she? But what was it?

"Y-yes… Mistress," I said, to buy myself time. Miss… Bridget? Miss Marjorie?

"Ooooh, calling me mistress already!" The receptionist clapped her hands together. "She was right--you are a quick study! And I thought you'd need at least a week with her before you learned to behave yourself." She skipped forward, uncomfortably close, and I realised that she was just the slightest hair taller than me. "I'll just have to be extra strict tonight."

Her leer was chilling.

"Okay~! Tonight's lesson needs a lot of space, so put this on and come with me!" She pulled a turquoise mass of ruffles out of nowhere and tossed it at me, then--before I had so much as a chance to look at what I was now holding--pranced back up the stairs. "Hurry up! I know you adventurers can get changed faster than that!"

Without even skimming the tooltip for the turquoise… thing in my hand, long and presumably demeaning as it was, I just tapped the 'equip' button and winced as it replaced my lovely, form-concealing robe. There was an immediate draught over my newly bared legs, and the full lengths of my arms, and what felt like most of my back. Layered turquoise ruffles sprouted out from around my waist, and cascaded down to what could only have been halfway down my ass. I stretched awkwardly around to check on it, but an impatient tapping at the top of the stairs stopped me in my tracks.

I shot up the stairs after her, perhaps faster than I'd ever ascended any staircase in my life.

"Come on." The receptionist was already halfway through the door as she turned to make sure I was keeping up. The door that led out of the building.

I could practically feel my eyes bulge. "O-outside? Mistress?"

"Don't make me convince you," she said, with a serial killer smile that told me she really wanted to have to convince me. I meekly hurried after her, the ruffles of my new dress bouncing in time with my girlish gait.

While the street outside was far from crowded, it was also far from deserted, and I fielded more than a couple of curious glances from passersby as we hustled our way down the street. I didn't know whether to be embarrassed or relieved that my appearance hadn't caused any more of a stir--I knew I looked like a girl in this body, but was there really nothing strange about seeing me in this tiny blue tutu?

Thankfully, the receptionist's stride was longer than expected, and soon we were in the semi-safety of an alleyway. It was a couple of blocks past the Lustrous Heart, which drastically lowered the risk of April or any other tenants of the Lustrous Heart catching us, but I still couldn't stop myself from stealing a glance at the entrance to the alley every few seconds.

"Hey." The receptionist clicked her tongue imperiously, and I snapped to attention immediately. "Stand there, sissy."

She indicated a spot right in the entranceway to the alleyway, then moved to where I'd been standing, so that to face her I'd have to have my back to the street beyond. I paled. For a moment, I thought about protesting, but the Madam's rules, seared into my head by the crushing of my clitty, put a stop to that. No backtalk.

Silently, I obeyed her.

"Good girl."

I tried to ignore the way that her remark, and the surprisingly warm smile she'd given me as she said it, made my ass leak.

"Here." Once again, she pulled something out of nowhere and tossed it at me.

It was shiny and red. Flimsy little straps dangled off it. I wasn't holding something--I was holding a pair of somethings. High heels. High heels draped in ruby red sequins, like they'd just been lifted directly from the Wizard of Oz.

"Tonight, you'll be learning to walk in those," explained the receptionist. She stepped to the side, revealing the cobblestone wall at the end of our alley. It may as well have been across the yawning black void of a chasm. "Once you can walk there without stumbling, you'll be free to go."

A defeated moan welled up inside me, and only the quaking fear of another punishment kept it from escaping out into the night air. I'd never even touched a pair of high heels before today, but girls I'd known in high school--girls like April--had often bemoaned having to wear them for dances and dates. They hurt your feet, they were hard to balance on… if VALKYRIE's devs had been as punctilious in simulating this experience as they had been in every other experience so far, I was doomed.

"Punish." A searing wave of pain interrupted me, but vanished as quickly as it had come. "Release. I'm not hearing a 'yes, mistress,' sissy~!"

"Y-yes, Mistress!"

The receptionist was lounging back against the roughshod alley wall behind her, a cruel smile playing about her lips. She, I noticed, was also in a pair of heels, though hers were a practical black set that seemed a good deal lower than the pair I held.

"Go on, then."

"Y-yes, Mistress!"

I pressed 'equip' on the tooltip in front of me, and almost immediately fell over as what felt like spikes shot up underneath the heels of my feet and my whole centre of gravity pitched forward.

"Haha~!" Laughter was the only helping hand the receptionist offered as I, in a bedraggled heap on the cobblestone floor of the alleyway, struggled to teach myself the real first step of learning how to walk in heels. Not, as I had naively assumed, learning how to take my first step, but rather learning how to stand up at all.

It was an undertaking. I could get on one knee and plant one heel into the ground just fine, but when I then tried to shift the weight from my knee on to the planted heel, that heel would roll dangerously to the side, unable to support the extra weight, and send me toppling to one side or the other.

Eventually, after a period of long and careful analysis, I found a solution: I crawled over to the alley wall opposite the receptionist and used it to haul myself back onto my feet, stolidly refusing to acknowledge her open snickering at my expense.

That brought me to the next challenge: once again, an intermediate step in between putting the shoes on and actually taking my first step in heels, that I hadn't considered beforehand. While I could sort of prop myself up against the alley wall, and stand that way, there was no chance that the receptionist would allow me to try to make it the whole way down the alley like that. That meant I had to learn how to balance on my heels without the wall.

My first few attempts were uninspiring. The flagstones under my feet were just too rough--it was as if the needle-point tips of my heels were highlighting each ridge and crack they found. I would push off the wall, teeter for a bit, and then either catch myself by shoving my arms back out and go back to half-leaning on it, or lose my balance completely and go crashing down to the ground again. Each fall was met with a new piece of sardonic encouragement.

"I'm sure you'll get it next time."

"Almost~!"

"That looked like it hurt."

And then, in a flash of what felt like divine luck, my heels found a solid footing. My breath caught: I held my hands up against my budding breasts. I looked down at my feet, bound up tight in their ruby red prisons, then up at the receptionist, scarcely daring to exhale. I was standing!

"Punish."

"AHHH!!" I collapsed, once again brought low by the vice-grip of my clitty's cage.

"Release." Through my eyes brimming with tears, I saw a devious smile play about the receptionist's lips. She'd done that just to make me fall over again.

Something inside me broke. Hot, fat, rivulets of my tears poured down my cheeks, filling the night air with the scent of salt.

"Wh-why are you so mean?" I whimpered, between hiccups and sobs. Futilely, I wiped my face with my hands, but the tears kept coming. "I-I never did anything to you!!"

The receptionist cocked her head. "And?"

I stared up at her, speechless. Had the Madam even told her about her suspicion that I-I was crossdressing to t-try something on April?? Or had she just told her that I was a sissy who she could bully to her cruel heart's content??

"We have a saying in this land, adventurer," the receptionist said, finally. "The darker the night, the brighter the stars." As if to emphasise the point, she tilted her head back, and gazed up into the night sky. Unmarred by the smog of the real world, stars upon stars sprawled across it, a diamond-littered shawl cast upon an ancient black sky. "They have sayings like it elsewhere. In Seng Wu, they say that the most beautiful diamonds are born under the crushing weight of the world. And in Rhodeia, the saying is that platinum scales come only of calamity."

Huh? Had I just triggered a lore dump buried in her code somewhere?

"Wh-what are you talking about?"

"It is a universal truth that beauty comes of pain, Anne." The receptionist looked back down, and affixed me with eyes that felt like they could pierce my flesh with their intensity. Even in the dark of night, for a moment I could make out every last angle, every last eyelash that made up her gorgeous face. "It follows that the ultimate beauty comes of the ultimate pain, does it not?"

I swallowed thickly. "B-but I don't want ultimate beauty!!"

The receptionist's lips flowed into a thin smile. "And therein lies the pain."

And then, like that, she stumbled, catching her head in her arms and her body against the alley wall. I could hear her panting from where I was on my knees. Concern for her welled up in my breast, only to be shouted down by the part of my brain that pointed out I was only on my knees, out here in the cold night, because of her. Why should I care if she was hurt?

She slumped further down the wall. I bit my lip and peeked down the street. My 'learning' must have been going even more slowly than I'd thought, because there wasn't a soul in sight anymore--NPC or player. Nobody around to see her struggling on the floor, and decide to help her on their own. That meant… that meant it was up to me, right? Whether she got help… or didn't.

She was just an NPC. And a really mean one.

But what if the Madam caught me returning to the Lustrous Heart without her?

She would punish me. Maybe even with the… execution mode.

Wouldn't she blame me for the state of the receptionist and do it anyway? It wasn't like she'd let me protest my innocence before.

I bit my lip. Would the receptionist show any gratitude and vouch for me even if I did find a way to help her? The NPCs in this game seemed really dynamic, and that was probably the most realistic outcome, right? But if her cruelty was just hard-coded, then getting her back to the Lustrous Heart was just going to let her torment me again and again.

Why had she even collapsed, anyway? And what was that whole rant about stars and jewels? We still couldn't log out--was this just another bug, a sign that the game as a whole was collapsing? Maybe it was a good thing, and the devs were going to get us out soon!

I massaged my forehead with my hands. If only April were here. She knew so much more about the game, the world, just about everything… she would have already come up with a plan of action for this, I knew. I stared at the receptionist: she lay in a heap on the floor. It would have looked almost peaceful, except for a million tiny signs that it wasn't. Her every breath was laboured. Sweat beaded her skin. Even her eyes were scrunched shut, as if repressing waves of pain.

I could run back to the inn and see if April was there. Explain the situation to her, then lead her back here and let her handle it. She was easily strong enough to lift the slender receptionist and take her to the Lustrous Heart, or the church, or whatever else healing place they had. And… she would, too. After all of her interactions with the NPCs of this world that I'd seen, giving them the same courtesies as real people and even trying to communicate with them in a way they'd understand, I was certain of it. If I held my tongue about what the receptionist, and the Madam, had done to me so far, she'd be happy to help a random NPC, even if there wasn't any reward involved. She was just… nice like that.

I blinked. I could heal. I had no idea what the problem actually was, but… if she didn't have any health left, then using Cure would fix her, right?

A touch shakily, I equipped my girly star wand. Maybe, if… if I showed her kindness here… she'd show me some back?

"Cure."

She remained unmoving on the ground.

I tried casting it another two times, but they had no effect either, and I thought back to my current library of spells. "Antidote?" Nothing. "Starcharge…?" Her body glowed with a golden aura, but didn't move. "Star Passage?" Another golden aura, this one lined with fractal shapes. Nothing besides.

Angel Down and Glitterdust were both meant for enemies, so those wouldn't work… which left Infuse.

"Infuse!"

With all the poise of Frankenstein's monster shuffling to life under a lightning bolt, the receptionist gave a full-body jerk and let out a shriek.

"What--what happened?" She sat bolt upright, and saw me, on my knees and with my wand extended towards her. "What did you do?" she snarled.

"I-I helped!!" I squealed, scuttling back as if physically struck. "Y-you collapsed and I healed you!!"

"You little--" A hacking cough cut her off, and she suddenly fell still. "Hahh!" She inhaled deeply, and I could hear shakiness in her breath. Unsteadily, though not nearly so unsteadily as me, she put herself back on her feet. "Up."

I flinched, only to realise that she'd just given me an order. "Y-yes, Mistress!!" I scuttled back up to my feet after her, supporting myself with an arm against the wall beside me.

"I'm going to go back to the inn." She massaged her throat. "You… finish the lesson yourself. All the way to that wall. In those heels."

I nodded. At least she wasn't using the cage's punishment on me. That was good… right?

"You only come back when you've done it," she continued. "That's an order."

"Y-yes. Mistress," I said, belatedly.

And like that, she stumbled off in the direction of the Lustrous Heart, still looking considerably worse for the wear. Part of me wanted to follow her, to see what she was going to tell the Madam about this bizarre incident, but… I had an order to follow.

Now that I'd found my footing the first time, finding it again didn't take long at all. With only a little nervousness, I released the wall... and found myself stable. I stared across the inky pool of darkness that lay between me and the back of the alleyway. The lighting hadn't changed: if anything, the night had only grown deeper since I'd come here. But somehow, that black chasm looked a whole lot smaller now than it had before.

Chapter 11: Percy

Chapter Text

Over the next few days, April and I settled into something of a routine in the city of Lumberg. We hopped around random shops in the morning, converting our hard-earned adventuring gold into power for our characters; we fought our way through the Silverwood and the first floor of the Breachwood, and back again, up until dusk; and then, when night fell, April would vanish off to the church while I reported to the Madam for my nightly 'lessons.'

As it transpired, the receptionist--Mistress Wilhelmina--hadn't breathed a word about her strange collapse during my high heel lesson, and so the Madam remained her usual austere self. She assigned herself as my teacher for the next few sessions, and covered things like how to apply makeup (using a mildly enchanted item called a 'Beauty Box'), a full course on 'ladylike' conduct (which included a humiliating session on lap-dancing), and taking care of my--well, Anne's--long tresses of hair. When the Madam discovered that I wasn't capable of giving back the teal dress and ruby red heels I'd used for my high heels lesson, she simply smirked and told me to pay her back for them in gold, an order that I hastily obeyed.

Unfortunately, however, although I was getting better and better at avoiding the Madam's punishments, I was also beginning to discover the cage's more mundane downside: I couldn't jack off. None of my lessons since the spanking of the first lesson had gotten me even close to orgasm, and with our easy victories in the Silverwood and the Breachwood, I didn't even have monster sex as an outlet. Back in the real world, I hadn't gone more than three days without masturbating since I was thirteen--going double that, all while I had April and the wolves revving up my proverbial motors during the day, and humiliating experiences with the Madam at night, was leading to a lot of pent-up arousal. More than once, I caught myself in a feverish haze, seriously considering sneaking back into the Silverwood after nightfall and just… offering myself up to the wolves there again. I always managed to talk myself out of it, but…

But even with that uncomfortable reminder of just how long it was taking for us to get freed from VALKYRIE, it was almost a surprise when we stepped into the last room of the first floor of the Breachwood and found Orias the giant earth spider waiting for us once again--its week-long respawn period had elapsed. This time, it was no match for us, with our new spells and Milestones. April ran circles around it, in between pelting it with crushing attacks, while I stood back (out of reach of all but its longest-ranged moves) and threw her buff after buff. When at last we defeated it again, for a moment I thought I saw April give a longing glance at the stairs down into the second level… but before I could say anything, she turned back to me and we returned back to the entrance of the dungeon. I'd probably been imagining things, anyway.

That night, as always, we approached the bridge back into Lumberg. But for the first time ever, one of the city guards posted at its entrance held up a gauntlet-clad hand to halt us. He was a greying redhead, about halfway between April and I in height, but stout enough to rival April in breadth. Like every other guard I'd seen around the city, his armour was a burnished gold--and, for the first time since entering the game, I realised that there was a relief of a stylized sun embossed on his chestplate. The flag of Lumberg, maybe?

"Ho there! I have been asked to give these to any adventurers entering or leaving the town." He pulled two crinkled sheets of parchment out of thin air--I was beginning to be pretty certain that the NPCs had inventories just like us players--and pushed them towards us.

"Ohh! Thanks!" April took her sheet with a friendly smile. I dipped my head mutely and took mine, too. A tooltip appeared in front of my face.

I frowned and looked at the actual physical pamphlet in my hand… and found it covered in a mess of indecipherable inky scribbles. Hence the need for a translation, I supposed, although why it wasn't in English to begin with escaped me for the time being, if a player was the one who'd written it.

"Huh!" April said. "You know, I almost didn't realise it's been a week!"

I definitely had, although I didn't say anything to that effect. Instead, I gave her a shrug. "Do you think they've found a way out?"

"Hmmm… probably not," she said, an answer that was surprisingly pessimistic for her. "They probably would have said something about that if they did."

"Good point," I said.

"Well, anyway, I'm off to the church--yes, again," she said playfully, pre-empting that question on my part. "You have fun in the inn!"

If she only knew, I thought as I watched her saunter off down the cobblestone path, her tail wagging gently and entirely out of time with the sedate movement of her hips. It was hypnotising--was that the effect my widened hips had on guys that saw me?

When at last she was out of sight, I managed to wrench my head away from the direction she'd left in and go in my direction--to the Lustrous Heart.

Even on the short walk there, I could tell that the streets of Lumberg were far more crowded than usual that night. Clusters of players (immediately recognizable from their names, healthbars, and Milestone counts floating above their heads) had formed around copies of the pamphlet inviting us all to the Player's Conference the next day, and the briefest snatches of their conversations caught my ear as I passed them.

"--dev accounts with the purple names--"

"--there's no way it could even work, though--"

"--wonder if they know--"

"I heard they went to the edge--"

Although my curiosity was seriously piqued by all of these snippets, I couldn't stop and eavesdrop--the sun had all but set, and although I hadn't been late to my 'lessons' with her yet, I just knew that the Madam would not take well to any tardiness.

I hurried along. Mistress Wilhelmina, as always, was at the reception desk to 'welcome' me back when I returned--but this time, there was a new face with her. A woman in a nun's habit… or, at the very least, a slutty Halloween costume approximation of one.

"Um, hi," I said, already feeling a blush creeping up on my face.

This new woman was, in a word, divine. She was just the slightest bit taller than me, and what seemed like half of her was her legs alone. Long and sensually sculpted, they were hugged from her black pumps up by a pair of pink-and-white striped socks, which went perhaps halfway up her milky white thighs, leaving a delectable stretch of them open to the air. Her habit, short and profoundly un-conservative as it was, did nothing to cover her legs from above; its hem just barely kissed them at the very top, and I was instantly certain that if she twisted or bent even slightly forward, anyone behind her would get a very good look at all of her private parts.

The sumptuous white silk of the front of her habit was in similarly dire straits. Although it covered every bit of her skin, leaving none of her ample cleavage strictly visible, it was clearly straining to contain her magnificent puppies, and their every last lewd contour--down to the rigid twin pinpricks of her nipples--was on full display for anybody walking past her. My clitty, starved so sorely of any stimulation, immediately twinged in its cage, and pretty soon my ass was moist with arousal too.

The nun smiled. Her face was the gorgeous keystone atop her hourglass figure. Her fair skin was dappled with the faintest hints of freckles, barely visible from where I was standing, and they--alongside the pillowy softness of her rosy cheeks, and the subtle, eternal pout of her pink lips, and the doe-like innocence of her beautiful amber eyes--gave her an aura of virginal purity I had never seen before. Her hair, a luscious strawberry pink, tumbled out from under her habit's hood on both sides of this beautiful visage, framing it as one would a masterpiece.

"Hello, Annie," said the nun. Even her voice, lilting and serene and quiet, held my attention like nothing else. "I've heard so much about you~~"

A stone dropped through the butterflies gathering in my stomach. From Wilhelmina, the receptionist? Or, even worse, the Madam?!

"Oh, don't be frightened, sweetie. It's all been good things~!" She put a finely manicured hand to her mouth and tittered gently, washing away any hint of fear I was feeling. Then, eyes on mine, she took one of my hands in both of hers.

"I'm Percy," she said. "I'm here to take you for your lesson tonight~!"

I stared at Wilhelmina for confirmation. A tight expression had come over her face, but she nodded.

"U-um, okay," I said.

And just like that, Percy led me out the front door, my hand clutching hers.

As we strolled through the streets of Lumberg, still holding hands, I couldn't keep myself from glancing at every inch of her body in turn. Her proportions were even more pronounced from the side on; it was unbelievable just how far her breasts jutted out in front of her, especially now that I had a petite pair of my own. Her ass was a similar story, though it at least flowed cleanly from her incredible thighs. My mind leapt to my caged clitty. Even if it was freed, would I even be able to get at her asshole inside there?

"You going to the big Conference tomorrow?" Percy said, eyeing all the adventurers on the street around us--who, it had to be said, were eyeing her right back.

"Hm? Oh, um, yeah, I think so." I trailed off for a moment. "Wait, you're a real person?!"

I glanced up at the top of her head, and, sure enough, there were all the trappings of a player character floating above it. Her healthbar, the name 'Persephone,' and… my eyes went wide. "You have a HUNDRED and THIRTY Milestones??"

Everybody in the street stopped and stared. Percy turned, and for a moment I thought she was going to admonish me for shouting… but she had one eyebrow raised, and her perfect lips curled into a sensual little smirk.

"Mmm. I've been playing since the beta came out, you know." She continued onwards, at the same meandering pace as before. "Made a character for every class… every archetype… although, you know, I've always come back to this one."

"And… what's that?" I asked, although I was already beginning to suspect I knew the answer.

"Starlight Priest," Percy said with a light laugh. "Same as you."

I swallowed thickly. "I, umm, I'm actually a Priestess."

She turned to me again, her head slightly cocked. "Oh, already?" She glanced up--looking at my own Milestone count, maybe?--and shrugged, apparently satisfied. "Well, that's good."

There was something in the way she'd said 'good' that made it feel more like 'serviceable,' or 'useful.' I was tempted to ignore it, but… well, she was working with the Madam and the receptionist. I could hardly let her beauty distract me from that.

"Um, why is that…?"

"Hm?" Percy cocked her head again. "Oh, why is that good? Hmmm…" She drummed her fingers thoughtfully against her chin, and my pent-up brain conjured up an image of them dancing the same way against my clitty.

"Priestess is sort of like… a class upgrade for Priest," she said finally. "Not a toooootal upgrade, because there's some downsides, but it makes you better at doing the things you're meant to be better at, and you're only worse at stuff you're not supposed to do anyway."

"How?" I asked apprehensively. Was this what was giving me double-edged traits, with both an upside and a downside, like Scared Silly and Pretty Face?

"Stat stuff, mostly. Casting stats go up, fighting stats go down."

"Oh." So that was why everything except for my Charisma was incredibly low. I'd been assigned Priestess at character creation, unlike--it seemed--every other player in the game, who started as a Priest. "So are you a Priestess too?"

"Hm?" She giggled. "Well, I was for a while, yep~! But I've gotten a few more class upgrades since then."

"Wait, where are we going?" For a moment, the terrifying prospect that I'd strolled right past the church building, in plain view of April, flashed across my mind--but then I sighed with relief as I realised I couldn't recognise anything. April and I had already been pretty much everywhere past the church on our daily equipment-upgrading trips. Then it occurred to me that not knowing where I was raised a new problem. "What, where are we?!"

Unfazed by my sudden panic, Percy just gave another giggle. Hers were rather unlike April's, demure and ladylike where April's were proud and open, but they did have a similar pacifying effect on me. I settled down, at least enough that I wasn't blurting interrogatory questions every two seconds, and Percy patted me on the head. "Don't worry… it's not anywhere you wouldn't want to be. We're just going shopping… for your lesson~!"

A shopping trip? Some more of the tension in my body eased. While I was sure that whatever I had to buy was going to be humiliating in some way, anything would beat giving a lap-dance to the Madam. And, as I looked up and down the street, momentarily freed from Percy's captivating appearance, there were hardly any people in this part of the town. Just a couple of solitary players, whose furtive glances over their shoulders were reserved solidly for the gorgeous Percy.

"My… lesson…?" I asked her nervously.

"Aw, sorry, Annie~~" she said gently. "That's staying a secret for now."

I grimaced. It was worth a shot. We continued on in silence--and then, a scant few minutes later, Percy came to a stop.

"And here we are," she said.

The store we had stopped at was… uninspiring, to say the least. Even mostly obscured in the dark of night, the storefront was plainly a crooked, chipped pile of planks held together less by craftsmanship and nails than it was by sheer, sullen spite. Boards covered both the windows, though that was a generous turn of phrase; wide gaps between them left the inky panes behind them exposed to the elements, and it was only the total absence of light coming from within the building that prevented anyone from seeing into its interior. Its doorway was bent and warped in several places, holding the door within like it was the tongue of a toothless maw. A rickety bannister on one side of this door served to lead customers through it, though it was only so welcoming as the rail-thin arm of a swamp witch, one round of cackling away from throwing you into a cauldron or turning you into a frog.

I looked at Percy incredulously. Her perfectly put-together self, even if the cut of her habit and the curves of her body beneath it did make her more risque than the average nun, did not belong in a building like this.

She just gave me a smile and flounced up to the doorway, then rapped smartly on its peeling surface. Three knocks in quick succession, then a pause, then three more knocks, then a pause, and then three more knocks. Nine in total.

Like something out of a horror movie, the door swung open with an arthritic creak, revealing the same inky nothing that dwelled behind the windows.

"Come on," Percy said lightly. "It's not that scary."

I repressed the urge to tell her that yes, it absolutely was, and followed her into the darkness.

There was the tinkling sound of a windchime; and then, suddenly, I was enveloped in a buttery well of light and warmth. I spun around. The room I was now in was long and thin, its walls and ceiling honey-coloured thanks to a spherical crystal glowing brilliantly overhead. On either side of me, stretching all the way down to the far end of the room, were cosy wooden shelves, stacked from floor to ceiling with a rainbow of bizarre merchandise. Percy was already at the far end of the room, and she wasn't alone: a strange, lizard-like creature with a hunched back lurked next to her, on top of some kind of desk.

She beckoned me over and, a touch unsteadily, I hurried down the room. Not a trace of this building's exterior was to be found in here. There were no missing boards, no peeling paint, no sign at all that this room was anything less than lovingly maintained by its owner. It was like I'd stepped into a different building entirely by going through that doorway.

"Wh-what is all this?" I stuttered.

The lizard creature surprised me by responding, in a raspy voice several octaves deeper than a chain smoker. "Like it? I call this joint the Toybox. Heheheh."

"And--and outside?"

"A spot of illusion magic," rasped the lizard creature. Dimly, I realized that what I'd taken to be mottling on his scales was in fact a velvety brown coat of some description.

"Annie, this is Grunger. Grunger, Annie is my protege for tonight." Percy introduced us both to each other.

"Yer protege, eh?" Grunger chuckled, and with his deep voice I couldn't tell if it was a dark chuckle or just normal.

"We're gonna get some toys for tonight," Percy said, and although she was clearly including me in the 'we,' it was the first I'd heard anything about toys. Silently, I looked over at the shelves nearest to me, and a hot flush immediately filled my face.

Dildos. I was standing in the depths of a 'toy' store, next to shelf after shelf crammed with dildos. They came in every size, every colour under the sun--and no shortage of different shapes, either. Ones that were long and thin, short and thick, ridged in weird places, curved, tapering at the end, bulbous, barbed… there was even a group that came in the exact shape, size, and colour as some of the goblins who had used April and I just last week. I turned away, and found that the rest of the shelves in this place were little better.

There were brightly coloured anal beads, in a range of sizes. Ball gags, hung up next to a number of straps that I could only assume were other types of gag. Vibrant loops of rope. Colourful sets of handcuffs. Tiny outfits sitting on little coathangers, that would have looked like they were the right size for babies if only they weren't clearly pornstar levels of ridiculous and revealing. And, worst of all, a whole host of things just as colourful that not even I, with my extensive porn habits back in the real world, could recognise.

What was any of this doing in a world designed for a fantasy MMORPG?!

"Toys, huh?" Grunger croaked, and after a moment I realised that was his way of laughing. "Woulda thought you'd have the whole catalogue by now."

Percy giggled. "Well, you know. A girl can never have too many toys~!"

With that, she darted nimbly past me, ignoring me completely, and started carefully scanning through the shelves around us. It was like a switch had been flipped in her brain. Like a hummingbird she flitted between each of Grunger's offerings, picking pieces up and inspecting them only to cast them aside moments later, and giving only the most inscrutable commentary to explain her thought process.

"Too bright. Barbs? Nooo… Oooh. No, hard. Too soft. Too springy. Ahhh." She settled on a dildo--a garish huge pink thing that, at least to my undiscerning eye, at least looked human--before immediately repeating the process with the gags. After just a few minutes, she returned to us both, her arms filled with a threatening assortment of toys. Grunger rubbed his eyes, his little lizard eyes gleaming with open greed, and hopped off his desk, onto a human-sized stool right behind it. Percy obligingly dumped her collection onto where he'd stood.

"Could you please buy these, Annie?"

I gave a start. "What? Me?"

"They're for you," Percy explained. "Please?"

Grunger looked in my direction, and the usual merchant's popup appeared.

I blanched. It was a sum I could technically afford… but it would cost me almost all of my earnings from my dungeon run with April earlier today.

"D-don't you have gold?" I pleaded with Percy. She'd been playing since the beta! She had to!

Percy looked askance, chagrined all of a sudden. Grunger croaked out another laugh. "Hah, this little klutz is atrocious with money. You'd never believe how many times I--"

"Th-that's enough, Grunger!" Percy said hastily. She turned to me. "Um, sorry, Annie, but he's right… My, um, party leader does all the finances for me…"

"Otherwise she'd be in shops like this every night, making folk like me rich!" Grunger cackled.

I bit my lip and closed my eyes. April was definitely going to notice if I was just randomly short more than a thousand gold when we went shopping tomorrow. But if I disobeyed this order, which I could only assume came directly from the Madam herself…

"C… could you help me make this money back…?" I asked, a touch hopelessly.

"Hm?" Percy said. "Well, we're soooooort of only here for this silly Conference thing tomorrow…"

"B-but you're really high level, right?" I pointed out. "Y-you could clear the dungeon I got this from really quickly!"

"What, Breachwood?" Percy tilted her head thoughtfully. "Well, Layley and I could probably knock that out in an hour, I guess."

"Th-then please?" I clasped my hands together, and seriously thought about sinking to my knees.

"Hmmmm." Percy scrunched up her lips, and it was as gorgeous as every other expression that fluttered across her face. "Oh, you can just ask her yourself~!"

"Huh?"

Percy giggled. "That's where we're going after this~!"

"To meet… Layley?"

"Mhm!" Percy popped a mock salute, and an impressive jiggle shot down her bosom. "She's our party leader!"

Another crazy high-level character, then, I surmised. Could she have even more Milestones than Percy, if she was their leader?

I looked back to Grunger, whose eyes now had a distinctly impatient glint to them. Then… that was the plan. Get these… toys now, and complete tonight's lesson, then go with Percy to see if 'Layley' was happy to help me speed-clear the Breachwood again before I went shopping with April again. At least this way, the only thing I was risking was confusing April a little bit... and not the experience of having my clitty brutally pinched off by a cursed cage.

"Alright."

I clicked 'Pay,' and bought the toys.

Chapter 12: Room 33

Chapter Text

My new 'toys' safely stashed in my inventory, Percy led me back through the streets of Lumberg, chattering aimlessly about different spells in the game of VALKYRIE--one of what seemed to be exactly two areas where she commanded legendary knowledge. The other being... the sex toys in this game.

It couldn't be a coincidence, right? The Madam had made me call myself a girl, in between spanks, up until I earned a Milestone off it. And now, a week later, she'd had Percy help me buy exactly three sex toys… giving me a new Milestone.

Apprehension was worrying a pit in the bottom of my stomach. After everything the Madam had put me through, there was no doubt that she intended to use all of these items on me at some point--especially the bright pink dildo known as the Bitchbreaker. While it… wasn't exactly the largest thing I-I'd had forced up my virtual ass in this game, that didn't mean I wanted it to go up there either!

I fought to ignore the treacherous way my asshole moistened at that thought.

"Here we are!"

We had returned to the Lustrous Heart. That made sense--it was supposed to be the best inn in town, according to that one guy who had helped April rescue me. Percy and her adventuring party, or whatever that kind of thing was called in this game, were probably staying here. Percy, at this point no longer holding my hand, waved cheerily at Wilhelmina the receptionist, then led me up the stairs and straight past the door to the room I shared with April. I hovered there for a moment, wondering if I should push it open and see if she'd made it back safely, maybe tell her I was going to be out for a little longer…

No. Whatever was going to happen with Percy and her party leader, I had the distinct feeling that I should keep it secret. I was going to be alone in a room with two women--two women I had to ask for a thousand-gold favour, meant to be kept secret from her!

We went up another floor; the top floor, judging by the lack of another flight of stairs going further up. Percy bustled all the way to the very end of the corridor there, and knocked gently on the door there--number 33.

"I'm baaaaack," she called.

There was a deep grunt from within, and then the locking mechanism in the door clicked. Percy tried the handle, and it swung open with silent ease.

Room 33 looked almost identical to the room April and I were in. The colours of all the drapes and carpeting and bedding was the same, and although the view from the window was of the street opposite ours, the window itself was basically the same too. Unlike our room, there were three beds, crammed into a space that was somewhat bigger than our room, but not quite big enough to fit all three beds comfortably.

At the far end of the room, slouched lazily amidst a pile of empty brown bottles, lounged its sole occupant. Even sitting and halfway towards lying down, it was easy to see that this guy was big. Between his sheer size and his gnarled green skin and the muddy brown tribal tattoos that covered him, he resembled nothing so much as a felled tree--and his posture did him no favours in that regard. His face was gnarled too, with a heavy brow and a pair of thick tusks that twisted out from under his lips like branches. Above his head, I read Oggagogagog: 67 . No surprises there. He hardly looked like a 'Laylie.'

"What's this?" He nodded at me with a grunt.

"This is the cutie I was talking about! You know, the one we're gonna help train tonight!"

"Train?" I said tentatively. Both of them turned to look at me, as if surprised I was here.

"Mhm!" Percy was the first to recover. "Annie, this is Laylie. You remember I mentioned her, right?"

I turned to size up the green man again, worried I'd missed something. He raised a hand. "Layla. Percy's the only one who calls me Laylie."

Nope. His chest, broad and clearly rippling with muscle as it was, definitely did not have any breasts on it. His hips were far narrower than his shoulders. There was even a very definite bulge in the fur-lined leggings that he wore--the more I looked, the more resoundingly masculine features I found.

"I'm only a man in-game," rumbled Layla. "I'm a girl in real life."

Percy clapped her hand to her forehead. "Ohhhhhhhh! That's why she was confused!"

Mortified, I immediately tried to backpedal. "Oh oh oh!! Ohmygod, I'm sorry!! I didn't--I was just--I didn't think--"

Layla waved her hand. "It's fine. Most people are surprised." She looked down at herself and sighed. "I wasn't expecting to be trapped like this for a week."

"Anyway, yes," Percy chimed in. "We're going to train you for the Madam! After tonight, you're gonna bounce up and down on that little pink guy like nobody's business."

I swallowed thickly. "And… and if I say no…?"

"Charm!"

She held her hand out towards me: there was an oddly familiar pink lacquer pendant in it, carved in the shape of a flower. Her amber irises flared with golden light.

"Just stay right there, okay?"

I nodded dumbly, staring into Percy's gorgeous face and her beautiful glowing eyes and her lovely tresses of pink hair. If she wanted me to stand still and watch her close and lock the door behind me, then I'd do it a hundred times. A thousand times.

"Hmmm, where should we set you up?" She trotted all the way up to Layla, sitting on the bed, and though I longed to wrench my feet from the floor and follow her, I could scarcely begin to imagine disobeying her most fervent wish for me to stay right where I was. "Oh! Annie, come over here!"

Joy thrilled in my heart--she wanted me once again! I hastened to her side, then straight to where she was pointing, right up against the wall opposite the bed that Layla occupied.

"Now, get on your knees…"

I dropped down to my knees.

"Take out that big pink dildo you bought for me…"

I swiftly equipped the Bitchbreaker; it appeared in my hands. It seemed much longer now that I was physically holding it--and thicker, too--but such trifling matters paled as Percy gave me another request to follow.

"Stand it up on the floor riiiight there. Between your thighs~!"

I deftly plopped it, flat end down, directly onto the carpet beneath me. It was thick enough that there was no stretching my expanded thighs far enough apart that they wouldn't touch its strangely springy pink surface, and so instead I hugged it between them, squeezing it close to heart.

"Now, put on that cute new outfit we got…"

My Starry Lustregown vanished back into my inventory, to be replaced by the extra-short hemline and hair-hugging hood of my new Trashee's Nun Costume. A sudden draught around my nether regions told me that my ass and caged clitty were both dangerously close to coming to light… but Percy still had more to say to me!

"And now equip that gag you bought…"

The hard, smooth ball of my ballgag appeared right in my mouth, alongside a tightness that ran all the way around my cheeks and the back of my head.

"And that magic rope~!"

I equipped the rope, and exactly as it said it would in its tooltip, it wound itself around me, pinning my arms behind my back and hitching my ankles to a loop of rope around my waist. It didn't quite escape my notice that this was an extremely compromising position to be in--but if Percy had asked me to do it, then it must have been the right thing to do.

"Yay!" Percy clapped her hands together. "Thank you, Annie~!"

She snapped her fingers, and her eyes stopped glowing. All of a sudden, the fact that I was kneeling over a dildo in a slutty nun costume with a ball gag in my mouth and ropes pinning me in place struck me like a bolt of lightning.

"MfhH!!" I jolted forwards--but the magic rope, my magic rope, was stuck fast to something behind me, and caught me, keeping me right above the dildo I was hugging with my thighs. My eyes went watery. "Mfhfh mgggh ff hhh??"

"It's called Charm~~" Percy batted her eyes playfully. "It's a suuuuuper useful spell, you know? If your Charisma score is high enough, you can have anyone do--"

An enormous green hand came down on her shoulders. While I'd been Charmed, Layla had moved, and was now sitting on the bed beside her. Despite the fact that she was standing up, Layla still towered over her, a good two heads taller than the top of her little black hood.

My clitty twitched in its cage, and my ass watered in response.

"You little chatterbox," Layla grunted wryly. "She ready?"

Percy's pink lips were slightly ajar as she stared up at the leader of her party. "U-um, yes!"

"Then let's go." A tiny square bottle, filled with a dark indigo fluid, materialised in her hand. She tipped it back past her prominent, dark lips like she was taking a shot, then swept up Percy in one tree-trunk arm and forced her mouth to hers.

"H-hhhmfffhh~!!" Percy kicked out reflexively, but her resistance was short-lived. In no time, she was pressing herself up into Layla's body just as hungrily as she was, her muffled squeal melting seamlessly into a river of moans and purrs and smooching. It was an intoxicating sight; the sensual curves of Percy wrapped up in her lover's tight embrace, picked up and played with so easily that it was impossible to see her as anything more than a toy to her. Layla's enormous hands roamed her body, palming and squeezing even her generous assets with casual ease.

She pulled away from Percy; a long and lewd string of saliva clung to both their lips. Percy made a dismayed sound and reached up to grab Layla's head, and I was surprised to find myself silently echoing her. That had been… spell-binding.

"Did you drink it all?"

Percy made an exaggerated lip-smacking sound. "Think so… oh!"

The strained front of her habit burst wide open. Without any bra beneath them, her magnificent breasts spilled free--and then some. Before my astounded eyes, they ballooned up in size, until both of them were practically the size of her head--if not even bigger.

"Hahhh, fank you, Daddy~!"

"Who's my sexy little slut?"

Percy beamed. "Pershy isss!!"

"Does Percy want a treat?"

"Uh-huh uh huh uh huh!!"

Layla reached down to her crotch, and my eyes almost popped out of my head when she un-equipped his fur leggings and Percy's 'treat' popped free. Like the rest of her body, it was murky green and enormous. The thing was easily far longer than any of the wolf dicks I'd been ridden with, and it outright dwarfed the goblin cocks. My mouth grew wet as I imagined what it would be like to have that thing rammed all the way down my throat, o-or, or, or--

Warmth trickled down the back of my thighs. It wasn't piss, I realised dimly. My ass was seriously salivating for this thing.

Right in front of me, as if I wasn't even a consideration, Percy tucked herself off to one side of the bed, so that she was practically curled halfway around Layla's waist, and her breasts were smooshed intimately between her arms and Layla's thighs, and gave Layla's titanic green shaft a long and lingering slurp of a lick.

"Haaa~~" The moan that escaped her throat was pure bliss. Up, up, up she went, pushing her whole upper body up to the very tip of the shaft, and leaving behind a sticky trail of her own spit as she went. At Layla's crown she paused, her lips laying daintily against her skin in the lightest of butterfly kisses…

"Oh yeah."

A new symbol appeared beside Layla's healthbar. A pink heart on a red square. Hadn't I seen that somewhere before?

She inhaled deeply, like she was trying to drag Percy's whole body straight into her lungs.

"Take a deep breath, newbie," she grunted, and I realised that she was talking to me. "Y'know what this is?"

She gestured up to the heart icon. I shook my head cautiously.

"It's a status effect. Aroused."

Percy's lips parted slightly further, and she dipped a little further down Layla's waiting shaft. I stared, my stomach churning with what I desperately hoped was nausea. Even with its tip in her mouth, that thing looked far too big for Percy to take much further. Did her jaw even stretch that wide?

As if eager to prove me wrong, bit by agonising bit, she slid a little further.

Even though her cock had clearly taken the foreground, Layla was still talking. "Don't confuse it with being aroused. As your little accident can attest, that happens just fine without the status effect."

I gave a flustered squeal through my ball gag and shook my head in as fierce a denial as my ropes would allow. Layla chuckled, the sound surprisingly warm.

"Ah, I know it's not piss. Percy's got the same thing with her slutty little butt." She reached around behind her, and Percy jerked her head up off Layla's shaft with a squeak.

"Laylie~!!" she pouted.

"Get back to it, slut."

"Yeshh, Daddy!" Apparently pacified by Layla's command, Percy shoved her mouth back over the top of her shaft and resumed slowly feeding it down her throat.

Layla turned back to me. "Anyway. You wanna know a fun thing about Arousal?"

I shrank back in the face of the leer that spread across her hideous green face. Weakly, I tried to shake my head, but a tooltip popped up in front of my face anyway.

I whimpered through my gag, and Layla's leer deepened. "How long do you think you'll last?"

As if she'd been waiting for Layla's question, the Aroused icon popped into view next to Percy's healthbar. Her warm amber eyes, already hooded and vacant with lust, went even emptier as she easily slurped up still more of Layla's enormous shaft. I moaned as I realised that there was a visible bulge in her throat now.

"Well, you beat Percy… though that's not saying much." Layla belched a laugh and put one hand possessively on Percy's head, a thumb absently toying with her pink bangs. "She's become an absolute whore."

Like that was her cue to start sucking in earnest, Percy pulled her head back and started bobbing back and forth on the shaft before her. A litany of squelches and spluttering issued forth, her spit and tongue and lips working over Layla's veiny green flesh without quarter. Bound and gagged, I could only stay on my knees and look on, in a grim combination of awe and horror.

"Ahhh fuck," hissed Layla. Her grip on Percy's head grew tighter; she peeled off Percy's habit, revealing more of her gorgeously kept pink hair, only to wind her meaty green fingers in it and turn it into a mess. "You're so fucking good at this."

Though it seemed impossible, Percy's slurping and sucking grew louder and sloppier in response to Layla's dirty talk, until she was practically drowning out everything Layla said with the smacking of her lips against cock-flesh. Fantasies of being the one under Percy's hungry assault, of having my clitty free and slobbered on by that gorgeous, warm, wet mouth, swirled around inside my head as my already-hot face grew hotter and hotter, and sticky goo leached desperately down my bound thighs…

Layla pried Percy's head off her cock. Despite her tremendous strength, it clearly took some effort--and Percy was quick to show why, as she strained to pull her head free of Layla's grip and return to blowing her.

"Laylieee~!!" Percy pouted. She reached out greedily for Layla's cock with an arm instead, but Layla simply grabbed it. There was a blur of movement, and then Percy was pinned against Layla's chest with a single arm, her face to Layla's and Layla's enormous green shaft now pinned snugly between Percy's almost totally bare ass cheeks.

"Be a good girl," Layla murmured softly down to her.

"Hngghh… yesh, Daddy…"

Once again, Percy settled down with just a single order, and nuzzled her face into Layla's broad, tattooed chest. A spark of jealousy lit up in my chest. In Layla's world, it was just so--so--so easy to--

"Heh. You didn't even outlast me." Layla was talking to me again. I looked at my HUD, the dread welling up inside me already sure of what I was going to find there.

Next to my healthbar, a red square with a pink heart on it smiled maliciously down at me.

"Arousal's a pretty brutal status condition," Layla started, clearly back in lecture mode. "It cuts your Wisdom and Intellect, and it gets worse and worse over time. And without magic, the only way to get rid of it is…"

"Shexsh!!" Percy piped up, from her position in Layla's embrace.

"Well, cumming." Layla cast her gaze deliberately at the space between my thighs, and I followed it as far as my bondage would allow. The… the dildo. The dildo beneath my aching, drooling, overwhelmingly horny little asshole. "I wonder how long you'll last."

With that, Layla shifted her grip on Percy and lifted her up, up, up into the air. Percy gave a happy wriggle and squealed with excitement, reaching back with her dainty little arms to spread her fat cheeks wiiiiiide open--and I gasped through my gag.

Where there should have been the puffy pink lips of a pussy, Percy had a flat metal disk, sitting snugly over what must have been the tiniest set of balls I'd ever seen in my life.

Then, with a resounding SLAP, Layla slammed Percy down on her half-sticky orc shaft, and Percy let out a scream of orgasmic delight.

"Daddddddy!! Can Pershy cummm??" Even as Percy begged to be allowed to cum, she jiggled herself up and down on Layla's incredible green shaft, her milky, freckled thighs and ass wobbling madly right in front of me.

"Do it, you little slut." Layla clutched her close and sneered down at me as, with a second mindless scream, Percy had what I could only imagine was an absolutely mind-bending anal orgasm on the end of a cock that still wasn't quite all the way inside her. A good two inches of the green monstrosity was still throbbing and pulsing beneath the hungry pink rim of her asshole, and I couldn't stop my mouth or my ass from watering at the sight.

Over the top of Percy's head, her little Arousal symbol vanished--and then, scarcely seconds later, it reappeared.

"Mooooore," slurred Percy. I couldn't see her face--her eyes were solely on Layla now--but I could just imagine her perfect features contorted into the most slovenly, cross-eyed ahegao a face could form.

Obligingly, Layla jerked her hips up… and down. Up… down. Up… and down. The rhythm she'd set was far less desperate than Percy's wanton jiggling, but far from complaining, Percy curled up closer to her and giggled drunkenly against her chest.

"Shooo biggg… hahhhh," she murmured. I whimpered into my gag, unable to stop my heart from pounding harder at how easily, how intimately she pressed herself up into Layla's body, even as Layla's massive green cock speared her cheeks. My mind reeled at the thought of taking even the very tip of that thing--and here Percy was, madly in love with it as Layla steadily worked the whole monster all the way up her tender little hole.

"Ah~~!" I could almost hear the love-hearts in Percy's voice as, with a little slap, Layla twitched the final stretch of her cock right up Percy's ass. She was literally balls deep inside her.

"Ghooood you're so tight," Layla groaned. I watched her roll her hips back and forth on the bed, working Percy's walls just as hard as his depths. If… if Percy had a bitch-button like I'd discovered, it was… it was getting mauled right now.

"Hahhhh~!!" Percy clutched Layla's chest, her dainty nails digging deep into her skin, and she cried out to the ceiling. "Can Pershy cummmm??"

"Cum, my little pet," Layla rumbled, nuzzling Percy once again. "Cum to your heart's content."

Still she gently rolled her hips up into Percy's, easing herself a little of the way out her ass, then all the way back in. Each roll was accompanied by a gentle slap--Layla's bulging ballsack as it kissed the bulging cleft of her fucktoy's buttocks.

My whimpers went unheard. Percy and Layla were lost in each other now. Percy had gone back to jerking her own hips for Layla, nails still buried in her flesh, and Layla dipped her grotesque, tusked face down to push a loving kiss on Percy's face--a kiss that soon turned into a second round of hot, heavy, lip-smacking making out. Then, as if I'd been completely forgotten, they tipped backwards on the bed, so that the only thing I could see of them was their legs (Percy's twined lovingly around Layla's massive green thighs), a bit of Percy's now thoroughly dishevelled habit, and--of course--Layla's throbbing orc cock and balls, still impaling Percy's enormous, perfectly sculpted ass.

She was… she was a sissy. Part of me recoiled from the thought, but I couldn't deny the truth--even if that tiny, flat disk was hidden behind a massive tower of orcish cock, I knew it was there now. It was proof that the slutty nun now making out with an orc in front of me was--had been--just like me at one point.

I swallowed thickly. My jaw ached: I had no idea how long I'd been wearing this ball gag, but it was too long. It sat there impassively between my lips and front teeth, reducing my cries to wordless pleas for release. The ropes around me were little better; though they didn't chafe against my skin, exactly, the fact that they were holding me in place was chafing enough.

This was absolute torture. A couple was having the sloppiest, messiest porn-tier sex I'd even seen before in my life, and I couldn't even touch myself. I couldn't even…

"Hnffhh…"

Something brushed up against the bottom of my butt. Something… wet, and springy, but firm. I looked down in terror. Was the dildo… coming for me?! Frantically, I jolted up, as far up and away from the tip of the pink dildo as I could go--and realised that the ropes' hold over me wasn't quite absolute. There was one direction I could move in.

I paused, panting. The tip of the dildo was no longer brushing up against my body now, although my thighs were still tight around its sides. It hadn't been moving… I'd just inadvertently sunk down to meet it. That… that meant…

I slowly lowered myself. My bindings were slack in this direction, and very shortly, that same taste of something springy and firm and sticky with my own butt's leaking juices found me. I jerked myself back up as high as I could go again.

Oh no.

Oh no oh no oh no.

They'd left me just enough rope to hang myself with. Or, in this case, to give in a-and… and fuck myself with. All I had to do was lower myself down on that pink dildo, and… I stared feverishly up at Percy.

She was upright again, but Layla wasn't. Instead, she had her fingers sunk deep into Percy's squishy ass cheeks as Percy--squealing and crying out with glee--bounced eagerly up and down on top of her, cowgirl style.

I could… I could be like that. I swallowed again. I could… I could cum again, j-just like her. All… all I had to do was…

I scrunched my eyes shut. NO. I wasn't going to--

"Hah!! AHhh~!! Da--ddy!! Sho!! Big!!"

My clitty shivered desperately in its cage, and my eyes flew back open. Not being able to see it didn't make it any better--if anything, it was worse!! I whined weakly into my gag, but there was no response from the couple fucking on the bed. All they wanted was to have as much wild bareback sex as they could wring out of each other… and for me to watch, pent-up and horny, until I couldn't stop myself anymore.

I… I took a deep breath.

There was… there was no escaping this.

Gently, I closed my eyes, and took the plunge.

It was embarrassingly easy to line the Bitchbreaker up with my drooling asshole. The suction magic it was attached to the carpet with held fast no matter how much of my weight I put on it, and so I was able to slip it between my quivering ass-cheeks and get its tip right up against my entrance without much thought at all.

"Hghhh…" I inched my hips down just the tiniest fraction of the way down its tip. I… I

I couldn't tell exactly how this thing compared to the goblins and wolves that had raped me before, but…

"Hnnnffff…" it did seem… thinner… somewhat. It didn't even bring tears to my eyes as its whole head breached me, sinking its way deeper inside my body.

"Mmmffggh…" I couldn't stop myself from letting out moan after moan as I lowered myself further down the Bitchbreaker's unyielding pink length.

And then it touched my… button. The treacherous little thing deep inside me, that had driven me to orgasm after orgasm every time I'd been raped and filled with monster cum in the week before. My heart leapt. I still had a little more of the dildo to get through! That meant I really would be able to… fuck myself with it…

"Mmmmfffh…" And then… just like that… I'd done it. My body was kneeling as low as it could go, my butt resting squarely on my bound heels. There was just a little bit more of the Bitchbreaker's shaft to go, but--I squirmed gingerly in my bindings. It felt like I had an iron pipe lined up inside my guts, pressing insistently against that humiliatingly sensitive spot inside me. I… I didn't need the rest, anyway.

Experimentally, I worked my hips back… and up… and forward. A pleased hiss escaped my throat and tumbled up against my gag. That was… wow. I'd never… with the monsters, they'd been so rough, I…

I gave myself another roll. It was the same thing I'd seen Layla do with Percy, only in reverse. Back, up, forward, down.

"Mffh… mffhh… mmffh…" My muffled pants soon filled my ears, as girly and pathetic as I was afraid they'd be, but that embarrassment faded like etchings in sand as waves of pleasure washed over me. Back, letting the warm rod of the dildo buried deep inside me push up against my sweet spot… up, drawing my spot up against the gently curved ridge between the main shaft and its head… forward, peeling that hungry little weak spot oh so slowly away from its cock… and then down again, letting the dildo bottom out inside me and restarting the cycle once more.

It was so much… slower like this. Slower and… gentler. Like… a smooth, painless release. Back, up, front, down. Around and around. Just me and my weak spot, jogging at my own pace.

And then, just like that, my clitty oozed openly through the bars of its cage, several days' worth of pent-up cum all massaged free by my… dildo. Next to my healthbar, the Arousal symbol faded away, leaving behind only a faint sense of satisfaction… and a less faint sense of shame.

The shame was only compounded by the new Milestone that popped up in front of me as my cum finished trickling down my thighs. 'Third Wheel?' Really? A Milestone just for... not being allowed to join in on sex...?

"Ah!!" Plap. "Ah!!" Plap.

Layla had Percy bent over the side of their bed now. Each time she slammed her full length up Percy's obliging ass was punctuated with both the juicy smack of their groins colliding, and the helpless squeal of Percy getting fucked even sillier than she already was. I stared up at them both, unsure if I wanted their attention. Were they even going to be happy with just one anal orgasm? Or would they just expose me to still more of Layla's Inherent Subjugation, and force me to make myself cum for them again and again and again?

"You little slut," growled Layla. Without breaking her stride, she tugged Percy upright, then rose to her feet, easily lifting Percy up alongside her until she had her in a full nelson, Percy practically folded in half with her knees up by her shoulders. For the first time since Layla had started fucking her in the ass, I could see Percy's expression.

"Hahhhhh~! Daddy~!!" As I'd imagined, her soulful eyes were crossed, and her tongue lolled brainlessly past her gaping lips. Layla's tusked face radiated a dull sort of confidence; to her, making Percy make those faces and those cries was plainly nothing out of the ordinary.

Lazily, she glanced my way, and caught my eye.

"Oh. You're done." Still bouncing Percy easily up and down her giant green shaft--I couldn't stop my eyes from drifting down to the mesmerising sight of Percy's fat ass gobbling down its length over and over again--she strode up towards me. Her fat green globes, bouncing in time with her thrusts up Percy's ass, loomed dangerously over my face as I looked up at her, terrified of what was going to come next.

"Slut!" she barked. Suddenly, the eager bouncing of Percy stopped in its tracks. "Cummies."

Percy let out a simpering mewl, the most pathetic sound she'd made yet. Craning my neck as far back as the ropes would allow, I found myself staring up at the tiny metal disk under which her own tiny ballsack hid… and at the fat bead of white that was slowly growing at its centre.

"Mfh!! Mfhh!!" I shook my head as furiously as I could, but neither Percy nor Layla seemed to care in the slightest--Layla held Percy exactly where she was, and Percy simply peered down and giggled stupidly as her 'cummies' trickled out of her flat cage.

"Yayyy, cummies!!"

Bound and gagged, I could only watch as the fat bead grew into a glob, and then that glob descended, like a spider on a web, following the call of gravity until--with an audible snap--it popped off the string of cum and dribbled over my upturned forehead.

"Mmffhhh!!" I whimpered through my gag, and Layla let out a deep laugh, which Percy quickly joined in with. A few seconds later, the Arousal symbol reappeared by my healthbar, and Layla took a step back, satisfaction scrawled over her avatar's hideous features.

"Round two."

"Daddy~~!" Having seemingly forgotten about me once again, Percy pouted up at her orcish lover and pointedly rolled her hips on her shaft, pulling Layla's attention back to her. With an indulgent grumble, Layla pried her off her cock entirely; and I could only stare at the soppy, ass-splattered state that Percy's ass had left it in. It shone with moisture.

My knees grew weak; the… the dildo between my legs probably looked like that right now.

"H-hey!!" Percy protested feebly. Her asshole, momentarily relieved of its enormous green duty, yawned cavernously beneath her tiny little balls. Strings of her own lewd goo, translucent but thick, ran in sticky rivulets all across her pink walls, as if to eliminate any doubt as to how Layla's cock had ended up that way. Though she was entirely under Layla's control in her arms, still she jerked her hips greedily in the direction of Layla's juice-stained cock, as if trying to swallow it back down her gaping hole.

"Let's give your little friend more of a show," Layla said. Percy squealed in assent, happily allowing Layla to drop her down headfirst on the floor in front of me, so that the top of her tousled pink hair brushed up against the base of my lurid pink dildo and the sides of her head touched my knees. She looked directly up at my straining clitty and--my heart hammered in my chest--my own asshole, which I could feel gaping after the fucking I'd given it myself.

Still holding onto Percy's waist, and with Percy eagerly spreading her own legs as far apart as they would go, Layla seized the fat snake of her cock with her free hand and fed it lazily back into Percy's body. Percy shuddered and wriggled between my knees, and I could only watch in mounting fear and arousal--both the game condition and the literal sensation--as a visible bulge formed in Percy's pale tummy.

"Daaaaddy~~" she moaned, squirming happily around her lover as she re-buried herself in her guts. "God you're soooo big~~~!!"

Layla ignored her, instead grabbing me by the chin and tilting my face up so that I was looking into her eyes. "Come on, slut. Up… down."

Beneath us, Percy squealed as Layla matched her own words with the motion of her hips. Up… down. In and out of Percy she went.

"Do it," she growled. "Up… down."

A muffled squeal escaped me, and I obediently raised my hips… and then lowered them in time with her.

"Mffhhh…" The Bitchbreaker slipped inside me once again, and a visceral thrill shook me to the core. My eyes were on a woman--a woman in the body of a man, but still, a woman!!--as I obediently filled myself up with a dildo for her.

"Up… down."

Layla took on a surprisingly gentle rhythm as she coached me through the next few bounces. Percy, content to just be getting plowed once more, didn't protest this new pace, instead watching with shining, lust-filled eyes as my clitty sunk down almost to her forehead, then rose back to the very top of my dildo, over and over again.

Slowly, still clutching my chin, Layla amped up the speed. It felt as if she was calling up a dangerous new tide with her thrusts--a tide of lust, ebbing and flowing in my poor, frenzied head. I was a drowning sailor, swept along in the wake of her movements.

"Up. Down."

"Mffhhh…" More muffled moans filled the air. My own moans.

"Haahhh~!" And some of Percy's, now that Layla was hitting her own slutty spots with some regularity.

Inside me, the now-familiar sensation of the Bitchbreaker grinding up against my depths was all I could feel. The way it stuffed me… filled me… parted my body so that it could use me was just… intoxicating. Up and down on my haunches I bounced, mirroring Layla as she continued to pick up speed in Percy's asshole.

The feverish tide inside me rose, and rose, and rose. My moans gave way to frenzied panting, and the tiny part of me that still commanded the power of rational thought was disgusted at just how slutty I sounded. The rest of me kept its focus on Layla, and her muddy green-brown eyes, and the pace of her rutting of Percy.

"Ohh god Daddy daddy yesss!!"

Percy's wanton screams from beneath me broke into my thoughts, and I looked down to find her whole body being shoved into the floorboards and yanked back up again at a blistering pace. I was riding my dildo at the same pace--but all of a sudden, I didn't want to slow down. I was close. I looked back up at Layla, and to my faint surprise, I saw the slightest hints of strain on her face. She was holding back her own climax--but as I stared up at her, she gave me the most imperceptible of nods.

"Mff! Mfhh!! Mffh!!"

"Ah~!! Yess!! AHh!!"

"You little fucking sluts!"

With one final, triumphant bounce, I let the Bitchbreaker bottom out inside me one last time--and it rewarded me by digging into my sweet spot at a truly mind-bending angle. The world went blurry.

"Mffhfhhhhhh~!!"

My orgasmic mewl was stifled and hoarse, but it rang in my own ears even so. A single, emphatic rope of my cum shot free of my caged clitty, splattering the front of Percy's exposed breasts. She paid it no mind, her squeals and cries still continuing unabated--and then, on the force of a thrust that shook the whole room and left Layla totally embedded inside her, she let out a shrill shriek of her own.

"OhmYGODDDD~!!"

Yet another trickle of her watery seed squirted out of her tiny cage, with such little force that it simply dribbled down her upside-down tummy.

But what Percy's last cumshot lacked in spectacle, Layla more than made up for. She let out a howl of her own: a chilling, animal roar that lifted all the hairs on my body and made my exhausted asshole clench around my dildo. It lasted what felt like minutes--and when at last she stopped, I heard gurgling from inside Percy's overstuffed belly.

Glug. Glug.

I stared down at it. Before my very eyes, it was swelling. The bulge Layla's cock formed inside her was growing rounder, and fatter, and hotter, and pinker…

"Oh yeahhh," groaned Layla.

Beneath her, getting pumped full of her cum, Percy made a similar noise, though without any of the words and a dozen octaves higher. Fatter and fatter she grew, until her bulging tummy was practically touching my own stomach, and the heavy musk of Layla's orcish cum filled my nostrils, somehow escaping the snug seal Percy's asshole had formed around the base of Layla's cock.

All three of our Arousal symbols had vanished. Layla picked up Percy's bloated body with one hand, still impaling her on her cock like she was a living fleshlight, and with a thunderous yawn peeled her off and laid her gently on her bed, face up. Her legs stayed spread, and I shivered at the sheer gaping size of the asshole between them, and the thick, yellowish sludge that was only now beginning to seep out of it, glacial in both scope and slowness.

Without any hint of shame, Layla turned back to me, her cock flopping obscenely in front of her. Although it had softened somewhat, it was still huge enough to beggar belief--it was practically the size of her thigh! The slobbery coat that Percy's ass had left on it earlier had been joined by glutinous seams of Layla's own cum. The physical remains of the rough sex they had shared.

The smell was gut-wrenching: but try as I might, I couldn't stop myself from panting after all of my physical exertion, and each pant drew another steaming, hot lungful of it down into my core.

"Not bad," Layla said appraisingly, looking me up and down. "You got a room here, yeah?"

I swallowed and gave her a tentative nod. She waved her hand in my direction, and suddenly the strap of my ball gag fell loose, and the ropes binding me in place fell to the floor. The same spell she'd used to unlock the door without getting up? I unequipped them both--they disappeared into my inventory without a sound--and, knees practically knocking together, I eased myself off my dildo. It slipped free of my ass with an embarrassingly long squelch.

"You wanna help clean me up?" she asked casually, bumping her cock in my direction.

Flashes of Percy, burying her face in its side, planting her lips on every last inch of it and slurping at it and eagerly devouring every last shred of cum and anal juice on it, overtook my mind's eye--but then I shook my head furiously.

"Suit yourself." And with that, Layla lurched over to Percy's head, and easily slapped her shaft like a slab of meat down on her face. The sounds of slurping and sucking followed soon after.

Neither of them so much as turned when I hauled myself to my feet and stumbled out of their room, soaked in sweat and Layla's heady musk and a little bit of Percy's squirt and aching, aching, from head to toe. I didn't stop running until I had burst through the door of Room 1 and squirrelled myself safely under the covers of my bed.

Chapter 13: Speedrun

Chapter Text

The next morning, sore all over but at least having cleaned the smells of the last night off my skin, I descended into the bar of the Lustrous Heart. It was far more crowded than usual today, and most of the new arrivals were players like me, with healthbars floating over their heads. For a moment it struck me that Percy and Layla could easily be in here too--but I took a deep breath and shook my head. They wouldn't try anything in the middle of such a crowded room… would they?

"Heeey!" April's voice was a welcome distraction from the memories of last night, and I turned to find her sitting on her own at what amounted to a coffee table, between two huge groups of players decked out in gear that even my untrained eye could tell was pretty high-level.

I hurried over to sit opposite her. Everything about her was reassuring; her gorgeous emerald eyes, her long, silky hair, her pretty nose… even how much bigger than me she was. It… it made me feel safe, even if Layla still dwarfed her by enough that she could still pick her up and rail her like she had with Percy.

"Um, hello?" I blinked, to find April waving her hand in front of my face. My clitty was straining in its cage, and my ass--still sorely gaped from last night--was growing warm.

"U-um, April! Hi!" I banished all thoughts of Layla fucking her silly and sat myself in my chair. "Umm, how was the church?"

April took a particularly large bite of her breakfast--what seemed to be standard hash browns. "Fine! The priestesses there are really nice!"

"What did you guys talk about?"

She took another heaping mouthful, which she had to munch through before she opened her mouth again. I was reminded of how Percy's cheeks had puffed up as she blew Layla last night… and couldn't stop myself from imagining how April would look doing the same thing.

"Oh, you know, shtuff," April said through the mush she was still chewing. She took a moment to swallow it all down. "Other dungeons in the area, actually!"

"Other dungeons?"

"Yep!" She put down her knife and fork to number them off. "There's Russet Tunnel, between here and the capital… Belch Lagoon, up north… the Widdleshins, out past Breachwood… and, um…"

"Gold Lemaign?"

"That's it! How'd you know tha…" April must have seen the hot flush that had shot across my face, because she swivelled around and immediately found the actual speaker: a pink-haired nun whose habit didn't seem to understand the definition of the word 'modesty.'

Percy.

"Um, hi! I don't believe we've met… I'm April!" April held out a hand awkwardly, and Percy eagerly snatched it up in both of hers and gave it a shake.

"Hi!! I'm Percy. You must be Annie's friend!" Percy beamed beatifically down at us both. Her breasts had gone back to their original size--small enough that they weren't literally bursting out of her top. Speaking of which, her top was back to normal too, without the gaping hole that her breasts had left in them last night.

"Oh! How did you meet herrr-him?" April turned back to me as she said this, and there was an inscrutable look on her face. It was like she was searching me for… something.

"Oh, she just wanted some help with her build and stuff! We're the same class, you know!" Percy giggled into her sleeves as April's attention flicked back to her, and the name floating over her head. Like me, she'd been surprised to learn that Percy was a player… although I begrudgingly had to admit that she'd handled it much more gracefully.

"Oh! Are you here for the Conference, then?"

"Mhm~! But before thaaaaat… me and my girlfriend owe Annie a little favour!"

Like an iceberg looming ominously out of the darkness, directly in the path of an innocent ship, the towering, emerald frame of Oggagogagog--Layla--materialised from the crowd behind Percy. She gave me a casual nod, then turned to April.

"Hey. You can call me Layla."

"Ohhh!" April looked between them both, clearly coming to a conclusion about their respective sexualities that I wasn't about to disabuse her of. "Hi! I'm April."

"So, about this favour," Layla started, and I felt my stomach pitch. What favour? Were they seriously going to do this in the middle of a crowded inn--and right in front of April?? "First, you forgot this last night."

I stared up into Layla's murky eyes, and it was impossible to keep the memories of last night from flooding into my head. The way she'd stood over me, still pile-driving Percy as I bounced on my dildo, gagged and cowering… how in control she'd been. Over both Percy and me. The thought of rejecting the trade crossed me, but the thought of what might happen next, and in front of April, stayed my hand.

They hadn't physically took the dildo out and given it to me. They were using the in-game trade system, which I had to imagine April couldn't see if she wasn't involved. That meant they were happy to keep what had happened last night between just the three of us… right?

"U-um, thanks," I said, without much gratitude. I accepted the 'trade.'

"No problem," Layla grunted, her prominent green lips contorted into as wry a smile as she could manage, around her body's tusks. "Now. As I understand it, you'd like our help with clearing a dungeon around here."

April shot me a look that was both surprised and--if I squinted--a little bit impressed. "Oh, that would be great!" she gushed, when the slack-jawed silence Layla had left me in stretched on for a little too long.

"Hehehe, it's not a problem!" Percy gushed back. "We're just killing time until the big ol' Conference, anyway!"

That gave April some pause. "Oh, wait, will we even have the time? It's at noon, I think…"

Layla gave her a hearty clap on the back. A flash of Layla doing the same thing, but to a different part of April, with April tied and gagged over her gnarled green knees--I swallowed thickly… and tried to ignore the way those thoughts had made my clitty strain in its cage.

"We'll be fine," Layla laughed. "We'll be done in an hour."

Percy flashed us both a pearly grin. "Soooo, if you wanna tag along with us, come on!"

A few minutes later, the four of us stood on the street outside the Lustrous Heart, holding hands in a circle. Somehow, Percy and Layla had managed to interpose themselves between April and I, so that both of us had one hand clutching one of Percy's lily-white hands, and the other in the clutches of Layla's massive green mitts.

"Alright!! Everyone ready?" Percy didn't give us a chance to respond to her cheery question; instead, she went right to saying, "Grand Odyssey!"

It was like watching a pair of invisible hands grab onto the fabric of the world around us and stretch it. Up and down they went, the ends of reality, and everything that lay between them was stretched out, long and narrow and flat, until it was all a senseless mass of colourful strings that surrounded us, and even those continued to stretch, stretch, stretch. Only the four of us--April, Layla, Percy, and myself--remained. Although the spell wasn't stretching us, the way it had warped the world around us squeezed us together, so that I had to fight to keep myself away from Percy's prodigious chest and--I realised with a spike of jealousy--Layla was pressed up against April's own, slightly less prodigious chest.

And then the world popped back to its normal dimensions, and the four of us stumbled back out to our original distances apart from each other, still holding our hands.

Well, April and I stumbled. Layla's stern grip on our hands kept us from falling over outright, and Percy repressed a little giggle, her own balance perfect.

"What was that?"

"Where are we?"

My question overlapped with April's, and it took me a moment to process hers--but when I did, I looked around in shock. Instead of the cobblestone buildings and milling crowds of Lumberg, we were standing in the midst of a familiar copse of trees; right in front of the towering roots of the most familiar tree of them all.

"The Breachwood!" Percy announced, arms outstretched and fingers waggling. "Ta-daaa!"

"Was that a teleport spell?" April said, pouncing--like she always did--on the closest and most interesting game mechanic at hand.

"Mhm~!" Percy said, preening ever-so-subtly under April's attention.

"Wh-why's the border like that?" I asked, while April remained engrossed in the tooltip. I wondered if her Intellect, being higher than mine, was giving her more to read.

Layla was the one to answer this one. "It's a Legendary spell."

"Most stuff in this game comes in five tiers!" Percy supplied helpfully. "Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, and Legendary!"

"And Legendary is the best, huh?" April looked up from her reading. Her tail wagged when Percy gave her an enthusiastic nod; I had to admit that they would make pretty good friends. Even if Percy was… I bit my lip and inhaled sharply. Every little thing was giving my clitty conniptions, and in my tiny cage, it was swiftly becoming unbearable.

"Come on!" Percy bounded up to the star-strewn black gateway into the dungeon, and for the first time since I'd met her, I noticed that she was wearing a pair of strappy black heels over her stockinged feet. How was she moving like that in those?

April extended a hand to me, breaking me out of my ruminations, and together--holding hands in a chain, me next to April next to Layla next to Percy--we vanished through the portal into the Breachwood.

Right away, this dungeon clear was nothing like the ones April and I had shared before. Percy opened up with a spell that looked and felt like a monstrously overpowered version of Starcharge, then gave Layla an enormous, silvery shield easily wide enough to protect all four of us, even if we stood shoulder to shoulder in a straight line. Layla pulled out a wicked-looking battleaxe almost as tall as April was, its serrated blade scarred with glowing furrows, and then surged down the twisted tunnels of the Breachwood ahead of us, mowing through everything that so much as looked at us.

It was a sight to behold. Her weapon seemed to expand as she swung it, only to shrink back to its normal size at the end of each swing, and the damage it dealt was staggering--each strike she landed spat out another tooltip informing us of the gold we'd earned. Even split four ways, the sheer rate we were collecting money at was astonishing.

"Whooo! Go Laylie~!" Percy kept up a tide of compliments the whole way through, getting especially effusive when Layla landed a particularly brutal hit or--on a few occasions--cleaved through an entire encounter in a single, clean blow. My mind went to the cheerleaders I'd used to stare at on television, back in the real world. She was hardly dancing, and she didn't have a catchy tune or even words that rhymed, but… there wasn't anything else to call it. She was playing as Layla's cheerleader.

We reached the last chamber in what felt like a matter of minutes, and Percy made an impressed noise. "Oh, you guys did Orias? Nice!"

And then, without another word, she and Layla powered down the stairs to the second floor together.

"I… I mean, we should be safe with those two, right?" April pointed out.

From the monsters, yeah, I thought. "Y-yeah," I said instead. It would still be really obvious I was short a thousand gold if we stopped here. "We, um, we shouldn't fall too far behind."

We took off after them, and caught up in short order--Percy had apparently noticed we were gone at the bottom of the stairs, and was waiting in a floating, pinkish bubble that bobbed gently over the multicoloured reeds April and I had harvested on our first trip to the second floor.

"Laylie's just ahead," Percy said conversationally. "She's just taking care of the first area boss."

"First area boss?" I said.

Percy nodded. "Mhm~! I think he's a big old tree guy."

I blanched, and out of the corner of my eye I could see April doing the same. We hadn't even gotten that far on our disastrous last trip down here.

"Hmm… let's do this! Cosmic Shear!" With a downward slash of her hand--I realised that she was holding the same pink flower pendant she'd used to Charm me the night before--Percy tore open a gash in the air in front of us. Glowing and eerie and flashing yellow and pink and red in an epileptic cycle, it hung there; and in its depths, with the same faltering frame-rate of a lagging game, there stuttered a tiny image of an axe-wielding orcish warrior cleaving their way through a host of bluish… things I couldn't make out.

"Pro tip, Annie, this is a reeeeeally good spell!" Percy told me. "I think you get it after Obsidian Skies, maybe? It's been a while, hehe."

"What does it do?" I asked. The gash in the air looked like a portal, but the way she'd swung her hand to create it, like she was swinging an invisible weapon, had left me even more rattled than I already was around her.

"Portals and damage and stuff! Now come on!" Percy zipped through the wound in reality with her bubble, which apparently also gave her the power of flight. April shrugged and bounded after her… and, not wanting to be left on my own down here of all places, I followed suit. We appeared right behind Layla, who with one swing of her magically-expanding battleaxe dispatched the bluish things we'd seen through Percy's portal, and turned around.

"'Bout time you girls got here," she snorted. "I need a top-up."

She pointed up at her health bar, which had been reduced to a red sliver at the very end of a long black line. She was almost dead?!

"Cure~!" Percy brandished her flower charm in Layla's direction, and her health bar shot back to full. "How long until your next one?"

"Five minutes," Layla grunted.

"I'll Refract you, then," Percy offered.

"Sounds good."

Percy waved her hand again, and the giant silvery shield that had radiated out of Layla vanished, to be replaced by an aura that clung far closer to her mottled green skin. It was… transparent, sort of, except that it warped the light as it came off her body, so that there was clearly something there.

"Stay closer this time, girls~!" Percy called out. "Give me a shout if you get knocked out."

We set off again, Layla back in business as a human--or orcish--meat grinder and Percy once again squealing out encouragement and praise for her party leader. The passages of the second floor of the Breachwood were far more arcane and convoluted than those of the first floor, but there wasn't a hint of indecision or uncertainty in either Percy or Layla as Layla's battleaxe carved our way ahead. It struck me, more than any numbers above their heads, that they really were both veterans of this game, who'd levelled countless accounts before April and I had ever started playing it. Who knew how many times they'd each gone through the Breachwood?

There were a couple more area bosses on the way to the floor's final boss--the second one, a gelatinous mass of translucent blue goop filled with a sea of independently moving eyeballs, actually survived two direct hits from Layla's axe, and tried to take her out with an uppercut that Percy's Refract spell effortlessly deflected--and then we were at an archway marked with a skull, identical in every way to the one that had marked Orias's lair.

It felt like stepping out from a blur, stopping short after Percy's spell had zoomed us past every last obstacle on the way to this room. Something felt off, and after a moment I realised what it was; we weren't panting for breath. I wasn't even slightly winded after running for what must have been at least twenty minutes. Percy's super-Starcharge must have stopped us from losing our in-game stamina, or… something along those lines.

"Alright!" Percy's voice was as peppy as ever. "I'm running low on mana, so try not to get hit!"

April gave me a meaningful look, and after a couple of seconds I picked up on what she was trying to say without words.

"Um, I can restore mana!" I volunteered awkwardly.

Percy's lips curled into a smirk that was somehow adorable. "Oh, that's right. Care to top me up, then?"

I thought I saw her tongue peek out naughtily from the corner of her lips for a moment, but shook it off and drew my star wand. "Infuse!"

"Ohh, that's a cute wand!" Percy clapped her hands together, then paused. "Can you do another?"

"Infuse," I said, a touch less enthusiastically than before. Two Infuses in a row was a pretty big blow to my mana reserves, and while I--or rather April--did have potions…

Percy twirled around thoughtfully. "Hmmm, I guess that's enough."

And then, with that mildly disparaging comment on my abilities, she and Layla marched through the skull archway, once again leaving April and I to look helplessly at each other before we hurried after them.

The second floor boss of the Breachwood certainly looked impressive. Unlike Orias, which had descended from the ceiling in the form of ever-shifting rivulets of dust, this fight started with a wave of darkness that emerged from a point in the very centre of the room, equidistant from the floor and the ceiling and the circular walls of the earthen chamber around us.

"Gorgon Aegis," said Layla, holding up a hand. When the wave reached her, it broke, like a wave crashing into the indomitable hull of a ship--and shrank back. All the way back to that point in the centre of the room it retreated, roiling and bubbling as if stung, and coalesced into a single, floating orb.

From the orb erupted a monster. Like the orb, it was black, but this was a chitinous, rough black, scaled and ridged, sandpaper-rough just to look at. Its body was a foul, flexing river of these dark scales and the scabby and brown something that lay just beneath it; and from this black river, following no body plan I'd ever seen on an animal or insect or living thing before, bursted a host of twisted limbs, each one crooked with more knotted joints than the last. At one end of the river bristled a forest of jagged claws and horns, each one a different tone of diseased yellow; the other end tapered into a single, merciless point, which gleamed with unrestrained malice.

"What the hell is that?" April's usual cheer had evaporated. This was a bridge further than Orias. While a giant spider made of earth was still scary, it was at least scary in a way that April and I could recognise from the real world. This was… this was just…

"You've never fought a dragon yet?" Percy asked, seeming oddly surprised.

"That's meant to be a dragon?!"

"Well, it's a pseudodragon, actually. It's been aaaaages since I saw the lore…" Percy paused for a moment and started scrolling down an invisible menu. Unnoticed by her, Layla surged forwards with speed that could only have come from one of her own self-buffing spells, and began to lay into the black thing with mighty swings of her battleaxe.

"Doo doo doo… invasion of the dragonborn… called on the Abyss… created a monstrosity that survives to this day!" Percy looked back up, apparently satisfied that she'd explained enough. "Oh, pro tip for when you fight him yourselves later: don't use elemental magic on him! He'll just eat it and get stronger. That's what makes him the Pseudodragon, I think."

"Little help here!" Layla's voice was strained, and it wasn't hard to see why--while Percy had been catching us up on the lore of the Pseudodragon, the sinewy black monstrosity had seized the thick haft of Layla's battleaxe with several of its barbed limbs, holding both it and her in place, and was now hammering at her shield of bent light with its other arms and its gnashing, over-toothed face.

"Ethereality!" Percy did a strange little hand gesture, and Layla--axe and pelts and all--briefly became translucent. The Pseudodragon's claws fixed on her axe slipped off it entirely, no longer able to grip onto it, and with a satisfied grin, Layla lunged directly into the sinewy segment of the Pseudodragon's body that passed for its heaving black chest--and passed harmlessly through it. Now behind the Pseudodragon, she spun around, raising her axe over her head. Her body flickered. And then, just like that, she was translucent no longer, and brought her weapon crashing down into the back of the Pseudodragon's head in a manner that I found reminiscent of April and her mace.

The Pseudodragon's body fell crashing to the ground. Instead of celebrating her victory, Layla skipped back, in a backwards lunge so graceful that I felt sure it was impossible for any martial artist to replicate in the real world. Her battleaxe vanished, to be replaced a moment later by a spear. This weapon's shaft was a shimmering jade green, and a roughly hewn spike of oil-sheen obsidian tipped it.

April gazed more intently at Layla, and for a moment the fantasy of her writhing in Layla's arms reared its head inside me once again--and then the Pseudodragon's body began to melt. Simmering and spitting, its flesh ran together like brackish boiling water, scales and limbs fusing together into a textured pool of darkness. And then it rose, a bubbling blob hooked up out of the pool by some invisible, animating force, and reshaped itself into a new form.

The new Pseudodragon was far bulkier than before. Its limbs, although they were still distributed in an asymmetrical mess, were fewer now, and rather than disjointed black twigs bent in a dozen places each, they were ponderous tree-trunks tipped with claws for balancing on rather than slashing at foes. Its maw had changed, too, gone from an insectoid morass of mandibles and claws and horns to something almost reptilian, with an elongated snout and a smattering of small brown teeth that peeked out from under its lips. Although its flesh no longer bubbled and roiled, as it stood over us, growling faintly, great blobs of it slowly oozed down to the ground, the semiliquid consistency of soft tar.

"It comes back?" I asked, mouth agape.

"Most bosses do, y'know," Percy said. "But don't worry, Layla has this."

True to Percy's word, when the Pseudodragon lunged at Layla again, she adroitly ducked out of its path and immediately plunged her spear in its arm. The Pseudodragon's new body was far slower, and clumsier, and with Layla's agility and the reach of her new weapon, the outcome of this leg of the fight was never in question; Percy didn't even have to lift a finger to help her. In short order, the Pseudodragon collapsed again, its body melting into that same black ooze as before, and then vanished.

"How come we aren't getting drops?" April said suddenly. I blinked, thinking back through the whole dungeon clear up until this point. Except for the gold, we hadn't even seenany drops since we entered the dungeon with Percy and Layla.

"Hm? Oh, Layla has auto-collect on," Percy said. "I totally forgot! Heheh, we don't usually adventure with people outside the party!"

"It's faster," Layla grunted, with a shrug. "If you want, we can split everything when we're done."

I eyed the new doorway that had formed when the Pseudodragon was defeated, and the staircase within it. Somehow, it seemed darker, more ominous, more laden with shadows than the staircase we'd entered the second floor with. "S-so, we're going to keep going?" I asked.

"Mhm~!" Percy said cheerfully. "You wanted us to help you clear the dungeon, remember?"

"But you're low on mana, right?" I said desperately. Surely losing access to all of her insanely overpowered spells was enough to give even a power-gamer like Percy pause.

"Oh, if there's a real emergency I have ways to get it back~!" Percy giggled. "But we should be fiiiiine. The bottom floor should be a cakewalk, really~!"

She was talking about mana potions, probably. Or some kind of end-game equivalent that could restore thousands of mana points in one drink. I glanced at April.

"It doesn't sound too bad to me," April said uncertainly, studying my expression carefully. "She does have a hundred Milestones…"

I could sense that she was deferring to me… but she did really want to see what was down there, on the very bottom floor of the Breachwood, too.

"Okay, fine," I sighed. "Let's do it."

"Yay~!" Percy clapped her hands together, and for a moment I saw that same adorable smirk flash across her gorgeous face. Before I could think about it, or try and point it out, or even change my mind about going down to the third floor, she was casting her super Starcharge again, and the three others zoomed down the staircase ahead of me.

I gave the dirt walls of the Pseudodragon's chamber one last, longing look, then hurried after them.

The third and final floor of the Breachwood was mayhem. Unlike the last two floors, its walls were not merely lined with the dungeon's characteristic electric blue fronds, but made of them--and its floors and ceilings were, too. And they did not simply sit placidly to the side, like the plant life of the surface that they resembled.

I swallowed thickly, just barely managing to keep myself from ducking behind April and clinging to her like a little girl, and watched the blue, rubbery tunnel ahead of us writhe. Undulating, flexing, twisting and turning, shuddering and quaking as if it knew we were here and wanted to hurl us off our feet as soon as we stepped on it. Even with my practice walking on high heels, it was impossible to imagine managing to keep my balance on this heaving, roiling floor for more than a couple of seconds, no matter what footwear I had on.

"Alright, girls!" Percy said. "Don't stop for a second, or who knows where the boss will throw you~!"

Like that was enough of an explanation to satisfy anyone, she and Layla shot off. Three vines, a withered black in contrast to the blue fronds they'd emerged from, lanced out to intercept them, but a single cleave from Layla's expanding axe obliterated them.

An abstracted look had come over April. "Huh. I heard there was a boss who was also a dungeon, but I didn't expect it to be the first one… wait. Are we just doing stuff out of order?"

"Huh?" I looked forlornly at the fast-receding forms of Percy and Layla. If it was even possible, the blue tunnel around them had grown even more ferocious now that they were in it. "Out of order?"

"Yeah. I… I thought this was the beginner dungeon, so we'd be able to clear it ourselves if we grinded enough, using the first floor." She stared out at the third floor, at its animated blue walls. It was starting to contract, the pace hectic and wild, pinching itself almost completely shut in places. That could not be good to be caught in. "But this looks like endgame content."

"VALKYRIE is open-world, right…?" I said, hesitantly. "Maybe we're meant to, like, do the first floors of all the dungeons first, before we go down to the second floors."

"Yeah… I guess that makes sense." April seemed lost in thought now, more than I'd ever seen her before.

"Should we… go after them?" I asked.

April made a pensive noise. "Yeah, I guess so, but…"

There was a thunder-clap crack, loud enough to rattle the teeth in my skull, and the flashing portal created by Percy's Cosmic Shear spell appeared in front of us.

"Come on, girls~!" Percy sang through it. "You don't wanna miss this!"

April hopped into it, and I followed.

We appeared in an enormous chamber. Its walls were a poisonous mixture of blue and green, streaked with angular black lines, and--like every other part of this floor so far--they rolled and shifted as if alive. Between them hung a hundred narrow blue strands, criss-crossing in every direction across the chamber like springy, twisting bridges. I was immediately reminded of the fight against Orias, and how in its second phase it would create bridges of its own, although those were made out of soil rather than… whatever this blue stuff really was.

There was a horrible splattering noise from overhead, like a bucket of wet paint falling onto a glass floor. I spun to see it, and saw that a dome of translucent pink something was floating over us, like a magical umbrella. Another one of Percy's spells, I guessed. Some kind of fluorescent blue goo was smeared over most of it. As I watched, mildly disgusted, it slid cleanly off the side of the pink dome, then plummeted… down…

I grabbed tightly onto April, halfway towards jumping straight into her arms. "Whoah!"

Wordlessly, I fixed my eyes on the nothingness beneath us. The chamber we were in had no apparent floor: its walls simply stretched down, down, down, into the pitch black depths of a yawning abyss.

April followed my gaze, and even she tensed up at the sight. "What's this platform?" she asked Percy.

"Hm?" Percy briefly stopped cheering on Layla, who I realised was standing well away from us, on one of the shaking blue bridges. She seemed not to notice the way it was actively trying to buck her off as she hacked away at a swarm of misshapen blobby things covered in irregular little holes and which flitted around her on tiny pairs of leather wings. "Oh, that's just my Aether Prism. Neat, huh?"

More disgusting blue goo shot out at us--this time, I saw its source, one of the many black lines in the chamber's walls--and splattered harmlessly against another translucent pink segment of Percy's pink dome. This time, however, instead of sliding off, it congealed, bits and pieces of it pinching out into spindly, prehensile limbs until it resembled a blue alien starfish, if starfish were shrivelled little balls of blue ex-goo covered in countless slender tentacles.

Percy's eyes flicked to it, and she grinned. "Gross, right?"

"What is it?" I said, unable to look away. It clung on to Percy's dome with what seemed like indefatigable intent, its dozens of tendrils probing and stroking and pressing at the vast shield, searching impatiently for a weak point. "What is this?"

"Hmmm. Well, that is a Breachling," she started, indicating the horrible little blue starfish still blindly groping at her shield, "and this is the Breach!"

More sticky blue jets shot out from the walls around us, none of them splattering against us, and instantly congealed, turning into more of the same blue bridges--and then all of the original bridges, including the one Layla was standing on, snapped in half. A hellish chorus of slurping noises followed, each broken bridge-strand sucked up back into the walls that had birthed them. Layla easily rocketed off her bridge with a single jump, and caught one of the new ones with a single hand, her massive axe still dangling from her other. Then, in perhaps one of the most Herculean feats I had witnessed from her yet, she hauled herself up on top of the bridge, ignoring its violent vibrations and roiling, in a one-handed pull-up. Still holding her giant axe.

"Here's the lore!" tittered Percy.

"Huh," said April, a few seconds before I was able to finish reading. "So this was like… their last resort?"

"Yeah, I guess!" A few seconds later, she made an annoyed puff. "Ugh, the Breachlings're getting in the way. Top me up?"

This request was directed at me, and I automatically gave her another Infuse.

"Thanks, babe~! Neutron Burst!" Percy held up her hand high, and from the flower charm in it came a brilliant light. I shielded my face and screwed my eyes shut, but even that wasn't enough to stop me from seeing spots, and when my vision was clear enough, the first thing I saw was April blinking them away too. Percy, who'd been totally unaffected by her own spell, had her face pressed up against the edge of the dome, back to cheering for Layla.

"Go! Whooo!! You can do it~!" There was a pause. "Oh nuts."

"What, what's wrong?" April and I crowded up to where Percy was, and pressed our faces to the dome, the same as she was. Through the faint pink sheen, I saw an enormous, gooey, brilliantly blue bludgeon roaring up to meet us.

WHAM. Percy's Aether Prism didn't just shake with the impact when the blue fist exploded over us. It shuddered.

"What's going on??" April shouted, more panicked than I'd ever heard her before.

"Okay, so." Percy inhaled deeply. She didn't seem scared, exactly, but… she was definitely shaken. As someone with a hundred and thirty Milestones, that was terrifying enough. "This boss is, ahhh, basically a… gauntlet." Deep beneath us, the gooey fist was reforming, strands of blue goo blasting out into it from every direction but ours. It looked like it was going to be even bigger this time. "The more damage you deal to it, or, well, the Breachlings, the stronger it gets."

"And you just used a spell called Neutron Burst on it," I said, feeling sick to my stomach. I was no scientist, but even I had heard that term enough to know it was something extremely big and destructive.

"On the plus side, it's gotta be really close to dying right now!" Percy said cheerfully. "But, I'm, aheh, I'm out of mana. And I think Laylie just died."

"Infuse!" I said.

"Sorry~!" Percy said with a shrug. "I don't have enough in the tank for another one of those. I guess I could try… Hyperlance!" She gestured at the giant fist forming beneath us, and a blindingly bright line of white light shot out from her palm at it. A perfectly circular hole appeared in the goo… but within seconds it had reformed.

April sighed and pulled out her emerald-studded club.

"What are you doing?" I said, even more panicked than April had been moments before.

"It's almost dead, right?" she said. "I'll try to finish it off." She gestured at the prism around us. "Can you let me out?"

Percy hummed thoughtfully. "Wellllll, if you really want to try… okay!"

She snapped her fingers, and then April dropped through the floor, as if it no longer existed. Percy and I remained, sealed in and still safe… for the time being. To her credit, April was quick enough to raise her club before a swirling tendril of Breach goo shot out to intercept her--but when she brought it crashing down on the mass of blue goo, it simply flowed out over her club and swallowed her up. Her healthbar dropped to zero in an instant, and then vanished.

I made a strangled squawk and lunged for Percy, which she sidestepped with surprising grace. "What's wrong?"

"You just--she's going to--"

"Oh, she just died," Percy said, rolling her eyes. "She'll be fine."

"No she won't!" I shrieked. "She's--it's a slave party!! She's going to get r-r--"

Percy tilted her head at this, even as she effortlessly dodged and weaved, leading me in a strange dance around the interior of her Prism. "Hm? This isn't a slave party."

There was another booming blow that rattled our cage, and I was knocked off my feet outright. "What?"

"You can just turn that off."

"You--I can?!" I thought about scrambling up to my feet, but in all likelihood it wasn't going to matter. There were glowing cracks of a deeper pink running through the surface of Percy's prism now.

Percy tapped her own cheek thoughtfully. "Or, wait, maybe that's just me."

Outside the splintered surface of the prism, the Breach's blue fist was building back up again, and somehow I knew that this was the one.

"Maybe it's just a training wheel thing," Percy continued, more to herself than to me. "Calliope knows why I'd need to be part of a slave party. Hmmm… have you had sex with a monster yet?"

I stared at her, aghast. "I… w-well, yes, I, uh, technically, but… what's that got to do with anything?!"

She made a confused little pout. "Nothing, I guess."

Then the fist struck us for the third time, and there was the deafening crack of a hundred glass balls exploding as the Aether Prism shattered. A wave of the Breach's goo, unleashed from its smashing fists, washed out over me, and burning pain raced through my whole being. In seconds, my health bar was at zero, and the now-familiar paralysis of my Resilience set in, locking up every last muscle in my body.

And then the goo was gone, having flowed off my body rather than remain on my skin, and I couldn't even twist my head or try to brace myself as I tumbled through empty air… right over the bottomless pit that gaped beneath me.

My stomach didn't just drop. It didn't just plummet. It… it was like I suddenly didn't have a stomach at all. Like it had just vanished, leaving nothing but stark, raving terror behind.

"Ethereality~!"

And then, with a weird pop in my ears, gravity's yoke on me fell loose, and then disappeared entirely. What little I could see of my paralysed body, still stuck in the position I'd been when Percy's prism had failed and I'd been launched clear of it, was translucent--just the same as Layla's body had gone, when Percy had cast the same spell on her. My paralysis held strong, and so I couldn't use my newfound intangibility to do anything, but… at least I wasn't falling any longer.

"Yoohoo~!" I blinked--basically the only thing I could do in this state--as Percy came into view. Her health bar was still totally full, but… I could scarcely comprehend what I was looking at besides that. On top: Percy, still clad in her nun's habit, her cute pink bangs still framing her gorgeous, freckled face, one hand still clutching that pink flower charm she used to cast her spells. But beneath that…

"Haaaah~~!" Percy let out a sultry moan. A dozen rivulets of the Breach's blue goo were wrapped around each of her legs, sunk deep into her pale and hefty thighs, holding her aloft in this dark and dismal dungeon chamber. And that wasn't all they were doing, judging by Percy's squeals and panting.

"Ohhh yesss~!" Percy twisted herself, in mid-air, angling with her hips as if to point her magnificent ass directly at me… and the enormous mass of goo carrying her obliged her. In a single, whip-fast motion, Percy had been turned around, revealing what exactly it was that the goo was doing with her.

Every single tendril wrapped around her legs had, just outside the entrance to her rear end, rejoined into a single, much thicker tendril… and it was this that had been plunged deep inside her asshole, still gaping after what Layla had done with it last night. Although it was liquid, what looked like veins still surged along its throbbing, gooey length, and after a few moments I realised what was happening; the Breach, demonic superweapon of a fallen civilisation, was squeezing more and more of its goo deep inside her, so that what was effectively its cock was growing longer and thicker with every passing minute.

"Fhuuuuck~! Yessss~!" Percy was no less vocal now that she'd been turned around. With the ease of a woman born in aerial ropes, she leaned forward, away from me, until she was bent over midair right in front of me, her ass--and the thrusting rope of goo still using it--remaining at the centre of my vision. Although it was hidden by all the goo in the area, I could easily imagine her clitty, prisoner in a totally flat cage, dribbling slutty load after slutty load down her fat thighs… and now that I was looking, I could see the watery trickles.

"Wh-what are you d-doing…?" I moaned weakly, finally realising that I could still speak when I was paralysed like this.

"Enjoying myself, silly~!" Percy sang between moans. "You'd better~hnnaaahh~take notes~!"

I balked… as much I was able to, being both paralysed and intangible. "H-huh?! Wh-why?!"

"As soon as my spell wears off… fhaaaa, yessss… you're gonna be just like this~~"

"Nonono," I said frantically. "Y-you can't! Y-you… d-drink a mana potion, or something!!"

"Sooooooorry~~" Percy made a crooning noise that betrayed no sense of apology whatsoever.

"S-sorry?!!"

Percy reached down into the goop that clung to her legs, and another set of semiliquid tendrils crawled up her arm, to find her ample chest, and her pale throat, and her belly, which was beginning to bulge, distended like it had been around Layla's giant green cock. With her other hand, she lazily drifted along her user interface, until at last a tooltip appeared in front of me.

"You've gotta hold on until this guy~" Percy stroked the Breach affectionately, then squealed as it responded with a particularly savage thrust into her belly-- "is satisfied."

My stomach had returned, and it was cramped with a terrible, lurking apprehension. The tendrils that had wound around Percy's arms had now met each other, caressing with their fluid motions her enormous breasts, bouncing them gently between them. At any second, Percy's Ethereality was going to wear off, leaving me to fall back into the abyss beneath us… and be caught by the Breach, which would waste no time in…

Pop.

Gravity restored, my stomach lurched--and a dozen strands of thick goo shot out from underneath Percy, catching me. Now my stomach was lurching for another reason. Hungrily, far faster than it had with Percy, the gooey tendrils raced out from where they'd caught me--my ankles, my wrists, my waist--and I noticed dimly that despite my expectations, they were warm, almost feverishly so. The goo slithered easily under the loose silk of my Lustregown, and soon its warm, damp, crawling strands were wrapped around my legs, my arms, my petite breasts, my hips, and--I inhaled sharply--peeling apart my tender buttocks. My ass grew moist, but it wasn't nearly enough--

"Hghahh!!"

A tendril, thicker than any of the ones wrapped around me, shot up into my asshole. I was still sore and sensitive from the Bitchbreaker last night, and the Breach, in its liquid state, easily poured its way over every last aching nook and cranny inside me, retreading the bruised path that the Bitchbreaker had carved. Deeper and deeper it went, and my muscles, still locked up by my Resilience, convulsed uselessly in response.

"It's so good, isn't it~?" Percy moaned. Despite myself, I bit my lip--it… it did feel good. As the Breach pumped more and more of its goo into my body, filling me up from my asshole, it ran a rhythmic course over all of my still-sensitive spots… including, I thought with a lewd squeal, the sweetest spot of all.

"Hahhhh~!" Against my will, my ass, already slick with both the Breach and my own… lubricant, grew wetter still, and my clitty writhed in its tiny metal cage. The telltale sticky warmth of my squirt trickled down my thighs.

"Did you just cummmm~?" Percy giggled, turning around in the Breach's embrace to see for herself. I strained to turn away--anything to stop her from seeing it--but I was still paralysed. "Awww~! Annie, you are such a little slut."

"Y-you're the slut," I huffed, managing to stave off the moans each twitch of the Breach inside me threatened to pull out. "I-it's your fault… we're… hahhhh…"

The Breach wrapped around Percy suddenly tightened, making her curves bulge out even more hypnotically, and she let out a squeal that echoed through the whole chamber. The tendril inside her had redoubled its efforts--like with Layla last night, I could almost hear the glug glug glug of it pulsing more and more of itself inside her.

"Ohhhh, yes~~" Percy moaned softly, my accusations forgotten. "Cum for mummy, big guy~~you know you want toooo~~"

And then--even as the Breach continue to work my slick anal tract, still pumping my hole with a hot, hungry tendril--the Breach finished itself on her. Little white geysers erupted from random points on each of its tendrils, to fall in sticky ropes over her skin, and her hair, and her little nun costume…

"HaahHHH~!! YESSS~!!" And, if Percy's open-mouthed, cross-eyed, tongue-out wail of approval was any indication, inside her butt as well.

"Hahhh… are you… done yet…?" I moaned, as Percy, with an expression of supreme, almost leonine satisfaction, settled on the tendrils of the Breach--they were still holding her aloft, although by now it was very clear that they weren't holding her in any way.

"Oh, I have mana now," Percy said, unable to stop a sly little grin from creeping up her face as the Breach, apparently immediately ready for its second round, continued to work still more of itself up her still-stuffed asshole.

"Th-then--"

"But I want you to try something, first~!"

The next roiling surge of Breach climbing its way up my guts was nothing compared to the sinking feeling that Percy had just given me. "... a-and… wh-what's that…?"

"Tell me…" she let the word linger for a while, though from her brazen grin it was obvious she knew exactly what she was going to say next, "Tell me that you're a slut~!"

"I-I'm a slut!"

Her face fell slightly. "That was a little too easy. Hmm… who are you a slut for~?"

My throat tightened, and my breathing--already laboured--grew shakier. Wh… why? It… it was a-always the same story w-with this stupid game. P-Percy wasn't even a part of it, b-but she still… "I'm a… a slut f-for you…"

"BZZT. Wrong! You're a slut for big monster cock… big, fat monsters… like the guys who fucked you before~!"

In a small voice, I repeated what she said. "I-I'm a… a slut for… b-big monster cock… b-big, f-fat, monsters… l-like… l-like the guys who f-f… fucked me… b-before…"

"Tell me about them~!" Percy easily rolled around on top of the Breach, so that she was on her belly, her chin propped up on her arms like she was at a sleepover, asking all of her friends who their crushes were.

I swallowed thickly. "Th-there's… there were… wolves…"

"Ohhh, timber-wolves?" Percy giggled. "How did that happen?"

"N-not just… t-timber-wolves," I said with a little moan.

Percy put a hand to her mouth in mock mortification. "Aww, did you stay out after dark?"

The Breach was still pumping my abused asshole, and with dull horror, I realised it was getting faster. "Y-yes~~hahhhh~!"

"So all the big bad wolves took turns bullying you, huh?" Percy said, ignoring my moans and cries. "What did you like about it, you lil monster slut?"

"I--" I bit back the immediate response of 'I didn't.' April, and Layla… they would have respawned in town, at the Church, and April couldn't teleport… she wasn't going to be able to save me, if Layla would even let her try. Percy was… she was my only chance, and she wasn't going to let this end unless I gave her something. "I… I-I liked how… b-big they were…"

It had been meant as a lie--something picked out of thin air, something that Percy would probably agree was suitably slutty--but I felt a hot flush fill my face as I realised that it was true. Their bodies… heaving, huge, o-oppressively muscular and warm on top of me, and my tiny frame… and then, on top of that, just how… huge they were, d-down there… it had been so easy for them to mash away at my poor little sweet spot, grinding me to… t-to orgasm after orgasm…

I let out a weak whimper. The constant, gentle flow of the goo over my weak spot had drawn yet another orgasm out of me, but this was watery, weak… not like the first few explosions that the wolves and goblins had hammered out of me before.

There was a wide, angelic smile plastered on Percy's face. "See? That wasn't so hard, was it?"

Easily, she tugged her arm--the left one, the one that always held her charm--out of the tower of Breach goo beneath her and said, "Cosmic Shear~!"

There was a horrible shriek, from above, below, left and right and forward and behind and inside my own skull, and the world went blood red--and the goo that was holding us up, and all over us, and inside us melted into nothingness. Together, Percy and I fell into the endless dark depths of the chamber, accompanied only by my screams and her giggling.

Chapter 14: The Black Sister

Chapter Text

I landed face-first in something soft. There was a soft whumph of someone else doing the same thing behind me.

"Cure," said Percy's voice. Something about it sounded… gentler, somehow. Or… subdued? "Get up, you little slut!"

"Is that any way to address your fellow Priestess, girl?" A second voice rose up from beyond the soft darkness I had my face buried in. It was a woman's, and an older one, but there was a cloying sibilance to it… and from the first word she spoke, every single hair on my body stood on end. "You are sisters under the same goddess, are you not?"

"Y-yes, my Lady," Percy said, a noise suspiciously similar to a whimper on the tip of her tongue.

Warily, I climbed to my feet. The… whatever it was that the older woman exuded hadn't died down when she stopped speaking. If anything, it seemed to grow stronger as I rose. My heart was pounding. I was halfway to panting, without any exertion more extreme than just standing up. I took a moment to catch my breath, which did nothing, then took a cursory glance around.

We were in someone's bedroom. That was clear enough; there was an enormous, six-sided bed that stood in front of me, right in the centre of the room, shrouded by six curtains that descended from the ceiling, all drawn. They were a sickly shade of bone white, and behind them lurked the silhouette of a woman with long, straight hair. Just the sight of her entirely ordinary silhouette made me certain, deep in my bones, that I never wanted to see what was behind that curtain for the entire rest of my life.

"I do not believe we have had the pleasure of meeting yet, girl. Your name," said the woman behind the curtain. Desperately, I fought the urge to turn around and sprint off--there weren't, as far I could see, any doors out of this bedroom. All six of its walls were the rusted black of long-dried blood. They were aligned with perfect symmetry to the sides of the six-sided bed in its centre, and covered in macabre ornaments; a host of skeletons and the stuffed corpses of animals, a few of which I could recognize… and most of which I didn't.

"Anne," I said, unthinkingly.

Percy was to my left, her posture tense and upright, her arms and legs stiff with what was clearly the same blind terror that filled me.

"Hmm. Anne. A fitting name, and yet… incomplete, as yet." The woman behind the curtains sucked in a deep breath, and it had all the hungry inquisition of a wolf stalking its prey. "You are a Priestess, and yet beholden to no other role. Am I to suppose, then, that you already know my name?"

My mouth was dry, but still I answered, not a shred of doubt in my mind. "Cassiopeia."

Percy caught my eye. Her face had gone bone white, and she was shaking her head furiously, mouthing the word 'no' over and over again like it was a mantra.

There was a deep, hissing coil of laughter from behind the curtain. "Hah. I shall take it as flattery, that you would mistake me for the Goddess of Beauty, but… no. My name is Ariana Aphagon, and I--" she inhaled again, and I was sure a forked tongue darted out from the head of that silhouette for a fraction of a second-- "am the Goddess of the Abyss."

I made a strangled little noise. The Abyss?? As in, where the monster we--well, Percy--just killed had come from?

"I suppose I am to congratulate you, for triumphing over my infant daughter this morn, but…" There was a smile in this next comment, which did absolutely nothing to assuage the sheer terror that Percy and I still felt, or to make me forget that she'd just called the Breach an infant. "You did precious little on this journey, did you not?"

There was a long, pregnant pause, and Percy elbowed me in the gut, nodding meaningfully at the silhouette behind the curtain.

"U-umm, yes, m-my Lady! I, um, didn't do anything."

Another long, rasping laugh. "And so the weak, too, may live on."

I could count out the next few seconds that passed with the hammering of my own pulse. Four… five… six. I kept my eyes trained on Percy, an undertaking far less terrifying than continuing to face the dark silhouette on the bed.

"Ah," said the sibilant voice, and there was something inescapably wistful about it, beneath the soul-paralysing fear. "I do so wish I could leave you with one of my gifts… alas. My sister has her own designs for you, and she would take a dim view of any interference. It cannot be helped. Away with you."

She said something else, a foul, hissing susurration that made my skin crawl and my mind recoil at the prospect of teasing anything approaching meaning out of it, and then we were standing in the middle of the Silverwood again, right next to the entrance to the Breachwood.

"What the fuck was that?" The icy grip of fear had released us both, and it was like the weight of the world had been lifted off my shoulders. Percy had fallen to her hands and knees, and was sucking in deep, hungry breath after deep, hungry breath, now that her lungs were no longer tight with unearthly terror.

"I have no idea," Percy moaned, for once not even a tinge of lewdness to the sound. "It was never like that before."

"B-but… you've met her before?"

"Ariana?" Percy nodded. "She comes out at the end of this dungeon… and a couple of others. But she never… it was never… scary. I… I felt like I was having a… a panic attack!"

Through the leafy branches overhead, I looked up at the sky. Still blue.

"Phoooof!" Percy clapped her own cheeks--the ones on her face, not…--and shook her head with some vigour. "You alright?"

I paused. Now that the aftereffects of Ariana's… thing… were fading, and the warmth and light of the surface world had returned, the first thing I could think of was what Percy had done to me, back in the bowels of the Breachwood. Specifically…

"I…" I swallowed thickly. "I'm not a slut."

Percy considered me, an eyebrow raised. Even when she was being sceptical of me, she was a vision of pure beauty… but I took a deep breath and steeled myself against her. I couldn't just… let her use her pretty face to walk all over me.

"Really?" she said. Her surprise sounded disturbingly genuine.

"No! I mean yes! I-I mean--yes, really, I'm not!!"

Percy quirked her lips, so that she was smiling, but in a way that accentuated just how puffy and pouty and pink they really were. "You sounded preeeetty slutty in there~~"

"I-I didn't!! I-I didn't even want to be… f-fucked by that thing!!"

"Huh." Percy was eyeing me more closely now. "So… you didn't go along with two super-strong adventurers, who spent last night training you to use a dildo, down to a floor of a dungeon you knew you'd be absolutely helpless in, and then let the girl you're playing with die, so that you wouldn't have any witnesses… except for me… to you getting to have a little bit of raunchy fun with the boss?"

"WHAT?!" I gaped at her. My mind reeled. And not just at her run-on question. It was all… it made too much sense… "H-how could I have known th-tHAT was going to happen??"

Percy shrugged, all too easily. "Well, you obviously didn't know the specifics. That's what a surprise is all about!"

"B-b-but… I-I didn't want to be… I didn't want a surprise…!"

"Annie, you knew I was a lil sissy slut the whole time."

She was saying everything in such a matter-of-fact tone, but… but there was no way she actually believed it, right? She was the one who had lured me i-into this whole expedition… taken it upon herself to Neutron Burst a-at exactly the wrong time… i-it wasn't my fault! How was I supposed to know that she would… do something like that??

Except, a tiny, treacherous voice inside me pointed out, it was fairly obvious that something was up. The little smirks that had come over her face every now and then… the mere fact that she was in league with the Madam, and the whole operation that was running at the Lustrous Heart… just… everything that she and Layla had done to make me… f-fuck myself…

I thought back to all the little stabs of apprehension that I'd had in the Breachwood. The little… spikes of fear. Just remembering them w-was enough. My… my clitty was stirring, and my ass… it had started to drool, j-just the tiniest bit…

"Now, Annie, if what I'm saying makes sense to you, why don't you try telling me what you really are again?"

"I…" I thought about giving in. About agreeing with her. About saying… I closed my eyes and let out a pained whimper. My clitty--and the spike it drove into my sweet spot from within, and my slowly salivating ass--had really liked that thought.

"You…"

I swallowed. "I-I… am… I am… n-not a slut."

Percy heaved an exaggerated sigh, but there was a light in her expression that was anything but disappointed. "Twice in one day? Gosh, you're gonna be worse than me one day."

And then, before I could piece together any of what that meant, she raised her pink flower--her holy symbol.

"Charm~!"

Every worry in the world melted away in the face of Percy's glorious beauty and her playfully parted pink lips and her hypnotic, glowing, golden eyes.

"Let's go find a nice doggy for you to befriend, huh~?"

I followed, feeling as if I were floating on a cloud, in Percy's wake as she sashayed through the depths of the Silverwood. We encountered a couple of snarling goblins, but she dispatched them with a simple Angel Down; I knew that spell, I noted with giddy excitement. She was just so powerful, and bubbly, and adorable…

"Here we go~!" Three timber-wolves paced out in front of us, creaking woodenly with every movement. "Glitterdust~!"

The wolf closest to Percy exploded in a puff of sawdust, and the other two wolves switched their focus to her, their hackles raised and growls building in their wooden throats.

"Annie, Seduce them~!"

If the beautiful Percy wanted it, then I did, too. I absently flicked through my abilities menu to remind myself of how, exactly, I used Seduce--I hadn't used it before. Dimly, I wondered why, if it was something that the gorgeous Percy wanted from me.

With the confidence of fulfilling my core purpose in life--obeying Percy's every request--I shook my wide, feminine hips, and touched my hand to my lips, and blew a sultry, sensual kiss that I was sure neither of the timber-wolves could resist.

I was right: the wolves immediately turned back to me, and there was an animal lust in them as they stalked my way now. A thrill of fear ran down my spine, but Percy's hand on my shoulder banished it. I had Percy with me. She was far too kind, too lovely, too beautiful to let anything that hurt me happen.

"Get on all fours, Annie," she murmured into my ear.

I did as she said, dropping to my knees and then bending over, my back arched and my shoulders supported by the slim pillars of my arms. My soul sang to be able to do what she wanted so primly, so easily.

"And the rope?"

I happily flicked through my inventory to equip the rainbow-coloured rope I'd bought last night. It popped into existence and immediately wrapped itself taut around me, binding my knees and ankles together, then my wrists and my elbows, so that any attempt to move would see me toppling over to my side.

"Now, who gets to breed you… who would you like?"

Percy was looking between the two wolves appraisingly; they had paused in their approach, and were looking at each other, growling softly as if to warn each other off. My heart fluttered a little--were they going to fight over me? A strange exhilaration stirred in my breast.

"Th-the biggest one," I chirped, knowing that it was exactly what she wanted me to say, after my… confession in the dungeon, a-and our previous conversation about me being a slut. A twinge of remorse struck me, when I remembered that--I'd been so rude to her, telling her that she was wrong! I had to work twice as hard to redeem myself for this!

"Good girl," she said, and there was an amused satisfaction in those words that made my clitty squirm with glee in its tiny cage. "Charm~~"

Reality piled into me with jackhammer force. I was on all fours in the middle of the Silverwood, my arms and legs tied, and there was a timber-wolf bearing down on me. Its companion stood idly to the side, its eyes glowing with a strange golden light.

"PERCY!!" I screamed, totally immobile in my self-binding ropes. "H-HELP!! ANYONE!!"

Percy came around to my front, cheeks puffed and lips pouty. "I don't get you, Annie. You're so easy to get into these situations. I don't think you even tried to resist my Charm once. But you're just so stubborn about pretending you don't like it~!"

"I-I'm not pretending!! P-please!!"

The wolf reared up and stumbled forward, and fell heavily across my back. Its two timber paws slammed into the dirt on either side of my arms with grave finality--and I whimpered, the sound pathetic even to my own ears, as the frantic jabbing of its fat, wooden shaft against my ass began. My Lustregown was still on, but its silk made for a very flimsy barrier between my recently-stretched asshole and getting raped by yet another monster.

"Then tell me the truth~!" Percy said, squatting down so that she was almost at eye level, and her magnificent bust was practically inches from my face. Her eyes were still glowing and golden, signifying that she was still in control of the second wolf.

"I-I'm a slut!! I'm a slut!!" I jabbered. Still the wolf bucked its hips against me, dry-humping me with frenetic intent.

Percy furrowed her brow in mock consternation. "But how do you know that?"

My heart stopped for a moment, and it was all I could do to sit there, still on all fours, mouth agape. "Wh-what?"

"I'm happy that you're willing to admit the truth, Annie, but you have to know why it's true, too, you know!" Percy leaned back, arms crossed over her gorgeous rack, with the all-knowing air of a university lecturer who had just said something so arcanely profound that nobody in her class could follow it. "So? Why are you a slut?"

Urgency--the urgency of having a wolf bucking its hips desperately against my ass--spurred my mind into action. I racked it for any scrap that would appease her before the wolf found its way through my robe.

"I-I like big cocks!! I-I love big cocks!!"

"Do you?" Percy tilted her head. "Well, you're about to get one, but you look so panicked about it~!"

My next words died in my throat, turning into a pathetic whimper. Now she wanted logic?! Percy pulled a face. "Maybe this will help."

She held up her holy symbol again, and panic welled up in my throat like a physical object. "Nononono--"

"Ethereality~!"

"H-huh?" I looked down at myself, at least as far as I could with my ropes still wrapped around my body. Had she seriously just freed me…? "Huh?"

My body was still as opaque as ever; there wasn't even a hint of the forest floor under my hands to be seen through it. The ropes, too… and then a breeze blew over us, and it was as chilling as if I were unclothed entirely. My robes. They had that ghostly translucence that Percy had given Layla, and later myself, back in the Breachwood. Which meant…

The timber-wolf thrust up against my backside once again, and this time its throbbing, scratchy cock found the touch of bare skin. With focus borne of a new breakthrough, it kept its hips close, maintaining the contact between our flesh, even as it drew its tip carefully along my curves. That vile point glided down into the soft valley between my cheeks… and then it hooked itself into something pink, and sore, and overwhelmingly wet.

"N-nHO!!" My cry of despair was pinched in half as, moments after discovering my asshole, the wolf atop me lunged forwards, spearing me in a single, decisive blow. "P-pleaseee!!"

I stared up at Percy. All pride and dignity forgotten, I tried my hardest to put on puppy-dog eyes for her.

She simply smiled back, unmoved. "Does that feel good, Annie? Is your slutty little butt happy with her new friend?"

My Aroused mate drew back, with all the fatal suspense of an archer pulling on his drawstring, and I let out another whimper in answer, knowing from experience exactly what was going to come next.

Smack. Smack smack smack smack smack. Smack smack smack. The wolf's thrusts came fast and hard, rhythmless and erratic, and its undercarriage slapped against my ass with such force and vigour that I was reminded of the Madam's spanking session, just a week ago. Smack smack!

And with the rapid-fire impacts against my buttocks came the lancing blows against my guts. The first one had already yanked me wide, wide, wide open, gaping me further than the Breach had managed with its mostly-liquid body, and the next dozen hammered this home, distending me further and harder. The walls of my asshole, already sensitive from all the ordeals of the last twelve hours, couldn't handle this hungry assault against them; a deep pleasure welled up inside me, and it seeped from every aching corner of my ass in the form of my juices.

Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes. I was getting wet. I was getting wet while a huge-dicked wolf was raping me. I was little better than one of those pornstars I used to jack it to online--worse!! At least they had chosen to be split open by some huge guy's cock! I-I, I was taking it up the butt a-against my will, and I was still wet! I-I was still--

"AhH!! HahhH!!"

With two particularly savage strokes, some of the deepest yet, the wolf found my deepest shame--my weak spot, my sweet spot, my… my mind reeled… my slut button. It took every fibre I had to clench my teeth and stop myself from blowing my tiny little load right then and there; Percy would doubtlessly titter at me, in that mercilessly merciful way she had, if I came here.

"Ohhh, are you holding on?" Percy gushed, putting her perfect little hands over her lovely little mouth. "Gosh~! I wonder if you'll manage to outlast your new boyfriend~!"

As she said the words, my clitty shook and shuddered. The wolf's thrusts weren't slowing down in the slightest, and now that it had discovered my little secret, each thrust felt as if the wolf were taking aim at it, harrying it and hunting it down like a wounded deer. Tightness--every time my bitch button got hit, I tightened up for a moment--it wanted me to be tight, tight, tight--

"AhH~! Fh-fhuck!! Hnghgh!!" Any attempts to plead with Percy were forgotten, in the face of my new contest of endurance against the wolf raping me. All my strength and my focus went to that convulsing spot inside me. Stop. Stop stop stop stop--

"HAHHHH!!"

"Ohhh!" Percy made a disappointed noise. Between my bound thighs, a warm trickle oozed its way free of my clitty and the cage that imprisoned it. "It's okay, Annie~! I used to lose to these guys, like, all the time."

With the first orgasm done, and the wolf still hungrily hammering away at my weak spot, there was no stopping my second, third, fourth, or fifth handsfree orgasms, either. I let out squeal after cry after moan after squeal. My head grew light, as if each pathetic squirt was taking more of my consciousness with it, and soon my thoughts danced senselessly on the verge of accepting my place as the timber-wolf's fuckhole. If Percy wanted it, I thought dimly, April would never be able to save me. She could make me be this wolf's sissy girlfriend for the rest of my time in this game.

And then, with one final, brain-shattering SMASH into my depths, the timber-wolf hammered its throbbing knot past my weeping entrance, and cum began to spurt up inside me.

"Nhoooo…"

I'd almost forgotten the sensation. Our gangrape by the goblins had been more than a week ago, now, and neither the Bitchbreaker nor the Breach could cum like a… l-like a proper penis could. But the memories all came flooding back as this wolf, my latest rapist, placidly held itself inside me and fired off string after string after string of goopy, thick, vile monster cum. It painted my insides, hot and heavy and still whimpering after the assault its cock had pressed on them, and I let out a drawn-out, miserable moan as once again my clitty drooled its contents over my thighs… or, at least, tried to. My poor balls had been wrung dry by wolves once again. A single wolf, this time. I was… I was getting weaker to them…

"Ooh!" Percy's voice, coming from somewhere to my side, made me startle. I would have toppled over, except for the timber-wolf still standing vigilantly over me… still holding its sperm inside my asshole with its huge, brambly knot. I trembled, and my spent clitty stirred. It was genuinely hoping to impregnate me. Had… had the VALKYRIE devs implemented that as a mechanic, too…?

A probing finger prodded at my bloated stomach. "He filled you up good, huh?"

"... y-yes," I moaned weakly, hanging my head shamefully. If I contradicted Percy…

"Well, have you learned your lesson now?" She crab-walked over to my front again, still hunkered down to my eye level.

I swallowed. "Y-yes…"

"Why are you a slut?"

B-because… because… "I… I cum when… p-please…"

Percy nodded along. "Mhmm, good start… you cum when…?"

"I cum when monsters rape me," I finished in a tiny voice.

The tooltip had appeared before I'd even finished speaking. Confessing. The word loomed larger than any of the others. Like it was a sin that the game had wanted me to own up to.

"Even caged and everything, too~!" Percy rose back up to her full (admittedly unimpressive) height, and beamed down at me. "Good girl, Annie~!"

With all the fanfare of plucking a single chocolate out of a box, Percy annihilated the wolf on top of me with a single Starlance, and then her own Charmed wolf. The sensation of my robes reappeared, her Ethereality spell having worn off now that there was no wolf in the way… I guessed.

"Levare~!" The command word for my rainbow-coloured rope was next; it sloughed itself off me, limp and lifeless. I looked down at it, seriously contemplating leaving it there, on the forest floor, but a prompting noise from Percy was all it took to snap my shaky resolve and make me pick it back up. It vanished back into my inventory; an Achilles heel that Percy, with her Charm spell, would always be able to exploit against me.

"Cleanse~!" She held her charm back towards me, and I blinked as the thick seams of wolf cum inside me disappeared, taking the uncomfortable, pregnant bloating of my belly along with it. I brought a nervous hand up to my face. Even the tracks my tears had left on my cheeks were gone. "Alright… I think that's everything, right? Ya ready to go back to Lumberg?"

"H-huh?" I gaped at her dumbly.

She sighed with theatrical weight. "You still want to come to that Conference, right?"

"I… I guess, y-yeah," I said shakily.

"Then come on!" She held out a dainty hand, and I took hold of it. Her skin was just so soft. I… I couldn't understand it. How could someone so angelic also be so… so… "Grand Odyssey~!"

Chapter 15: The Players' Conference

Chapter Text

The moment the world around me and Percy snapped back into shape, shoving us into the courtyard of Lumberg Church, something big and olive-skinned leapt on top of me, bowling me over with all the grace of a giant dog.

"Anne!!" April was atop me. Her fluffy white ears were perked up, her fluffy white tail danced furiously behind her, and her breasts--her jiggly, warm, perfect, firm breasts--were squished against mine. "Are you okay?!"

She peered down at me. Her emerald eyes were wet.

"Y-yeah," I choked. As lean and perfectly sculpted as her body was, it was still heavy, and right now April's full weight was squashing me into the grass of the Church lawn. Her rich scent didn't just fill my lungs; it flooded them, sweat and earth and muscle combined.

"O-oh, right," April said sheepishly. She bounced back to her feet, and helped me up after her. Despite myself, there was a twinge of disappointment inside me. Being buried under April's body like that was… intoxicating. By the stirring of my clitty and the warmth in my ass, I knew that the rest of my body agreed--something that was rapidly becoming rarer by the day in this stupid game.

"It was tough, but we managed to take it out~!" Percy had bobbed her way up to Layla, and now had her arms wrapped around her girlfriend's shoulders, totally ignoring (or secretly relishing) the way she had to stand on her tip-toes and squish herself up to Layla's broad chest in order to achieve this. Behind them, a gaggle of priestesses stood on the stairs up into the Church proper. They were dressed far more conservatively than Percy, in shapeless brown robes that touched the floor. Between scornful glances at Percy herself, they spoke amongst themselves in hushed voices; it was no wonder what they thought of her.

"You, um, you didn't get…" April was hunched over, having furtively lowered her head to my level, and she nodded meaningfully at my crotch area.

I swallowed thickly. I had. Twice. Thanks to Percy. But, with the same sort of dawning horror that had accompanied my last few confessions to Percy, I realised that I couldn't ever let April know about it. I-it wasn't just that it was humiliating, although of course it was-- 'Oh, April, I got beaten and then had my butt fucked in front of Percy twice in a row!'--but the chance that something really bad could happen, to either one of us, if I told April about Percy's part in it.

April would be apoplectic. The thought of her fury on my behalf made my heart burn with love for her, but… if it came down to a fight between April and Percy… well, one Charm would be enough.

The thought of April, Charmed and powerless, happily slurping away at Layla's cock in front of me made my knees wobble.

"U-um, n-no! P-Percy dealt with it, u-umm, before it could…"

Her concerned frown held for a tense moment, and I worried that she hadn't bought my story--but then she smiled. "Phew! That's great!"

I smiled back (convincingly, I hoped).

"Hey girls~!" Having apparently drank down enough of Layla's musk to tide her over for now, Percy beckoned us to join them--a summons that April was happy to follow. I went meekly along with her. Had to keep up the act.

"We've gotta track down the rest of our party," Layla grunted. There had been three beds in Room 33; if Layla and Percy were sharing one, which seemed… likely, that meant there were still two crazy-strong adventurers unaccounted for.

"So we'll be seeing you two lovely ladies later~!" Percy beamed. "Maybe at the Conference, hmm?"

A perturbed look passed over April's face at this comment--had she already figured it out?!--but it went away before, I could only hope, anyone but me noticed it. "Hopefully!"

And with that, Percy and Layla strode off, Percy's puffed-up rear swinging with pendulum intent.

"They're kinda weird, huh?" April said. I blinked. It was the meanest thing I'd ever heard her say about anyone, including the NPCs in this game.

"Y-yeah, I guess," I agreed weakly. "But, um, at least they helped us out…"

"Ohhh, that's right! Here!"

The tooltips of a host of new items flooded my vision.

"Oh, sheesh, sorry!" April's voice piped up from somewhere behind the wall of tooltips blinding me, and they vanished. "I, um, didn't realise they'd all pop up at once."

"Wh-what was all that?"

"The stuff Oggagoggy--Oggaggoga--Layla split with me! She, um, traded it to me after the nuns, ah, stunned me."

"The nuns stunned you?!"

April shrugged helplessly. "I really wanted to go back to the dungeon… y-you know, to save you…"

An enormous smile, as sunny and inexorable as the dawn, rose up on my face. April returned it, then snatched up my hand; my breath caught in my lungs.

"C'mon. Let's find somewhere to sit down and split all this stuff between us!"

Our wander through the streets of Lumberg revealed that every last bar, store, and quaint little cafe in our immediate vicinity was packed to its brim with the floating healthbars of other players. The city had seemed crowded when we returned to it yesterday; now it was just plain overfilled. I hadn't been to the Town Square much, but it seemed impossible that all these people could be crammed into it at the same time.

In the end, we wound up looping back to the Church, and finding a nice patch of grass in Lumberg Park--near the Tree of Caduceus--to sort out our inventories. We wound up splitting every stack of new items roughly in half. The Pseudodragon had dropped two separate 'legendary' items; a crafting material similar to the two Umberkar Hearts we'd collected from Orias the spider-boss so far, and a small, twisted length of pewter called a Protean Charm. After some discussion, including an explanation of what Protean meant from a friendly player visiting the Tree ('ever-changing and versatile,' he'd said), April took the charm, leaving me with the crafting material.

"Oh man, I can't wait to try out shape-shifting!" April gushed, clutching her new Protean Charm to her chest. "I bet you that's what this charm buffs." She gazed dreamily out at the line of non-magical trees that lined the park. "I bet I could turn into a full wolf."

I shrugged, carefully schooling my expression as thoughts of having April at my side, in the form of a snarling, ravenous timber-wolf--or one of the bigger wolves that lurked in that forest--circled around inside my head, and brought a fresh dribble of wetness to my still-sore asshole.

"H-have you checked the Tree?" I said. "That would be a druid spell, right?"

April nodded glumly. "I spent ages the other day, remember? Couldn't find anything. Well, there was some kind of tree form thingy, but… yeah." She trailed off, clearly a touch more unhappy with this rare deficiency than she was saying outright.

"Oh well!" she said with sudden brightness, shooting up to her feet and dusting off her skirt. "I think it's almost noon! Shall we go to the Conference now?"

I glanced up at the sun. Even after a week here, the brilliance of its light and the warmth of its rays on my skin still felt all too real, and I could only manage a moment looking directly at it before I had to shield my eyes with a delicate elfin hand. I didn't really know how to tell, but it looked like it could be almost noon.

"Yeah, alright."

The Town Square was an eclectic collection of stone and brick buildings clustered in a tight circle around a wide, charmingly cobbled clearing. The two gaps in this ring of buildings were opposite each other; they speared the square on Lumberg's main road, which had the simple name of Main Road. There was already a small crowd gathered there when we arrived from the Eastern Main, all of them players. Most of them had their attention on the Adventurer's Guild building, a three-storey and somewhat crooked tower nestled between two squat inns, whose bricks were a pleasantly creamy orange under the midday sun. In front of the building, a small wooden stage had been erected. There were no curtains draped over it, leaving its wooden struts and poles and posts exposed. It left the stage looking strangely naked, compared to the ones I'd seen in the real world.

April and I decided to set ourselves a short distance away from the existing crowd, just the tiniest bit closer to the stage than they were. On the stage stood a pair of players; 'Axeman44,' a stout, bearded man (a dwarf?) dressed in golden plate armour that seemed to catch the light of the sun and hurl it back at the sky; and 'Cadmius_Swiftfoot,' a bipedal lizard-man covered in greenish-silver scales and dressed in a mustard yellow three-piece suit that somehow looked more foreign and unbelievable just by existing than lizard-like features of the man (woman?) wearing it. Both of them had just over a hundred milestones each, putting them both squarely on the same horizon of power as Percy. Despite myself, I felt my skin crawl, and I had to fight down the urge to retreat all the way to the back of the clearing.

April tapped my shoulder.

"Look," she said in a hushed voice, nodding over at the road we'd just come down. A vast swell of people poured down it like a melting glacier. Stout dwarves, ethereal elves, towering orcs… people with the ears of random animals or tails or no unusual features at all, in every shape, size and colour under the sun. Even from the centre of the square, the pattering footfalls of hundreds of players blurred together in a dull roar. "Good thing we came a little early, huh?"

A similar crowd had appeared on the Western Main, and between them the square was soon packed tight with players of VALKYRIE. April had protectively clapped an arm over my shoulder when the crowd by us had swelled up to absorb us, and she kept me tight within her grasp even as people jostled past and around us in an effort to secure places right next to the stage. My heart fluttered stupidly under the firm strength of her grip; the recent spate of orgasms that had been wrung out of my caged clitty didn't stop it from struggling to stiffen back up once again. She was holding me. No matter how rough the crowd got, she wasn't letting anyone get between us for even a second. The delirious thought of reciprocating by curling one of my arms around her waist--the highest part of her body I could reach that wasn't her jiggling and definitely off-limits breasts--slipped into my mind, but I shook it away. Maybe… maybe I could lean i-into her, and rest m-my head a-against her side…?

"Ahem!" A booming voice from all around cut into my April-centred plans for subtle impropriety. The dwarf and the lizard-man on the stage had been joined by ten or so other players; the lowest Milestone count among them was still a towering 87. It was this player--a man so tall and slender that it looked like someone had grabbed him by the head and toes and stretched him out like taffy, with the pointed ears of an elf and a leathery suit of armour that gleamed with a dim purple aura--who had spoken, his voice magically enhanced so that he could be heard all around the square.

"Hello, everyone!" He strode to the front of the stage, beaming at the crowd that had gathered before him. His hair was long and blonde, and tied back in a refined ponytail that started at the top of his head. Despite this, there was a masculine edge to his jawline and cheekbones that left it clear--even without his deep, booming voice--that this was a man. I realised that one of my hands had drifted up to my own cheeks unconsciously, and I hurriedly brought it back down. Luckily, April was still rapt with attention for the elf on stage.

"My name--my real name--is Christoph." The name that hovered over his healthbar read BowOnlyAcc. "Today, I will be your humble host for the first-ever Players' Conference held in VALKYRIE… and hopefully the last one, too."

A thin round of laughter rose up from the crowd, and Christoph paused for a moment, still beaming.

"Today, the sole point of discussion will be The Bug." He nodded pointedly at one side of the stage, and a chorus of oohs and ahhs followed as, in front of the backdrop provided by the Adventurer's Guild building and the two inns neighbouring it, an enormous image of the game's logout symbol with a red X superimposed over it appeared. Illusion magic? In a game as exhaustive as VALKYRIE, that made sense as an option.

"For any power gamers among us who haven't even tried to log out for the last eight days," continued Christoph, to laughter far warmer than last time, "ever since the official launch of the game's open beta on the 11th of July, 2036, it has been impossible to log out of VALKYRIE." His delivery grew stiffer; this part had to have been rehearsed. "People affected by this bug are locked out from accessing any of the other applications installed on their Phantasm Vision, including the ones that should be able to run concurrently with VALKYRIE, like their Discord overlays and so on. We have, to date, encountered no exceptions; if you believe you are one, and can demonstrate the ability to log out and log back in again, please do come to the stage once this meeting has concluded."

The crowd remained mostly silent; this was all old news, and unpleasantly so at that. It seemed unlikely, this far into our captivity, that there was some undiscovered player who could get out of the game where the rest of us couldn't.

"And with all that old news out of the way, let's get into some new news." Christoph gestured at the other high-level players lined up behind him. "Our alliance here has been hard at work all over the continent, trying to figure out all of the changes between VALKYRIE's pre-release build and the open beta. We've been all the way to the far edge of the Badlands and back, and, well, that alone has revealed a lot."

"For those of you who haven't been playing since the pre-release builds, the original four playable regions were Geldreich, Rhodeia, Grungeld, and the Badlands. Thanks to the efforts of our Badlands investigation team, though, we've discovered that the invisible barriers blocking off all access to three new regions--Teliomere, Seng Wu and Tincherage--have been lifted. There have been tons of references to these three places all throughout the pre-release process, but we all assumed they'd be DLC content. Apparently, the devs were just saving them for the public beta."

Behind him materialised a giant map, of a continent unlike any I'd ever seen before. Most of the right half--the East, since it was a map--was lit up in green, with clear, chunky black borders between the different regions. The rest of it, and the west, was a bright orange.

"There's a fuckton of content here--more than anyone could get through in a week--so it's very possible that the source of our bug is something that was introduced in one of these new regions. If you're already fully Prestiged and looking for new challenges, consider hitting up the dungeons and world bosses there, especially in Seng Wu, which is absolutely massive."

He nodded to the side of the stage again, and the image behind him morphed once more. This time, it displayed an item--a sort of twisted ball of something grey and ashen, with a hint of something silver buried at its core--and a tooltip, exactly like every other item tooltip in VALKYRIE.

"Now… this is an item that appeared in the inventories of every player with a hundred Milestones--or more--when the open beta was launched, and we think it will continue to appear for players who achieve a hundred Milestones going forwards, as like a reward for getting that high. We still haven't figured out what effect it actually has yet, if it even has one, but what we have figured out is the secret behind its flavour text."

The image behind Christoph changed. The hint of silver was gone, replaced by something amber, and parts of the tooltip were different, too.

"So far, we've identified nine variants of this tooltip," continued Christoph, and the image behind him changed once again, displaying nine separate lines of text. "Leaving out the excerpts from the holy books at the top, and the stuff about the fragments and ashes and yada yada… and after rearranging them into rhyming couplets…"

Hosted souls ensnared elsewhere, lost across time.

Their futures unwritten, their deaths, defied.

Walk all Tiresia, where none dare to tread.

Grasp secrets arcane, pocket tomes unread.

Face challenges cruel, brave the darkest Abyss.

Hone power on power, wits upon wits.

Mark their stars nine, from his daughters reborn.

To take from black dawning a shimmering morn.

All this be done shall the contract revoke.

"It looks like the devs set up an epic prophecy plotline to celebrate the release of the open beta. I won't bore you guys with all the interpretation and theorising that we went through this week--" he gave a knowing look at one of the high-level players on his left, although it was hard to tell which one, exactly-- "but our overall theory is that nine players have been randomly assigned as 'Chosen Ones,' so to speak, each one corresponding to a different member of the Nine Sisters."

The Nine Sisters? Were these the sisters that Ariana was the Black Sister of? My heart quivered at just the thought that there were eight other beings just like her out there. I knew it was just a game, at least on a rational level, but… what I'd felt in that bedroom had been anything but rational. The Phantasm Vision couldn't just reach into my brain and activate every single signal for fear at once… could it?

"What do these 'Chosen Ones' have to do? It's not super clear. There's a lot of stuff about getting stronger, so maybe they have to reach a certain Milestone level or hit Prestige… and then… the 'black dawning' happens. Our best guess about that is that it's some kind of global event that gets triggered when all the Chosen Ones are gathered together, or something along those lines. Again, it's not made particularly clear, but a global event does sound suitably epic for a 'prophecy' like this."

"What we have cleared up is a way to identify the 'Chosen Ones'. A couple of days ago, one of the parties under our alliance went to the bottom floor of the Shattered Tesseract and spoke with the goddess of that dungeon, and she confirmed that she, and all of her sisters, would tell her Chosen One if she ever met them." A fleeting grimace passed over Christoph's face, short enough that someone further away might have missed it completely. "Of course, nobody in that party was her Chosen One."

"It's very possible that this 'black dawning' event is what's keeping us stuck in the game. A bug in a global event would be the logical cause for a global bug, after all! Besides the entirely new regions, these Fragments and the related lore are the biggest change that's happened between the last pre-release and the beta--they've done some pretty big changes to the language models that the Sisters use when you clear a dungeon if you have one in your inventory--so if it's messed with the logout function somehow, perhaps triggering it and clearing it is the way to get free."

"To that end, we'd like to start introducing all of you--" he spread his arms wide, indicating the crowd-- "to the Sisters! They'll show up after you clear the very bottom floor of some of the most lore-relevant dungeons in this game, and while that usually takes end-game tier characters and equipment, one of the nice things about VALKYRIE is that end-game characters can help out newbs, no problem."

The visual behind Christoph changed again. We were looking at the map of the continent again, this time without any of the highlighting--instead, a collection of labels were strewn around the map, all in the region that had been green before. The one in the middle read Lumberg, and a small image of the Tree of Caduceus sat on top of it.

Starlight

Evershroud

Everwatch

Sunsteel

Lifespring

Direblood

Might

Fellspark

Soulshape

"If you could all take a moment to check your Milestone tracks--not the Milestones, the Milestone tracks, and see which dungeon corresponds to your top track… good." A sea of hands went up in front of the sea of faces around us, people browsing to the required menu on their invisible HUDs, but mine and April's remained in place--and my heart skipped a beat as I remembered that for one of April's big, reassuringly muscled arms, that place was around me.

"What are you?" whispered April, as all around us the low murmurs of conversations between party-members sprang up. "I'm Lifespring. Not too far." I wasn't sure I agreed with her--it was more than halfway down the river. That was much further away from Lumberg than the label reading Direblood in the middle of Silverwood, which had to be the Breachwood. If Direblood corresponded to Ariana… well, dire was about right.

"Starlight, I think," I said, scouring the map for it. I still remembered the word from when I'd checked my new Milestone tracks--or at least tried to--the other day, and Percy had given me a still-recent refresher of it, claiming to be a Starlight Priestess herself.

"Oh… oh, that's on the mountains," April said, pointing it out for my benefit. Her dubious tone worried me for a moment, but it was actually quite close to Lumberg, all things considered, unlike the label reading Everwatch that was all the way on the eastern edge of the continent.

Then it occurred to me just how dedicated this game was to realism, and that it wouldn't be weird if a dungeon themed after Starlight was as close to the stars as possible, and that we might have to trudge all the way to the top of a life-sized mountain by ourselves to get to that dungeon.

I reached out for a comforting straw. "M-maybe someone will teleport us?"

"Oh… maybe!" April said, spirits buoyed back up by the suggestion.

The murmurs around us continued for a few more minutes. April had fallen silent, and was staring intently at the back of the person in front of her's head, probably looking through a map or her inventory or something. I busied myself by trying to muster up the nerve to rest my head against her side, like I'd thought of earlier.

"Okay!" boomed the voice of Christoph again, long before I had even finished imagining the welcoming softness of her body against my forehead, and he strode back out to the front of the stage, obscuring the bottom of the map. "Hopefully everyone's figured out where their dungeons are. If you're ever in doubt, you can always ask an NPC at the Guild here for a refresher."

"Please keep in mind that this is just an optional thing for you all to try out, for the time being. The way I see it, if we're right, this could help us all get back out of the game--and if we aren't, well, you'll have some fun while we wait for the devs to finally figure out how to get us out. And now, just to wrap things up here--I've talked long enough--I'll just let you all meet the lovely people who'll be helping you clear these dungeons!"

"Introducing… Team Starlight!" With those words, a grim premonition percolated out of thin air and dropped into my stomach. High-level dungeon clear--Starlight--that meant--

"Hiiii~!" A pink-haired sissy, buxom breasts and badly strained nun costume and all, took centre stage, flanked by three hulking behemoths. Behind them, the map of the continent morphed into a crystal clear image of the four of them, which shifted to match their every move. Layla was on Percy's right, radiating all the gormless menace of her orcish body; and to Percy's left stood a musclebound, lizard-faced and scale-covered man of the same species as the player in the mustard-coloured suit from earlier (were these beastkin like April, or the 'dragonborn' from all those tooltips in the Breachwood?), and an equally muscular, hairless man who might have been human, except for the fact that his skin was an ashen grey.

All three of these hulks were barely clothed, exposing most of their rippling musculature to the crowd at large. Each pair of shaggy animal-pelt leggings struggled to contain its own very visible--and very long--bulge. Percy, it seemed, had a type.

"My name is Persephone, and we'll be waiting for you up at the top of Mount Zenith~! If you need lil ol' me to come pick you up with a teleportation spell, please just shoot me a Message spell, and I'll be right there for you~!"

There was a furious round of applause as she waltzed back off the stage, her retinue stalking along behind her. I caught sight of Christoph, off to the side, his brow crinkled with some bemusement at the standing ovation. The player next to him--Axeman44, the dwarf who'd been on the stage before it had all started--elbowed him in the side.

"Annnnd Team Evershroud!"

Over the next few minutes, each team was given its turn to say their piece, and though there was some applause after each one--Percy had set a precedent, after all--it never got as fervent as it had for Percy's team.

The dwarf in the golden armour was part of Team Sunsteel, which was apparently mostly comprised of dwarves (except for that lizard-person in the mustard yellow suit); he promised as succinctly and stoically as possible that his team would do their best, to a chorus of curt nods from the rest of his party. Team Lifespring, who April paid special attention to--it looked like she was trying to commit all of their faces, character names, and Milestone counts to memory right then and there--was a far more diverse bunch, at least in terms of races. There was a tall red lady with devil horns coming out of her forehead and an hourglass figure… a small, grizzled man in muddy green robes who might have been a dwarf, except that he was nowhere near as stout… a hairless, uh, person with rubbery sea-green skin and what looked like tentacles sprouting from the middle of their face, just beneath their eyes… and a pair of lithe, skinny and lightly armoured girls with two different sets of animal ears. Beastkin like April, probably.

"We'll take you for drinks in Forthport afterwards," said the red lady with a roguish smile. Her in-game name was Hoodwink, and she had almost as many Milestones as Percy. "Their stuff's just as good as in real life."

The other groups came out and introduced themselves--honestly, at this point there were just too many new faces and places to keep track of--and then, just when it was all blurring into an endless parade that threatened never to end, Christoph stepped back out.

"Alright, well, that was everything! Let's keep our fingers crossed that none of this ends up mattering and we're out in the next thirty minutes… but if it doesn't, well, we hope to see all of you guys out in the world of Tiresia!"

And with that, so ended the first-ever players' conference organised by the Escaping VALKYRIE Alliance. They had an idea of the plan going forward, and an idea of what to do was far better than nothing. It wasn't the big, decisive knockout that any of us had been hoping for, but as April pointed out later that evening, just before she left for her nightly church visit… if it was so easy, we would have been free by now.

Chapter 16: Interlude I: An Evening Stroll

Chapter Text

The sun was setting. Already the vibrant fingers of dusk were splayed across the sky behind it, and Tiresia's twin moons--copper Aleph and silver Asphodel--peeked through the clouds massed on the edge of the horizon. Under the twilight they cast, the cobbled streets and sturdy houses of Lumberg were bathed in a calming orange glow.

Just past the sunset-tinged greenery of Lumberg Park, April Cascelli looked up at the sky and took a deep breath. The senses of her in-game body were far sharper than those of her real self. She wasn't sure what the exact cause was--did beastkin have better senses on account of being descended from animals, or was it because of her carefully laid out stat distribution, or was this just a consequence of the Vision tapping directly into her brain's sensory regions to create this living, breathing world around her?--but just standing still and thinking for a moment was enough to present her with a wealth of information.

With her nose, for example, she could smell the faint hints of sex that still wafted up from her friend and adventuring partner's crotch, though they'd died down considerably since noon that day. A timber-wolf… and, though the thought made her queasy, a scent that distinctly reminded her of the Breach, or at least that half-second whiff she'd gotten on the outside of Percy's prism before it had one-shot her. Anne hadn't said anything, even when prompted… so April hadn't pried. But she'd noticed.

"Alright! See you in the morning!"

She waved Anne goodbye, and didn't let the grimace creep up on her face until Anne was fully turned away. It had taken her a while to notice--she didn't usually use peoples' names when she was talking directly to them--but at some point during their first week in the game, she'd stopped being able to say, or even think, Anne's real name. His name in the real world. She still knew it, or at least she couldn't possibly see how she'd be able to forget it after how long they'd known each other, but… she couldn't call upon that knowledge. Was this just part of The Bug? Or was it something more… sinister?

She turned towards the Church and set off. To her keen in-game ears, telling when Anne would be out of eyeshot was child's play; she'd developed a keen sense for Anne's ginger, mincing foot-steps, and just their sound alone was enough to put the image of him wobbling his widened hips down the streets of Lumberg straight into her head. She kept up the charade most of the way down her street, until Anne's footfalls were just barely audible… and then turned a hard right, ducking straight into the trees that lined Lumberg Park. She checked the sky again. A little bit of the sun was still peeking out from behind the horizon to the west. Good.

More briskly than before, now that she was no longer listening out for Anne and had a fresh reminder of the time limit she had to get out of the city, April cut across the grassy field that ringed the Tree of Caduceus, and emerged from Lumberg Park on the side closest to the bridge out of the city. As she crossed over it, she met every guard on the way with a cheery wave and a smile that was only slightly tense; they returned it, waving her on. At this point, every last one of them had seen her on her way out of the city for her nightly wanderings. She'd already heard all the warnings about entering the Silverwood after dark--and they knew, from prior experience, that she would be fine. It was impressive how quickly the AI in this game could learn new things.

There was still a thrill that ran through her body when she stepped off the cobblestone patio at the end of the bridge, and onto the raw, beaten dirt track that led into the forest. Adrenaline… and just the tiniest little bit of excitement. She strode onwards.

When at last the sun vanished beneath the edge of the world, leaving behind only a canvas of dull embers for the twin moons opposite it, an icon appeared on April's HUD. A pink heart, superimposed over a red square.

The next breath April drew was shaky and hot. Feral urges welled up from somewhere deep inside her, urges beyond words and reason. A still-new hunger began to gnaw at her, screaming at her to sate it. Not one from her stomach, no. This was the fearsome hunger of her womb.

Her fingers moved with blinding speed over her inventory, and her clothes vanished, revealing the toned, richly sculpted body that lay beneath. It was not all too different from the body of the true April Cascelli, give or take a pair of fluffy white wolf ears and a fluffy white wolf tail. A little larger, a little more muscular… a little smellier, despite her nightly baths…

April howled towards the sky, an action that came as easily to her new body as perking up her ears or wagging her tail. She perked up her ears. Behind her, her tail wagged itself, betraying her anticipation to an absent audience.

A chorus of howls came in response.

She smelled them before she saw them. Their dark, earth-ridden musk felt to her like a brilliant neon sign proclaiming the wolves' approach in advance, and if she focused for just a moment, she could tease out exactly which wolves were coming tonight. At the front of the pack was the enormous silver wolf she'd taken to calling "Lord Argent" in her head. She bit her lip. If he was taking the lead tonight… the other wolves might not get a turn with her.

He materialised from the trees before her; a towering, silver-coated hull of shaggy, wild-worn fur and muscle. His bared fangs, some as long as her head, glittered darkly in the darkness, wicked, gleaming stars against a red night sky. April's breath caught. He was beautiful.

The other wolves she'd caught whiffs of fanned out behind him, their amber eyes fixed on her with ancient, predatory intent. Argent was the only silver wolf tonight; the rest were dire wolves, and direly dwarfed by the silver beast at their vanguard. Low, suspicious growls filled the night air, and a few of the wolves pawed at the forest floor, as they waited for her to make her first move.

"Moonlight," April murmured, gesturing at Argent. A small ball of yellow light--somewhere between the light of the silver moon and the light of its copper sister--floated from her hand and phased harmlessly through the wolf's temple. Immediately, the growls ceased, and the tension in the wolves' hulking frames faded.

A faint rain pattered over April--Argent and the other wolves were too far to feel it, and didn't even blink or flinch back at the sight or the sound of her new Milestone. They were waiting for something else, now. So close to its prize, April's empty womb gave her an aching, longing command… and she sank down to her knees, keeping her sea-green eyes on the silver wolf in front of her, following that command to its final, trembling end.

Some of the wolves were panting. Still she kept her eyes on Argent, as she twisted her body around, and presented him with her naked rear, her body tight with anticipation. She lowered her upper body, planted her broad hands firmly in the soil in front of her. Some instinct, buried deep inside her, perhaps alongside the one that let her howl, compelled her to let out a low, gasping whine.

Only then did Argent move. He lurched forward, and though his body was simply titanic, there was a sinewy efficiency, an elegance to his approach. One moment, he was still; the next, he had pounced on top of April, mounting her in a single bound. Beneath him, April let out a sensual moan. His hot weight lay atop her, holding her down with all the dominating pressure of the earth. His shaggy coat pricked at her skin; his scent, already so familiar and enthralling, flooded her mind. The easy heaving of his barrel-wide chest pushed out against her back, making her bare breasts swing back and forth with each breath he took. Lower down, the intimate contact of his waist against hers drew hungry wetness from what felt like the very depths of her womb. It was salivating for him.

And then her red-hot prize found its way between her taut thighs. Even with her legs spread as far apart as her doggy position would allow, it was a tight fit for Argent's steamy, steely member. The wolf sawed himself back and forth fiercely against April's underside, scraping eagerly against the outside of her pussy, and she could scarcely contain her heart-pounding excitement. Just the touch of his heat against hers was reminder enough of his size. Shivers raced up and down her spine with each hungry, dry thrust, with each drooling splatter Argent rubbed free of her desperate little cunny, until--at long last--with a brain-melting spike of pleasure--

"AhH~~!!" April let out a squeal that wasn't quite human, and wasn't quite animal--

the wolf speared her on its tip. It was a thin, pointed thing, unlike the flat-headed mushroomy things of the goblins, but as Argent forced himself forward, driven on by the excitement of finding the source of all April's lust and eagerness, it rapidly grew wider. It was all April could do to cling on to sanity as the beast's vast heat parted her lips for her, that single, fat column of flesh easily carving its place inside her body, helped along its path by her sheer wetness. It was already throbbing, the cock's thick, purple veins pulsing up against its new home, pumping still more heat and length inside her.

Argent's tip dug deep into the back of her vagina, already far deeper than any human April had been with could go. But she flexed herself around it, encouraging it to come further in, feeling with her thighs and her cheeks that there was still far more wolf to go.

"HahhHH!!"

Even though she'd been ready for it, expecting it, aching for it, there was still a burst of pain as Argent slammed himself past her sphincter and his pointed tip embedded itself in her womb. That soon melted away, however, as he fed more and more of his length into that forbidden part of her, and her sphincter settled into its new role as a second layer of cock holster for her animal mate. The rest of her womb followed, stretching with intimate ease around its new partner, clinging to it, inviting it further in.

Argent pulled back, tugging her womb with him, and April let out a low whine. He stabbed forward, jerking her whole body forwards, and she gasped. Soon, he was sawing his length back and forth inside her, never quite prying his head free of her womb's iron grip, drawing gasps and cries and moans and whimpers from his all-too-willing mate. Words failed her altogether--not that they would be any use for the enormous animal fucking her brains out.

Low growls rang out from around her. The other wolves, though they were still hanging back respectfully from the mating pair at the centre, were growing restless, and a few of the bigger wolves eyed Argent mutinously. April, most of her attention still on the enormous beast spearing her womb over and over and over again, wondered dimly if they were about to attack--but a chilling howl from atop her rebuffed them, and those that had voiced their challenges slunk to the very outskirts of the little clearing, heads lowered. April moaned in contentment. Her mate for the night had staked his claim over her, and the other members of the pack had respected it.

She was well and truly his bitch.

As if just recognising this himself, Argent picked up his pace, hammering himself against the very back of her womb with increasing zeal. April could only bite her lip, and yip up at her mate, and try to roll her hips around him as something even hotter and wider than his enormous base rapped against her overstuffed cunt. His fullness still hadn't forced its way inside her yet--while her pussy and womb had slurped up all of his cock, there was still the bulbous ball of heat and hardness at its base waiting for its turn to enter her. His knot.

Just the memory of her last few knottings was enough to make April arch her rear further up, and press her upper body closer down to the ground, in a mindless attempt to spread herself even wider, wide enough to admit this new contender. Her tongue lolled freely from between her lips, hot and thick and drenched in spittle--her knees slid ever-so-slightly further apart, bringing her body even lower down. She let out another whine, this one pure animal submission, begging wordlessly for mate's next gift.

Argent delivered. With thrusts that struck deeper inside her womb than ever before, each one physically pushing past her limits and leaving them distended, expanded for Argent's use alone, the knot began to breach her sultry pussy lips. He raised a single paw with all the meaty heft of a greatsword and planted it right in the middle of April's heaving back, pinning her torso, breasts and all, to the forest floor. And then, with this new leverage, his knot punched itself the rest of the way inside her.

If April had been able to see her own nethers at that moment, she would have seen her sticky, juice-stained mound bulging precipitously, and just the faintest streak of red flesh joining her pussy lips--now a lurid scarlet of its own--to the furry underside of her animal partner. Every other part of the wolf's undercarriage was ensconced safely inside her, where--as the wolf returned to humping her, now with his knot scraping itself messily over the gooey entrance to her pussy--it finally drove an orgasm out of her.

"HnahhHHHHH~!!" April cried out to the starry night sky, arms and legs convulsing, ears and tail twitching with glee, as the lustful wave crashed over her. For a moment, the Aroused icon on her HUD vanished--but it instantly reappeared, seeming almost brighter than before, with the wolf's next thrust forwards. With his head in her womb, most of his length abusing her tight little passage, and his knot embedded on her doorstep, there were precious few nerves that the wolf wasn't stimulating with each strike inside her. She came several more times in the next few minutes, writhing and squealing on his powerful length, her last few scraps of self-restraint obliterated in the wake of the pure pleasure that surged over her.

And then, at long last, she felt it.

Her pussy, now intimately acquainted with the bruising, steely mass of Argent's knot inside her, twitched in time with its pulses, even as it rushed forwards, then was dragged back, then hurtled forwards again. The telltale sign that it was coming. Acting on instincts from time immemorial, April squeezed herself tighter still, wrapping Argent's base in a forceful embrace. The throbbing mounted and mounted. The idea that she was sitting on top of a volcano, about to receive its burning load, flitted across her mind--

"AWOOOOOO!!"

Argent let out an explosive howl; and then, from the tip buried all the way at the very back of her hungry womb, a thick glut of warm, copious seed burst out inside her. April could only moan blissfully, pinned down by his paw on her back and his cock spearing her cunt and his whole body clamping down possessively over hers, as that steamy tide rushed to fill her womb, and then overflowed into her happily aching entrance, all the way until it found the unmoving plug of his knot inside her. Full, full, she was completely full--and still his essence poured out into her.

"Hhhahhhhh~~!!" A new pleasure, duller than her multiple orgasms or the explosive bursts of excitement that accompanied her knotting or her womb-fucking, washed over her as her tummy began to swell, pushed out from within by the still-climbing pressure of the cum building up inside her.

April swiped the tooltip that had appeared away, as on her back Argent--displaying the same stamina he'd shown on her last night with him--began to move once more. His cock, mired in the sea of his own animal sludge sealed inside her, ground inexorably forwards, and soon the Silverwood once again rang with the wanton moans and squeals of April Cascelli.

Argent rode her five more times before his thirst for beastkin pussy was slaked. It was with a lewd pop, and the audible splattering of his lumpy, steaming cum all over the forest floor between her legs, that he tugged his knot free of her body and dismounted April. As he sauntered away, one of the dire wolves started for her, eager to take his place. April, her heat at this point more than satisfied, rose shakily to her feet, ignoring the surprised and suddenly wary growls of the wolves around her, and muttered, "Wild Aspect."

The creature she had in mind was a pixie; more specifically, the sepsie that inhabited these woods. She pictured its slender green body, and the four iridescent wings that sprouted from its back. Her whole body shrank down in an instant, snapping with elastic clarity to its new size--still far larger than a real sepsie, which perhaps would have reached up to Anne's knee height--and four evenly spaced pinpricks of heat lit up her back.

Bzzt.

Two new pairs of diaphanous wings, dew-stained and lined with faint scales, emerged from her body to kiss the cool night air. April fluttered them experimentally. She couldn't use them to fly, much to her disappointment, but having them more than doubled her Dexterity, which made the next part of her evening routine much easier.

She dropped down into a sprinter's crouch. Her wings blurred behind her, giving off a high-pitched whine that almost could have belonged to a jet engine. And then, in a burst of speed, she rocketed out from the midst of the wolves, straight through just the slightest gap in the direction of Lumberg. By the time her Stamina fell to the red, the frustrated yelps and barks of the wolves she'd left behind were a world away, leaving her free to slow to a gentle power walk.

In minutes, the bridge was in sight, though she made sure to stay in the undergrowth. She was still naked, and although the sepsie-aspect she wore had changed her appearance considerably, she doubted it would fool the guards on the bridge. Even though they were just NPCs, she didn't want to be seen in that state by anyone! Maintaining her cover, she slunk her way down to the riverside, and slipped into the cool water of the River Samson.

Her body rubber-banded back to its original size, her wings melting away behind her, and she spent a few contented minutes cleaning off all the leaves and dirt and… fluids… that her adventure in the forest had tagged her with. It took her some effort not to let out a gentle sigh that might catch the attention of someone on the bridge… and, when she hooked an olive finger into her pussy to dig out some of the thickest clumps of wolf semen inside her, she almost had to bite her tongue to restrain an impassioned moan. It was electrifying--all this caked cum sloshing around inside her pussy, inside her womb, should have been disgusting… but instead, she could barely keep herself from touching herself over it.

She eased herself out of the water without any further incident, and towelled herself off with a towel she kept in her inventory for exactly this purpose, and re-equipped her full outfit. She gave herself a once-over. There was still a warm ball of sludge in her stomach, rounding it out as if her pregnancy was already a couple of months in… and, not for the first time, she entertained the thought of skipping her Church visit and letting it go on. It was all just a game, after all. Taking hits to her Dexterity and Wisdom wasn't the greatest thing in the world, but she was fairly Strength-focused at the moment…

She shook her head. No. Anne was still… shaken up by his experience with the wolves, and if she started showing, he was sure to be curious about it, and there was just no way she'd ever be able to tell him that she'd been secretly having sex with wolves in the woods behind his back. It would just be too awful for him… even if he was sort of the reason she'd gravitated towards them to begin with.

Her hands were straying towards her pussy again. She put them firmly back at her side and schooled her expression back into something approaching decency, rather than the lewd, lip-biting desire that had just come over her, then strode up to the bridge.

"Hello! Good night!" The night guards waved her along in grim, professional silence, only acknowledging her greetings with curt nods. Riding the afterglow of her activities, April practically danced along the short street past the Tree of Caduceus, and through the humble courtyard of Lumberg Church neighbouring it. In the gentle yellow light cast by the twin moons up above, the little brass flowers that dotted the courtyard almost seemed to glow with their own light.

"Ah. Miss April." The matronly Ms. Humbert was not surprised when April pushed through the front doors of her Church. The other priests and priestesses, knelt in prayer on either side of her, didn't even open their eyes or pause in their chanting. "Another cleansing, I presume?"

April nodded her head awkwardly. Ms. Humbert sighed and set the string of beads she held aside, then clicked her tongue with a very specific intonation that April's sharp ears immediately recognised.

"Of course, Mother." One of the priestesses--Sister Blythe, April thought with a smile--rose to her feet. There was a gentle, if slightly indulgent, smile of her own on her freckled face as she turned to April and dipped her head in acknowledgement. "Please come with me, Miss April."

She led April down a corridor joined to the main hall. Despite its narrowness, it was laden with paintings and reliefs of historical scenes that were fast becoming very familiar to April, even if she had no idea what events they were portraying. Candles set in sconces at regular intervals shed a warm, flickering light over them, and for some reason she was reminded of the colour of the brass flowers out in the courtyard.

At the end of the corridor was a rich wooden door; and through this door was a small stone chamber. In the centre of the chamber was a small stone tub, mounted on a fluted pedestal, almost like a birdbath; but unlike a birdbath, the water within the tub shone with silvery light, that painted all the muted amber stone around the room a gleaming, creamy white.

Without needing to be told, April put both hands in the tub, wincing as a fiery sensation bit at her skin. The water hissed threateningly, though instead of bubbling, it clouded over, filling with a murky, twisting mass of black that only seemed to thicken and darken as she kept her hands submerged in it.

"Oh, dear," said Sister Blythe, looking into the tub at her side. "That was quite a lot of sin."

April squirmed in place, more put off by embarrassment than the scalding heat over her hands. "Sorry…"

"Not to worry, dear!" Sister Blythe patted her on the arm reassuringly, about the only place she could reach. "This is what we make all this holy water for! But, um…"

Her voice dropped down to a whisper, and April had to crane her neck down to hear the next part. "If you're going to keep doing this, I may have a more convenient solution at hand."

There was a melodious chime, and the black muck that filled the tub of holy water boiled away, leaving behind the original gleaming silver… although the glow that radiated from it was far dimmer than before, and new shadows now loomed from the margins of the stone room.

"K-keep doing this?" April stuttered, her mind for a moment seizing on the possibility of somehow denying what it was that was getting her pregnant every night.

Sister Blythe gave her another smile, somehow both understanding and admonishing in a single crinkling of her lips.

"Okay, um, sure," April said, giving up on her weak attempt at deception, with some chagrin. "Wh-what is it?"

Sister Blythe produced a small copper chain from her robes. From it dangled a peculiarly smooth and round gem, coloured a honey-like amber so rich and dark that it bordered on opaque. If April squinted, she could almost see a black speck in the very centre of it.

"It's a little keepsake we make, mostly for women in your… situation. It keeps the womb in stasis. It's very effective at preventing unwanted, ah, accidents."

She held it out to April as she spoke, and when April touched it, it vanished into her inventory like monster drops and foraged herbs did.

"Oh, wow!" April said, looking up. "These are rare! You shouldn't have…!"

Sister Blythe waved away her babbling with a serene shake of her head. "It was brought to us this morning by another adventurer, and I daresay we do not have much use for them at our Church."

She winked in a distinctly un-priestly fashion, and April giggled involuntarily.

"If you would like, I suggest you try your hand at some artificing of your own. The recipe for a Timeless Seal should be available in any beginner's artificing tome, and, being an adventurer, you shouldn't find it too hard to get your hands on the ingredients."

April gave her a resolute nod. "Right. I can make my own and pay it forward!"

"'Pay it forward?'" A pleasant expression crossed Sister Blythe's face. "I quite like that. I may start using it."

And with that, April marched out from Lumberg Church, a new (well, secondhand) Timeless Seal to her name. It would take some finagling--she didn't want it to trap any status conditions she contracted in battle the next day, or her nightly Aroused status--but once she had a pregnancy trapped, she'd never have to go in for a cleansing again.

She paused for a moment.

Was it bad that she kind of wanted her permanently stalled pregnancy to be Lord Argent's…?

Chapter 17: The Plunge

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

It had been almost a week since the Conference--and since April and I had agreed that we'd go along to our respective dungeons and discover whether or not one of us was a 'Chosen One' required to trigger the black dawning event. With our finances more than secure (thanks to our Percy-assisted deep run into the Breachwood), we'd spent most of that week holed up in the Adventurer's Guild library. The room was surprisingly well-appointed, and lined with shelves that stretched all the way up to its roof, which was high enough up that even April had plenty of headroom to spare. Over its doorway, in print that looked dangerously close to Comic Sans, read the slogan, 'Knowledge is an adventurer's best friend!' Thanks to it, we'd learned quite a bit about the place we were heading to.

The Lifespring dungeon that had been marked at the Conference was called 'Dryad Falls.' At five floors deep, it was one of the longest dungeons in the Supernum valley. It lay along the north bank of the River Samson--the same river that Lumberg's bridge went over--in the middle of a rough patch of wilderness known simply as 'the Reedlands.' The monsters there were small and scrappy; little poisonous green sepsies like there were in the Silverwood, but also swarms of annoying monster bugs, ambush-type monsters that resembled hollow reeds, and scraggly semiaquatic things that looked like a rabid cross between a fox and a beaver. Bandit activity was also high in the area, according to the guild receptionist, a grizzled older lady with a scar over one eye and a left arm that looked and moved exactly like any other left arm--if you discounted the fact that it was made entirely out of wood.

"You girls had best keep yer wits around yerselves," she'd told us, in a burr that I tentatively placed as south of somewhere. "Two pretty little things like ye'll be a right dog-eared snack to summa the most unsavoury types out there."

At this point, any righteous indignation I might have felt at being called a 'pretty little thing' was quashed by the suspicion that I had, in fact, been treated as a 'dog-eared snack' several times already.

There was also, to April's delight, some kind of skill trainer in the region--an NPC who would teach players certain skills, or help them hone their stats in certain ways, if the players helped them with a quest or outright paid them for their trouble. I was uncomfortably reminded of the Madam at the Lustrous Heart by April's description of the mechanic, with her knowledge of humiliating Milestones and desire to 'train' me into being a girl… but I kept my mouth shut, and not just because I was risking having my clitty pinched off. This skill trainer just so happened to be a druid, and so April had her heart set on meeting her.

"I think we're ready!"

My clitty squirmed in its cage as April turned to me. Her green eyes had taken on a hint of azure since the day after the Conference, thanks to a new Milestone that she'd picked up. A small amber ball had joined the Protean Charm on a chain around her neck. As almost everything did, they looked good on her. I managed not to let my uncomfortable arousal creep up on my face, but my ass was another story--just the realisation that April had her attention on me specifically was enough to get the slightest trickle of my juices to leak into my frilly pink underwear.

"Um, hello?" April cocked her head, and I suddenly realised she'd been talking to me.

"Oh, umm--" I looked wildly down at the desk we were sitting at, and saw she had one finger on a map of the Reedlands. Tracing out the path for our adventure? "Y-yeah, that sounds good! Let's do that!"

She beamed at me, and I couldn't help but beam back. No matter how long this ridiculous Bug was going to last, and no matter how many indignities and humiliations and tribulations the game was going to put me through, at least I had April--sweet, kind, dependable, clever, gorgeous April--with me.

"Tomorrow it is, then!" she proclaimed.

"Tomorrow," I squeaked.

"Mhm! First thing in the morning," April said. "That's… fine, right?"

I tried to settle my nerves. "I, um, yes!"

On its own merits, going on a camping trip with April for days on end was an exquisite proposition; the kind of offer that would have made me chomp at the bit if she ever made it in the real world. But we were in VALKYRIE--and in VALKYRIE, I had my nightly… lessons at the Lustrous Heart. It was an obligation that I wasn't sure the Madam would ever release me from, even if it was just on a temporary basis, until we finally got to log out of this game.

"Are you sure?" April was watching me more closely now, and I fought to school my expression into something more composed. I was going to have to ask the Madam if this was fine at some point. In the abstract, doing it tonight wasn't going to be any harder than doing it the day after, or the day after that. And… the odds were quite good that the Madam would say yes, right? She seemed to want to keep our arrangement a secret from April just as badly as I did.

"Yes," I said, summoning up the confidence I needed from that thought. "I, um, just remembered there's something I need to do before we leave."

It was technically true, I told myself, to head off the guilt that had come of my attempt at misdirection. There was something I needed to do. And our conversation had reminded me of it.

"Oh!" April said. "Is it something I can help with? Want me to tag along?"

"N-no!" I said hurriedly. "It, um, I'm meeting them at night! You're hanging out at the church then, right?"

A thoughtful look passed over her face. "Ah, alright."

"Sit."

The Madam's lessons for me had continued all week, and tonight was no exception. When the afternoon passed, I found myself back in the lurid pink light of her cellar, my mouth clamped shut except to confirm her orders, and my body doing whatever it needed to do to get through the evening with the minimum pain.

"A-arf!"

I sank obediently to my knees, resting my twitching ass on my haunches and keeping my gaze trained on the Madam. Tonight, like the last few nights, she had me in her favourite new humiliating outfit: a tiny little dog costume, that was little more than a light brown bikini with a bright red collar and a hairband topped with doggy ears… and, buried in my twitching ass, a matching butt plug with a tail attached. Percy had almost certainly told her about our… encounter with the timber-wolves.

It was humiliating enough to be wearing a butt-plug in the first place, being a m-sissy, but what really clinched it for me was how small it was. Putting it in was hardly a stretch at all, and it was so short that it didn't even get close to, w-well, making me… feel good. The most it ever worked out of me was a faint sense of stickiness.

I'd had to buy the whole set myself, of course, on a solo visit to that sketchy Toybox store… although since it lacked any of the specialised enchantments that came with my last purchase there, it was only about thirty gold.

"Good girl." The Madam cupped my chin in one dominating hand and tilted my head further up, posing me as if I were a doll.

"A-arf!" In response to the Madam's compliment, I followed my doggy training and shook my ass for her, 'wagging my tail.' I wasn't permitted to speak while I had the costume on; to help me learn my place as a bitch, I could only bark, yip, and use… doggy-style body language.

The Madam released my head, and I kept it at the exact angle she'd moved it to. Her violet lips curled into a wicked smile that made my heart do somersaults in my chest, and she drew her hand seductively along the dress she was wearing. It vanished in an instant.

My mouth watered. My ass tingled. My clitty squirmed. The Madam's body was as gorgeous as ever, pure voluptuous curves under a strappy black bodice that drew the eyes directly to the impossibly deep valley of her cleavage. Age had drawn faint lines over her skin, but far from diminishing her beauty, they elevated it with their unspoken majesty. April had all the easy beauty of a nature spirit; Percy, the curated beauty of an idol. This was the beauty of a queen.

And between her plush, gartered thighs sat the fat, bejewelled sceptre of a queen. Stretching more than halfway down her thighs, with all the heavy allure of pure gold, cylindrical and gleaming and encrusted with a galaxy of precious gemstones, was the Madam's personal dildo. It was attached to her waist by a tyrian purple harness; its head was an enormous, glittering diamond, cut with so many facets that it was impossible to count them all. As I stared up into it, barely managing to keep myself from drooling, a hundred tiny reflections of myself stared back, pretty and prissy and pathetic in their tiny dog headbands and scarlet collars.

"Beg."

By this point, I'd practised it so many times that it was second nature. A low whine started up in the back of my throat. I lowered my head slightly, tilting my head even further back so that I maintained eye contact, and lifted up my hands to my chin. My fingers curled docilely under my palms, simulating paws; and I let my mouth fall open into a tender 'o', and my tongue spilled out of it, along with a healthy portion of drool.

It was utterly emasculating.

The plug in my ass had become soaked, and my clitty felt as if it were on the verge of exploding free from its cage entirely.

The Madam sneered down at me until I ran out of breath and my whine petered out, then nodded with some satisfaction. "Again."

I repeated the performance. She made me beg a few more times, each time waiting for my breath to give out before she did anything else, the same sneering expression on her face. My clitty was shuddering and jittering in its cage by the time she finally held up a hand.

"Good girl."

I swallowed thickly. "A-arf!"

"You may have your reward."

I whimpered softly as I inched up to her dildo's diamond crown and planted my full lips against it. My long curtain of silky black hair brushed up against her knees, an unnecessary extra reminder that, in this world, I was a girl. I pressed my tongue up against the diamond, and gave it a delicate flick.

The Madam let out a shaky, billowing breath. As far as I could tell, her dildo had some sort of enchantment on it, which let her feel any touch on it like it was her own real flesh-and-blood cock. Some jealousy welled up within me--here I was, beneath her, my own flesh-and-blood clitty sealed up and inaccessible--but I didn't dare let even a mote of it show on my face. My eyes stayed as wide and adoring as I could make them, as I gently lapped at her diamond tip.

There was something… unsatisfying about the cold crystal under my tongue. It had no flavour, and no warmth, besides the little bit of my own body heat it had absorbed. The Madam herself didn't help: rather than bucking her hips frenetically against my face, as the goblins in the Breachwood had, she remained seated on the side of the cellar bed, leaning back with all the royal repose of a lion at rest. The only motion she made was the occasional twitch of her hips--a sign to take her dildo deeper into my mouth.

"Rrffh~!" I let out a muffled bark as I stretched my jaws wide enough to admit the diamond, and worked my lips over the next part. My tongue was halfway to being pinned by it, which meant that I had to start bobbing my head gently back and forth. I'd watched Percy doing exactly the same thing, a week ago--and now it was my turn. Unbidden, the stretchy rings of my ass stirred into action around the plug inside it, still leaking their slovenly juices all the while. My face, already hot, grew hotter. Why did this have to turn me on??

"What a little slut," breathed the Madam. She took hold of a fistful of my sleek black hair with one hand, though it was without any of her usual brusqueness, and rather than yanking at it, she simply held it. I was being a good g-girl. She didn't even need to tug my leash for the time being.

Another twitch, and I opened my mouth wider, letting still more of the cock enter me. Her diamond tip scraped against the back of my throat now, when I brought my head forward to draw her underside along my tongue. The urge to gag came over me a few times, when my gentle bobbing took her past some threshold in my throat, but I managed to fight it off each time. Even after just a few days of this… bitch training, my body had become far more receptive to oral. My heartbeat quickened. What would it be like if those goblins gang-raped me now…?

Another shifting of the Madam's hips, and I braced myself. Deepthroating her staff was still a difficult task, requiring me to angle myself just right. I took a hungry gulp of air, then lunged forward--

"Gghghkkh~~!!"

"Nice and deep," the Madam murmured. There was a hard pride in her eyes as she looked down at me, on my knees and gagging my way through swallowing down her golden dildo. The jewels that studded its length gave it a bumpy texture, and their facets created corners that jutted up into my straining throat, but the effect was far less painful than the spikes and burrs of goblin cocks. I focused on trying to breathe through my nose, desperately trying to ignore the slobber leaking from my lips, and the pathetic wriggling of my clitty as I half-choked myself for the Madam's pleasure.

The Madam let out another moan, a sound far gentler than anybody as cruel as her deserved to make. A confused pride welled up in my own breast--I fought to deny it, but as more and more of her golden shaft squeezed down my throat, penetrating me thanks to my own efforts, I couldn't stop it. I was… I was getting good at this. The Madam's half-closed eyes were a testament to it.

And then, just as I was coming to terms with this complex new realisation, the Madam made one final, trembling sigh. Her orgasm was subtle, unlike the squealing of Percy or… w-well, myself… and the harness she wore made it quite impossible to see the pussy that lay beneath (by design, I suspected), but now that I'd obediently blown her to it several nights in a row, it was unmissable. The Madam held up a fist, and I managed to disgorge her jewel-encrusted member with only some light gagging. The half of it that I'd been able to get down this time was filthy with my spit now… sticky, and wet, and shining with an altogether gloopier light than the untouched bottom half. Again, I had to fight down a surge of pride. Only a few nights ago, I'd barely been able to let the dildo's head into my throat… and now I was taking half of it w-with, well, not ease, but…

"You are dismissed, girl," the Madam said curtly, her composure already back after the momentary lapse her orgasm had brought.

I swallowed thickly, and it wasn't just to rid my mouth of the thick gobs of spit that giving my blowjob had formed. Despite her meanness, I'd avoided the Madam's wrath so far, but that didn't mean I'd forgotten the burning sensation of her punishment. "I-I, umm, M-Mistress, may I, ummm…"

The Madam sighed. "You may. If it is not a waste of time."

"I'm, um, April wants us t-to go on this q-quest thing, Mistress, and, um, I think we'll be… o-overnight--" The words tumbled out of me in a hectic, stumbling tide. I'd never said this many words in one sentence to the Madam before--her preference was for me to say little more than chirping 'Yes, Mistress!' or 'No, Mistress!', and only as a response to her orders or questions.

Mercifully, with all the acuity of a knife cutting to the bone, the Mistress barely had to pause in order to process my stammering. "Very well. You have been behaving yourself lately, and so I will permit this… holiday. When does she intend to return?"

"I, um, I don't know," I whimpered.

"Hm." Though the Madam's posture remained relaxed, slouching ever so slightly back in the afterglow of her orgasm, she was clearly considering the situation. "Very well. I see you are… close enough to, hm, graduating, that any truancy is vanishingly unlikely. You are too good a girl to start disobeying now."

It hadn't been a question, and even after my humiliating blowjob session part of me still bristled at being called a 'good girl,' but I still felt compelled to squeak a quiet, "Y-yes, Mistress."

"Yes," said the Madam, and I suddenly felt strangely like I was only hearing half of a conversation--one that was about me, but not with me, even though she was addressing me directly. "You are temporarily relieved from our lessons--until you and the girl return to Lumberg."

"Y-yes, Mistress!" My heart lifted. She was really saying yes? A-and without shoehorning in any humiliating requirements, or emasculating tasks that I would have to do for her out on the road--

"But do not mistake this temporary reprieve for relief, sissy. On this journey with the girl… you will show her, at least once, just how much of a girl you truly are."

It was like having my brain plucked out of my skull and shaken until I didn't know up from down. I was barely aware of what my mouth was doing as my eyes flicked back and forth along the tooltip that her command had come with. "I-I, u-umm, M-Mistress, wh-what, ummm--"

"I'll leave that up to your judgement," the Madam said sedately, her voice dripping with false sugar. "Though, of course, you will be giving me a full report on it when you return. And, as you well know, I do not enjoy being disappointed."

She gave me a dismissive wave, and I bustled out of the cellar, my face glowing like hot coals. It didn't even occur to me that I was still wearing my scanty 'dog costume' until I was safely in my room.

Room One was, as it always seemed to be after my lessons with the Madam, totally devoid of April. Despite that, I still clapped my hand over my budding breasts (as small as they were, the tiny bralette of my costume did absolutely nothing to hide them) and my caged clitty (this was invisible underneath the tiny brown triangle of the costume's bottom, but in this case its tininess was exactly what I wanted to hide about it), and hurriedly crab-walked over to the bathroom. She wasn't in there, either.

With a sigh of relief that wasn't just sighed but gushed, I stumbled into it and slumped heavily on the strange, boxy toilet within. There, I peeled the sticky tail plug from my ass and planted my palms against my temples and tried to massage a spark of inspiration out of my frazzled thoughts.

Show her how much of a girl you truly are. The mission was--well, on one hand it was as vague as an order could be, but on the other, it pointed at a very specific, and very humiliating outcome… whatever I did, it had to convince April that I was a girl. Even though I was actually a b-girl. I only half-noticed the whimper I made out loud at my hijacked thought. I couldn't even think it, let alone voice it. I wasn't a g-boy. I wasn't!!

Was that all I had to do, then? Just try to tell her my gender, to show her it was impossible for me to even call myself a boy anymore, thanks to the bizarre sway that VALKYRIE had over my very thoughts? No--even imagining the Madam's fury if I tried to get away with that feeble attempt was enough to make me cower on my porcelain seat. I had to… I had to do something girlier. Thoughts of me bent over beneath a wolf, eagerly telling April how much they always made me cum, bubbled up to the forefront of my mind--n-no, that was way too far, the Madam hadn't said slut, just… girl.

A girl who got on all fours for wolves and--

I buried my face in my hands and moaned. Not now. I had to figure out a sane way to… show off my girliness to April, not get all horny and flustered in this stupid bathroom! I took a deep breath. Tried to count to ten. Felt my clitty stir as the aftertaste of my most shameful confession yet lingered on my drooling tongue. 'I cum when monsters rape me.'

NO! Would telling April that be girly enough for the Ma--NO!!

I slumped back against the cold, tiled wall. My mind was racing, but it was down a dark, humiliating track studded with nothing but dead ends and free falls into mortifying scenarios that would make my night getting gang-raped by wolves in the forest look positively heroic. I needed ideas that wouldn't permanently ruin my chances with April, not ones that made my clitty twitch and my ass salivate precisely because they would!

I yanked my tiny brown panties aside and jiggled the offending body part in frustration. Locked away in its prison, the shrunken, shrivelled little thing was on a hair trigger! If only I could just jiggle it in just the right way, wring out some form of release from this horrible prison… I went through all the angles I'd tried on previous nights, every combination of fingers, but none took. I was frustrated and alone and utterly incapable of finding release without some monster to bury his cock inside me.

Except… that wasn't entirely true. My breath caught. I stared without seeing in the direction of the closed bathroom door. The frenzied swarm of thoughts in my head fell perfectly still. In the mental quiet that followed, just a single track remained. There was another way. I'd… I'd already used it, once. I pulled open my inventory and flicked through it, hardly daring to even think about what I was searching for until it was right in front of me.

My finger hung over the Equip button with all the grim trepidation of a guillotine blade. Memories of Percy and Layla, and all the wild, mind-shattering sex they'd had in front of me, and the way they'd bullied me into fucking myself on this very dildo, on the top floor of this very building, flared into life inside me. That had made me orgasm. That had made me orgasm a lot.

I bit my lip. Just pressing the Equip button didn't mean I had to use it. It would just put it in my hand. I could very easily unequip it again, if I decided it was too big, or too much, or it was just too girly to… ride it.

The cleft between my ass cheeks was already sticky. Remembering all of the sensations that burying this thing inside me had brought me a week ago made it even stickier.

I pressed the button.

The Bitch-Breaker appeared in my outstretched hand. Its lurid pink body was every inch as long and thick as I remembered it. The surface was springy, malleable, almost squishy; but beneath that lurked an incompressible firmness that I could only remember in terms of the pressure it had put on the little bitch-button somewhere deep inside my asshole. Compared to the golden dildo of the Madam, it was certainly less opulent… but my hammering heart and my flushed face and my drooling asshole agreed that it would be far easier to…

I glanced up at the bathroom door. Closed… and locked.

I took hold of the Bitch-Breaker by its base--its oh-so-stocky, almost reassuringly stable base--and planted it firmly upon the tiled floor. The enchantment on it took root, sealing it tightly in place, and with another glance at the door--still closed, still locked!--I stood over the dildo and dropped down to my knees. Between my ass cheeks, the tiny string of my brown doggy costume's panties had been soaked through, and it stuck to my bare skin as--with equal parts excitement and trepidation--I tugged it aside.

"Haah~!" I lowered my hips, and I surprised myself with the volume of my own cry as the Bitch-Breaker's squishy tip kissed the lips of my oozing asshole. It--it wasn't in yet. I could still… I could still peel myself off… p-put my gown back on… g-go to bed…

I had a sudden vision of myself atop a vast cliff, my head peeking over its edge, into the endless grey depths of an ocean below. My legs were straining, in this awkward half-squat over the dildo between them, but I still had enough strength to get back up. To fight this urge. To escape the siren song of gravity, even as it called out to me, tried to lure me down… down… down…

"Ahh… ahhh~~" My hips came down… lower… lower. The Bitch-Breaker's thick tip slipped into my wet sphincter, the ridge at the base of its head catching firmly against my lower lip, then drove up further, following the gentle rocking of my waist as I succumbed to my lust. It was… I just needed a clear head. Just clear enough to strategise. Come up with a way to satisfy the Madam at the same time as staying in April's… w-well, 'good books' was the wrong way to put it… i-it wasn't like she'd hate me if I ended up being a girl, o-or whatever… her… her 'might one day date' books! I needed to stay in those!

I rewarded myself for my astute reasoning with a careful roll of my bottom half, touching without jabbing at my little bitch button with the unyielding wall of the Bitch-Breaker. The resulting jolt of pleasure drew a sigh out of me, and I repeated the motion. My clitty squirmed; the stinging pain as it pushed up against the bars of its prison was almost pleasant.

"Yesss." In the soft blanket of fog that my self-indulgence had brought over me, it was hard to say what had convinced me to try… speaking. I normally didn't when I… jerked off, having become accustomed to doing the deed in tense silence after spending years paranoid of discovery as a horny teenager in my parents' house… but this… this felt… different. April was out, doing whatever she always did at nightfall, and so the room was mine alone for the time being. I could afford to be a little… vocal.

"Ohh… god…" Jerking my hips up and down a shaft made of magical pink stone had no right to feel this good. Like I had the first time, in the room with Percy and Layla, I found myself appreciating my own, far more relaxed pace. When I found my sissy spot, I caressed it, doted on it--and that made all the difference. Up and down I bounced. If… if only I could find a partner as… as gentle as my own movements. Who responded to my fear and the tightening of my little hole by slowing down, by taking her time, not redoubling her efforts and bullying me into orgasm and orgasm just to hear me squeal. I-I could squeal and sigh just fine without having something slammed into me until I could barely fit two thoughts in my rattling head. Someone as… as nice as…

"April," I moaned, just under my breath, some part of me still afraid that she could be in the room right now, that she could have snuck in unheard while I was lost in my sensual one-girl rodeo. It… it was far from my first time masturbating to thoughts of her, but… "April…"

Images of her, standing tall, proud, undefeatable, powerful, sailed through my head. They weren't just fantasies--they were memories. From all the times I lost all my health and had to stare up at her, paralysed… from when we were both standing, and I still had to crane my neck just to meet her gaze. She was so much bigger than me. Had the height difference between us always been that wide?

"April," I moaned, my breath catching as the next step loomed in front of me. My ass grew slicker, and the dildo inside me seemed to swell as I tightened around it. I no longer saw just April, in all her power and her might, but April with… with the Bitch-Breaker in one of her powerful hands, and me bent over her brilliant, squishy thighs. She… she wasn't mean, like the Madam, or downright cruel, like Mistress Wilhelmina, or manipulative, like Percy… she would just ask me, in her upbeat, beautiful voice… i-if I was sure… a-and the cage would still be tight on my clitty, locking me in, giving me no other option but to… to nod, and placidly allow her to put it right up against my slobbering little hole, and--

and--

A few thoughts, hot and conflicting, fought to occupy my mind at the same time. The first was a wave of sensual elation--all that pressure that had built up inside me was gone now, squirted free in a sticky white rope over the bathroom floor. Then there was shame, hot and sharp. April was--she was a girl. And I'd just--I'd just imagined her using a-a dildo on me, like I was the girl. No, worse than imagined it--I'd wanted it. I was never going to be able to look at her the same way again. Not without… remembering.

And then… and then there was defeat. I'd played right into Percy and the Madam's hands. Of course they'd arranged to push me into fucking myself on the Bitch-Breaker exactly twice so far. Of course the third time, wh-which I'd walked into all by myself, even if the… main reason had been the cage pinning my clitty down… had given me yet another humiliating Milestone. Now my pussy didn't just get wet when I was aroused, o-or getting growled at, or… wait. I didn--did have a pussy. It was my a-pussy. I-I had a pussy, not an ass!! No, those were--that was the wr--right order for those words--I buried my face in my hands. Great! It was just like my clitty. For as long as I was stuck in this stupid game, I was going to be forced to think of that hole as my pussy. My slutty, stupid, girly, pussy.

I rose to my feet, disgorging the now very sticky Bitch-Breaker from my PUSSY with a shuddering, but subdued, moan. In a fit of petulant pique I thought about leaving it out there, stuck to the bathroom floor, abandoning it like I'd tried in Room 33… but the thought of April walking in and discovering it killed that idea instantly. I picked it up--and mopped up the little puddle of my pussy juices around it, and the even smaller rope I'd shot from my clitty--and fell despondently into bed. I wasn't going to be able to come up with a sensible plan of action for the Madam's quest while I was still getting used to thinking of my pussy as a pussy. But… at least… at least I wasn't so pent up, anymore.

Notes:

hihi~!! if you've been enjoying this story, you might want to check out a little something i wrote over these last couple of weeks!

BAD END: The Black Sister's Gift

this is a side story exploring the "what-if" of Ariana giving her suggested gift to Anne, commissioned by the lovely Simolesis629! it does contain minor spoilers for the events of this story up until chapter 14, buuuut if you've read this far those are probably old news to you! hope you enjoy!

Chapter 18: Trouble in the Reedlands

Chapter Text

Insects, fat and black, buzzed lazy trails around the two of us as we ventured through the Reedlands. Low in altitude and clinging to the wide banks of the River Samson, this region of the world was far more humid than the Silverwood, and it showed in the wildlife that we passed on our trek through it. Throngs of reeds taller than I was dominated the marshy ground, stretching out in a sea of gold and brown and green as far as the eye could see. Only the slimmest of dirt paths wound between them, though April's imposing frame left behind twin trails of snapped shafts and oozing sap on either side of these tracks as she ploughed her way ahead of me. The very sky overhead felt wet against my eyes, like the sun had been replaced with an oil painting of itself by a very enterprising thief.

"Hmm, you know what?" April said thoughtfully, mid-stride. "This game doesn't have any background music, huh?"

I thought back. "Huh, yeah. You're right." With how intense the combat sometimes got--among other things--the devs probably hadn't seen the need to heighten things with another layer of intensity.

"Maybe they thought it would… um, hang on. What's that?" April nodded at something in the distance.

I stood on my toes and craned my neck in a vain attempt to rise above the stalks around us. "I, um, I can't see," I said awkwardly. Did I really have to be THIS short?

All semblance of coherent thought left me for a moment as a pair of strong arms scooped me up, and I was lifted up to April's eye level. "I, uhh, I--" I stammered, when I regained enough presence of mind to realise that April was holding me in her arms oh my goodness--

"There," said April, either tactfully pretending not to notice my blushing and sputtering, or genuinely too interested in what she'd seen to have caught it. I looked over, shielding my eyes from the sun's glare with one hand.

There was a path in front of us, nestled in the reeds much like the narrow ones we'd been taking up until this point. This one, however, was far wider: wide enough to admit an entire horse-drawn cart, like the ramshackle one that lay upturned in a bundle of shattered reeds, where April was pointing.

April sniffed the air, and for a moment I was reminded uncomfortably of the wolves that inhabited the Silverwood. "I think there's a--"

"G-get back!!" A balding old man stumbled out from beneath the cart. In one hand, he clutched a sack that could have equally been mud-coloured when it was first created, or so deeply stained with mud that it had become mud-coloured. In the other, he brandished a heavily darned sock that flopped around like there was something in it. A pebble?

"Whoah!" April took a step back. I almost let out a yelp of warning, but she tightened her grip on me, keeping me from falling. "Wait! We're not gonna--"

"You bandits shoulda never come back!" Despite his tall talk, the old man remained stationed in front of his upturned cart, swinging his improvised cudgel in place. Even he had to crane his neck to look April in the eyes, though he wasn't nearly as short as me. "Here to finish the job, eh? Well I'll curl your irons left and right, you damn beasts! I'll pepper your eyes! I'll--"

His eyes darted to mine, and he suddenly lost all steam.

"Wait," he said. "You're not bandits."

"R-right," April confirmed, sensing a chance to finally get a word of her own in.

"You're adventurers!" The old man's eyes lit up. "Sweet, merciful sun! My prayers--by Wormwood--please, adventurers, hear my plea!"

He sank to his knees, eyes shut, dropping his sack and his sock in favour of clasping his worn, muddy hands in front of him. They settled into the marsh around him, acquiring a layer of dirt to accompany their existing layers of muck.

"I, um, okay," April said, while I looked on in what was swiftly becoming mild amusement. "What happened to you?"

The old man cracked his eyes back open. "The bandits! I was bringing my crops to sell in the city… thought my Keepflame would keep me safe, even in the dark of night… but it did naught but lure the bandits straight to me! They, they ambushed me here on this very track! Overturned my cart… took every last thing they could carry!" He let out a hearty sob: and even though he was just an NPC, I couldn't help but feel bad for him. "Months of harvest… my dear mule… my son…"

"Your son?" I blurted.

"Yes! Please, if nothing else--" The old man scrabbled forward, and clutched desperately at the hem of April's long travel skirt--"you must rescue my son! He's but a strapping young lad, in his prime… his mother died nine winters ago, you see… he's all I have left…"

His manic burst of energy now exhausted, the old man--"Belwurs Kettle"--resumed sobbing softly in the dirt in front of us. April lowered me to the ground, then bent down to place a hand gently on the sobbing man's shoulder. I tried to ignore the pang of disappointment from no longer being in her arms, and the matching pang of jealousy from watching her put her muscular hand on his shoulder.

"We'll do it," April declared.

I blinked. Wait, if quests were shared between us, then didn't that mean the Madam's quest was--

"Oh? Oh! Oh glorious sun, praise you!" April extended her other hand to help the man to his feet, which he instead took as an offer to shake her hand in both of his. "A hero among beastkin! Nay--a champion!" I rolled my eyes as his adulations continued. Figuring out if April had seen my other quest--the quest to prove I was a girl to her--could take a backseat for the time being. Right now, April was sheepishly rubbing the back of her head with her free hand, not entirely sure of how she was going to extricate herself from this guy's gratitude.

"Alright!" I said, more hotly than I'd intended. "Chop chop, we've got a lot to do now! Gotta find your son and all! Go wait for us in there!" I shooed him off; he obligingly snatched up his muddy sack of potatoes and scurried back under his upturned cart.

April gave me a wry smile. "Thanks. That was… something." She looked down the wide route; now that I knew to look for them, there were indeed furrows running the whole way down its length. The work of decades--or even centuries--of carts passing down this road. "Our first quest, huh?"

First quest? So she… hadn't seen the Madam's quest, right?

"Hm. I'm a little surprised we didn't hit a Milestone for that." She shrugged. "Maybe it'll be for finishing your first quest?"

I weighed up the odds before I spoke up. Was I likely to finish the Madam's quest before we found this farmer guy's son? Probably not, right? "Yeah, that makes sense. I, uh, speaking of which…"

I gestured at the enormous, featureless expanse of reeds around us.

"How are we supposed to find this guy? I don't see any quest markers…"

April tapped the side of her nose and winked. "Oh, don't worry about that. I'm AprilThaWolf, remember? Just let the old sniffer handle it."

Before I could make much more than a dubious noise, she took a deep whiff.

"That way," she said, pointing down the dirt road in the direction that, as far as my shaky grasp of this game's geography went, led away from Lumberg. "Lots of different scents. I'm not sure which one is the son, but they're all going in the same direction, so…"

"So, worst case scenario, we find some bandits to beat up and have them tell us where he is," I finished.

"Exactly!" April beamed, before her expression became strangely devious. "You ready to go bandit hunting?"

Following April's nose, we went a short way down the wide cart-trail--there was a bend soon after where Belwurs' overturned cart lay, presumably where the bandits had hid to make their ambush--and found a path of snapped and battered stalks smashed into the reeds on one side of the trail. It was easily wide enough to admit two Aprils, and stretched on into the endless sea of reeds in a surprisingly straight line.

"Yeesh," April said, clomping her way over the mass of pulped stalks and churned-up mud that made up the floor of this improvised corridor. "I thought bandits were supposed to be, like, sneaky."

"A mule is basically just a horse, right?" I pointed out. "It's probably hard to transport one of those stealthily."

April shrugged. "Yeah, I guess so."

We set off down the trail of destruction. The muck here was far harder to walk in than the dirt paths we'd travelled before; it clung to our footwear and squelched sullenly each time we pulled our feet free of it. I was silently glad that April had insisted we invest in heavy-duty waterproofed boots during the lead-up to this expedition, even if my pair had a distinctly feminine cast compared to the thickset black bricks that April wore. The hem of my Starry Lustregown was already brown with muck; having to wear one of my girly pairs of regular shoes in this would have just been gross. Even though I didn't particularly care if any of those shoes stayed intact.

The air began to buzz; thick, yellow streams of flies poured out from the reeds around us, and twisted together into a great ball, blocking our path. It hovered there expectantly, and I could almost sense a consciousness behind the thousands of beady little compound eyes in it, just waiting for us to leave it an opening.

Too bad we weren't about to just give it one.

"Wild Aspect! Area attack!" April shouted. The first shout was her bread-and-butter defensive spell; the now-familiar bark of a timber-wolf tessellated over her skin in an instant, pre-empting the living swarm of smidgens as it rushed over her, eager to sample her blood.

The second was my cue.

"Angel Down!" I pointed with my starry wand, its girly little ribbons flouncing about, and a stream of tiny pink and white motes of light shot out from it, bathing April and the swarm upon her in equal measure. The motes danced like feathers in the air, scouring away the bugs with blistering ease.

The logic was simple. A living swarm of tiny opponents was a really bad match-up for a melee fighter like April, whose club swings only stood a chance of killing a few bugs in the swarm at a time. With the bark skin she had from Wild Aspect, the bugs wouldn't be much use against her either, but they'd be free to surge past her and start trying to suck my blood.

Luckily, a large number of low-health opponents compressed into a small area was exactly the kind of thing that my best damaging spell, Angel Down, excelled against. Although its damage was low (and lowered additionally by my… Scared Silly Milestone) it was constant, and applied to all the targets in its area equally.

All that added up to the result: April standing with her hands on her hips in the middle of the Reedlands, her healthbar barely lowered by a sliver, and a whole swarm of bugs dead around her.

"Nice!" she said. I automatically pointed my wand at her to top her back up, but she waved me off. "I think I only took, like, one tick of your beam. Spring Hide triggered after that and blocked the rest of it. Save your mana for when I'm a little lower!"

"Right." I was a little put out, but her point made sense. Though… that had been my best spell, and a single Milestone had blocked almost all of the damage? It was technically a good thing--that meant I could use it even she was in the path of it without feeling too bad, although the dazing effect was something we had to watch out for--but it still made me feel… inadequate.

The thought of Layla towering over her again flitted through my mind. I shook it out. The thought of April towering over me took its place. I groaned weakly.

"H-hey, wait up!"

The rest of the day continued on in this vein. We continued down the path mowed for us by the bandits, monsters popped up, and we smacked them until they died. The smidgens weren't the only monster we'd prepared a specific strategy to beat, but they were the only one we saw--the others were easy enough for April to club over the head repeatedly. Even the tricky little reed-stalkers, tall, thin… things that pretended to be reeds until we walked past them, were easy enough to deal with once they actually revealed themselves and attacked.

And then, hovering smugly behind the shaggy brown carpet of a pair of mud-rovers, we encountered the other monster that warranted an entirely different strategy.

This entry wasn't new; we'd unlocked it on the day we started reading up about the Reedlands, because we'd fought one on our very first trip into our very first dungeon. A pysie. The little blue pixie-thing that had taken us by surprise, silenced April, trapped us both in water, and… left us for the goblins.

"Star Passage!" I pointed my wand at April, and a honeycomb of golden light appeared around her.

"Catwalk!" April lunged for the pysie even as she shouted the pseudo-spell that my spell gave her. The tiny blue fairy balked, its Gutless keyword clearly taking precedence in its hierarchy of video-game-enemy priorities, and spun to flutter off--only to find April directly in its path, having teleported right on top of it.

She brought her hands together, unleashing the sharp report of a Thunderclap. The two mangy mud-rovers, who had taken April's sudden disappearance as their opportunity to turn their focus on to me--my moist pussy grew wetter still as it occurred to me that they might count as canines for Doglover--were caught in the radius of the spell, and they were bowled over alongside the pysie, stunned by the peal of thunder.

"A-Angel Down!" I shouted, managing to catch both of the shaggy beasts with the very end of my spell's conical beam. In terms of control, dazing wasn't much compared to stunning, but at very least I could stack up a little bit of a slow on the two monsters while they recovered from the actual stun. Behind them, April raised her club to finish off the priority target.

There was a very satisfying squelch. When she stepped back, there was just a single, silvery pearl at the bottom of a deep crater in the mud.

"Ah!!" I let out a squawk of surprise and pain as, without any consideration for the death of its ally, one of the mud-rovers fought its way free of my spell and lunged for my leg. Just the one bite tore out almost half of my healthbar and--worse still--wracked me with the bubbling, festering heat of the mud-rover's disease effect: lockjaw.

My spell fizzled, freeing the other mud-rover--but before it could lunge at me as well, April landed a devastating blow on its skull. To its credit, it survived the hit (mud-rovers were monstrously tenacious little freaks), though the feeble yelp it made was a far cry from its earlier growling. It wasn't long for this world. The mud-rover on my leg stopped gnawing on me to round on April, but when it launched itself at her--a brown blur almost too fast for my eyes to follow--she caught it mid-air with her club. The cracking of its bones, sharp and clear, even made me wince.

The other mud-rover went for me, the easier target lying half-paralysed in the mud. It snapped woozily in my direction, completely failing to even graze me with its enormous yellow front teeth. A concussion from April's earlier skull-shattering attack? Was that a mechanic in this game too? Whatever the reason was, I hurled a Glitterdust its way, compounding its inaccuracy with some blindness, and then April--having made short work of its fellow mud-rover--gave it one last slam of her mace.

"They got you, huh?" she said, striding over to me to help me up now that the fight was concluded. "Moonlight!"

A pleasant yellow orb of light floated out at me, accompanied by a pleasing shower of light rain--the work of her Rainfall Milestone. The two effects combined were enough to fill up my tiny health bar, even from half.

"Yeah." I pointed my wand at my leg. Thanks to the 'lockjaw' permeating it, it may as well have been turned to stone. Diseases couldn't be fixed with Antidote, which was specific to poisons, but fortunately--as a Priestess--I'd been deemed eligible to learn a spell that could fix them. "Purify!"

The paralysis, and the lingering pain that accompanied it, melted away, and I was able to climb back to my feet. April was half-crouched, her club raised, and when I opened my mouth to ask what was wrong, she shook her head and held up four fingers. Four… seconds?

"Phew, that was a tough fight!" she said loudly, her expression remaining serious even as she rose back to full height. What the hell was going on with her? "We might have to turn back--WILD ASPECT!"

Dull whizzing sounds peppered the air, and a hot pinprick blossomed in the side of my throat. "Ow!"

"Walk me!" April's bark-skin had returned, and she barked the order at me even as she turned away, laser focused on something in the reeds beyond.

"Star Passage!" I shouted. Golden light once again honeycombed April, and then she was gone.

There was a whumph from in the reeds, and a cry of alarm. I stumbled towards the source of the sounds, figuring that this was where April had vanished to, but the moment I moved my vision blurred intensely, and a stinging pain filled my chest. I collapsed into the muck, hacking and coughing.

A reedy voice floated up from behind me. "She's down, Turg!"

"You go back up the girls," grunted someone much gruffer. A strong, veiny arm, covered in some kind of coarse fabric, wrapped itself around my waist, and I was hoisted into the air. "I'll go get the others."

"G-got it!" Something dark red hurried through my blurred line of sight. Nausea overtook me as the gruff, muscular person carrying me spun around and took off, powering down the brown streak I took for the muddy trail left by the bandits without any regard for how much he was shaking me.

A second later, the same reedy voice let out a shriek, and the gruff man carrying me said something in a foreign language that was definitely a curse word. I felt his body shift (was he looking at me?) and then, without even breaking his stride, he dumped me unceremoniously into the mud, face-first. I gasped, more out of surprise than anything, which was a bad move--mud, damp and foul-tasting, filled my mouth. I tried to spit it out, but with my throat and lungs mostly paralysed, my efforts were in vain.

"Anne! Are you okay?!" April had come running, her opponents clearly already dealt with. "What did you do to her?" she snarled suddenly.

"P-p-poison!" squeaked the reedy voice. "It's just a weak poison!"

Weak or not, my health was dropping fast thanks to its damaging effect. Falling to zero wasn't the end of the world, thanks to my Resilience, but aching pains kept lancing through my chest and gut, and I could feel the way it was making my face twitch.

April swore. One of her strong hands clapped down on my shoulder, and she pried me out of the mud. "Do you have an antidote?" she snapped.

"N-no, miss, ma'am, sir!!" quavered the reedy voice. "Th-the boss carries those!"

"Dammit!" I could sense something in April's body change. Steeling herself to "mercy kill" me? Straining all the muscles in my head and neck, I gave her a feeble nod.

Something sharp plunged into my chest. I watched my healthbar fall to zero with almost blissful detachment. My vision unblurred in an instant, and the icon next to my healthbar indicating that I was poisoned vanished. April filled my view, her ears flat with concern and her lower lip just barely short of wobbling. In one hand, she held a small dagger.

"Mother above!" squawked the reedy voice, his horror plainly audible. "I-it was just--"

"Moonlight." Another rush of warmth filled me, and a light rain sprinkled us all. I took a dramatic, gasping breath, and was met with a matching gasp of shock from the reedy voice.

"What in--!" The owner of the reedy voice was not, as I'd pictured, a skinny human with dark skin. Rather, he was a skinny russet-furred beastkin of some kind, clad in pale leather straps (one of which seemed to be a bandolier of some kind, which had a number of tiny cloth pouches and a sheathed dagger dangling off it) and a dark scrap of fabric at his waist that acted like a loincloth. He was far more animalian than April--he had a snout, though it was blunt and squashed-looking, and even a set of whiskers that twitched and jerked fretfully in time with his cowering. His ears were small and round, and countless little notches on their edges gave them a ragged, chewed-on appearance.

One of April's toned hands was wrapped in a crushing vice-grip around one of his elbows, explaining why he hadn't fled yet, and while my first thought was a delirious spark of jealousy--he attacked us, and his punishment was getting held by April?!--my cooler head swiftly prevailed. There was a pain in his eyes that made it clear he would much rather have his arm released, and it only grew more intense as April rounded on him.

"Alright. Spill the beans," she snarled, her goofy gangster flick dialogue more than made up for by the raw, animal anger radiating off her. "Where did you take the human kid?"

"Huh?" said the red beastkin, who I internally decided was a… vole of some kind. "Oh, uh, to our camp!"

"Where's that?"

"On the river!" I couldn't tell if the pitch of the vole-man's voice was rising alongside his fear, or if it was because April was tightening her grip on his arm with every question. "We have b-boats! We put them on boats!"

"Them?!" April seized upon the plural pronoun with even more furour, and the vole-man's beady black eyes began to stream with tears.

"Yes! A-all the slaves we catch, w-we take them there!!"

April's growl deepened. "And where do the boats go?"

"The main camp," wept the vole-man softly, his voice so high that it was almost inaudible. "I-it's in a cave…"

April looked at me. "Any other ideas?"

"F-for questions?" She nodded grimly. I took a moment to think, absent-mindedly casting Cure on myself to top myself off. The vole-man wasn't going anywhere.

"Wh-what are you doing with them?" I asked. I tried to adopt April's intimidating snarl, but in my high-pitched squeal and from my… unimpressive physique, it came out as hoarse and not much else.

"The boats?" The vole-man seemed genuinely confused. The way he grovelled when he answered to April was totally absent in his responses to me.

"No, the slaves!!"

"A-ah, yes." The vole-man shrugged. "We sell them off, I-I think."

"You think?" April growled.

"I-I know!! The clan leaders, they handle it! Someone comes in to take them, an outsider!"

"And where does this guy take them? You wouldn't know, huh?"

"Y-yes, ma'am, miss! He's very mysterious! I--!" He broke off suddenly.

April narrowed her eyes. "You what?"

A high-pitched whine told me that her crushing grip on his arm had just gotten positively cruel. "I-I think they go to the border!"

"The border?" April exchanged glances with me. Our in-depth reading hadn't gone as far as the borders between the kingdoms of VALKYRIE. Lumberg, the Silverwood, and the Reedlands were all well within the borders of the starting kingdom, after all.

"Yes, with Zayikh," babbled the vole-man. "Teliomere! W-with Teliomere!"

"Man," April said, her scowl lightening somewhat. "I hope we don't have to go that far. Wasn't that one of the DLC kingdoms?"

"I, aheh, y-you have time!" volunteered the vole-man. "H-he only comes every few weeks, and h-he was here a week ago!"

"Wait, when did the guy get kidnapped?" I asked.

It had been meant for April, but the vole-man helpfully supplied the answer. "O-only a few nights ago! Th-the golden-haired human, yes?"

April and I exchanged uncertain looks. We hadn't actually bothered to get a physical description from the old man.

"Yes," April said after a pause, though it was obviously more to sell the illusion of certainty than out of any genuine confidence. "Anne, do you have any rope or something?"

"Huh?"

"I wanna tie this guy up. It'll be easier than holding onto him like this. Maybe we can do, like, a hostage exchange when we find these bandits."

I paused. I did technically have a rope--a long, thick, rainbow-coloured rope--but it wasn't exactly something I wanted April to know I owned. And even if I did decide it was worth it, the only way I knew of to get it out of my inventory was to equip it, which would tie me up first. And once April said the code phrase and got it off me, would I even be able to put it on the vole-man? Maybe if we got him to pick it up off the ground…

"Um, yeah, kind of," I said lamely.

"Kind of?" April said dubiously.

"Well, it's--it's a rope, but it's hard to use."

Even the vole-man was squinting at me. "The hell kinda rope is hard to use?"

"Look, just… just don't freak out." I sighed and navigated through my inventory to take out the 'Autovincium Major'--the enchanted rope that Percy had made me buy at the Toybox in Lumberg.

The rope snapped into existence around me, twining itself around my arms and legs and throat, and digging deep into my skin. April and the vole-man gave matching cries of alarm--and I joined in as one end of the rope looped itself around the lower half of my face, cutting into my cheeks and stuffing my mouth with its coarse, unpleasant fibres.

"Anne!" April stumbled over to catch me as I fell back, unable to keep my balance with the rope around me.

"Mfffhhfhhfhh!!" I squealed, trying in vain to say the codeword to free me through the rope in my mouth. Of course it would gag me this time. Of fucking course!

"OW!!" The vole-man, seizing his opportunity to escape, gave April a vicious bite on the arm holding him captive. Her grip slipped, and he tore off, scampering into the reeds practically on all fours. "Dammit!!"

For a moment, it looked as if April would chase after him; but instead she got down into the muck with me and started tugging forcefully at the ropes around me. Even with her monstrous strength, it proved to be a tough task. The ropes clung to me with what felt like lecherous intent. With some gnawing and muffled shouts, I managed to convey to her that she should focus on the rope in my mouth, which she eventually managed to work free, in the process covering both her hands and the area around my lips in my spittle.

"L-levare," I gasped.

"Levare?" April raised an eyebrow--then jumped as the ropes around me spilled to the ground, no longer knotting me tightly in place. "Oh, was that a code word or something?"

"Yeah," I grunted, rubbing my jaw.

"I, um, you probably should have said that part first," she pointed out.

I grimaced… though she was right. "Yeah, I, uh, didn't realise it would block my mouth."

"Have you used it before?" she asked casually, though it came with the unmistakeable undercurrent of the question she really wanted to ask; when had I used this thing before?

"I, um, yeah, kinda," I jabbered. The thought of explaining Percy and Layla and fucking myself on a dildo in front of them was just--"I-it doesn't matter. Let's go catch that bandit!"

April made a face, but she didn't press it. "Oh, let's not bother," she said. "The other bandits have probably gotten all the way to their camp by now. They'll know we're coming. And I doubt that guy is gonna add much power to their side."

"So… we're… still going to go there?" I asked.

"Uh, yeah!" April scoffed. "We can't just let that farmer guy's son get sold off into slavery!"

The obvious rejoinder of 'the farmer guy and his son aren't actually real' somehow didn't feel right, at that moment. Instead, I nodded. "W-we should come up with a plan, then."

April rubbed her chin. "Yeah, alright. Let's see… the timber skin worked well against those poison darts, huh? So you can focus on using Antidote on yourself…"

Our impromptu strategy meeting continued on through the afternoon. It was interrupted a few times, by wandering monsters who seemed more surprised to be stumbling upon us rather than the other way around, but we were able to dispatch them handily. The bandits didn't show up again, probably terrified out of their wits by April's earlier display of strength.

"Hmm." April was looking up at the sky, where the first orange streaks of sunset were beginning to paint themselves above us. "We should set up camp."

"Here?" I looked dubiously at the mud and reed fragments we were standing on. Okay, we'd invested in sleeping bags and a tent, but I wasn't sure the tent was waterproof enough to keep out a night of gross marshland muck.

"I guess the bandits could come back," April mused, missing my point completely. Stupid, outdoorsy, athletic, gorgeous April. Though she'd raised another valid concern in turn. "I've got those bear traps."

Even I had to wince involuntarily at the thought of letting those bandits step on bear traps, bad guys or not. They might have been slaving assholes who'd paralysed and almost kidnapped me, but I'd read the tooltips on those traps. They supposedly had the crushing force required to smash the bones of monstrous bears. Then again… the bandits were just NPCs. In most games, we would've probably just killed them by now. "That… works."

"Then I'll go set them up. You can figure out the keepflame, yeah?"

I nodded. Keepflames were single-use magical items sold by alchemists and mages alike, and they were a necessity for camping out in the wilderness. Their effect was simple: monsters at or below the keepflame's strength level abjectly refused to get near one, and if one somehow did get inside a strong enough keepflame's radius, it would enter a fear state and flee until it managed to escape. The main downside was that they could only be activated at dusk… and that they did absolutely nothing to stop attacks from 'mortals'--aka NPCs--like the bandits.

Hence the traps, I supposed.

Dusk was fast approaching, but it hadn't quite approached yet, so I started with the tent in my inventory. We both had one, but they were both two-man tents; the extra was more of a contingency, in case we got split up or one tent got ruined. I tried not to let the quiet smile on my face turn into a full-blown grin at the thought of sharing a single tent with April, but my success there was mixed at best.

When I equipped it, the tent appeared in the form of several rolls of canvas--each the same ludicrous shade of hot pink--and a number of purple metal bars. The colour scheme, needless to say, had not been either of our first choice… but the salesman at the hunting store had been so taken with us two 'darling girlies' that he insisted we take these pink tents at half price, and it was hard to argue with such a steep discount. Privately, I suspected that he just wanted to get rid of them--it was hard to imagine even someone as unabashedly girly as Percy genuinely wanting to camp out in a tent as glaringly obvious as this.

Pitching it, as it transpired, was rather more difficult than I'd expected, and I soon found myself wishing that we'd sprung for the self-pitching models after all. The canvas and the metal rods were incredibly heavy to my spindly arms, and while I knew on some level that this wasn't my fault--it was the game's, for saddling me with such a miserable Strength attribute--I couldn't help sniffles of humiliation from escaping me as I struggled beneath all the poles and thick pink fabric. Next time, I was definitely waiting for April to come back.

By the time I was finally done, it was almost dusk. Rather than stand back to admire (though 'admire' was perhaps too strong a word) my sagging pink handiwork, and its heart-shaped window flaps and upside-down-heart entrance, I quickly dove into my inventory and retrieved the thing April had actually asked me to handle, the keepflame.

In its inert form, it just looked like a bundle of sticks and a jar that was mostly empty. There was only a fine lining of some kind of greyish, ashen dust at the bottom of the jar--but when I arranged the sticks in a vague star-like shape and poured the dust in their centre, the whole thing suddenly ignited. I held my hand out to it, and was pleasantly rewarded by the sensation of warmth. And just in time, too--the last dregs of the sun were just fading at the bottom of the horizon when I looked up, leaving behind a black sky and a sea of twinkling stars.

And… I stared. The two moons. One a glimmering silver, like the solitary moon back in the real world. It was just a hair short of full tonight, if I was seeing things right. Or maybe it had just been full and was now shrinking, or waxing, or waning, or whatever the word was for a moon. The other, half the sky away, was a rich, copper crescent. That one was far more obviously alien. So long as it hung in the sky, there was no forgetting that I was still trapped in a virtual reality. No matter how realistically rendered it was.

There was a rustling in the reeds behind me. April had finally returned from her trap-setting expedition.

"Phew," I said, turning around. "You really--"

Pht. Something stung me in the throat. I clapped my hand to it. A dart.

As I sank to my knees and the world blurred, a horde of indistinct figures padded out from the reeds.

Chapter 19: Beastkin Bait

Chapter Text

Poison coursed through my veins, turning them into rivers of liquid fire. The world was a black, swirling blur, but I could feel the countless hands grabbing at me and lining up my limbs and trussing me up in a scratchy, damp rope easily enough. Some were furred, some felt like plain old skin, and a couple even felt like they were covered in smooth scales. Most of their fingers were clawed, and their owners took no pains to avoid scratching at my own skin as they worked on me.

Once I was tied up, somebody roughly shoved something cold and hard up against my lips. The glass lip of a potion bottle. On a hunch, I greedily gulped down its contents--and sure enough, within seconds the burning heat in my blood and my swimming vision cleared, and my whole body was no longer locked up. Now there were just the ropes pinning my wrists and elbows and knees and ankles together to contend with.

I was getting really sick of being immobilised like this.

"HELP!! APRIL!! HE--"

Something starchy and foul-tasting was shoved into my mouth by a clawed hand. It was sweaty, like the scent of the changing room back in school had been compressed into a single, rigid sock. I tried to spit it out, but it had somehow stuck to the inside of my mouth, and no amount of worrying at it with my tongue managed to dislodge it. One of my captors leered down at me; a ragged cat-beastkin with a tooth-shaped notch in his ear, and a sea of brown fur around his left eye that resembled a black eye. I immediately resolved to call him Black-Eye.

"Let's bounce," he grunted, and I realised with a start that this was the owner of the gruff voice who'd tried to ambush us alongside the vole-man. There was a messy chorus of agreements--some of the voices female, I noticed with some surprise--and then some bandit behind me slung me over his shoulder. The way he'd picked me up didn't give me a great view of his head or facial features, but I quickly discovered that his whole body, shoulder and back and all, was covered in a tight mesh of tiny, dark green scales. They were cold to the touch. At the base of his back thrashed a meaty, powerful tail; running all the way down its centre was a column of small, serrated spines. Some kind of crocodile-kin?

The gang set off, and from what I could tell I was near the front. Though it was dark, the two moons overhead cast just enough light that I could make out the details of at least the bandits closest to me, and faint silhouettes of the ones at the very back of the column. The vole-man was nowhere to be seen, but that didn't mean much--as April had said, he didn't seem likely to add much to his gang's fighting power. My heart sank as I tallied up the members I could see. There were ten, counting the crocodilian man carrying me, and adding on Black-Eye--who was in front of the crocodile-man, leading the party--made the total at least eleven. All beastkin, as far as I could tell. April had been able to take on three of the bandits without my support, but it hadn't exactly been simultaneous, and she'd had the advantage of surprise, thanks to her minor ruse of making them think that they'd had the advantage of surprise. Against eleven foes, who were significantly more prepared for her… I wasn't sure even April could mount a daring rescue. And that was assuming she hadn't been captured herself.

Someone ahead of me took a deep sniff of the air. Black-Eye, probably, or maybe some other beastkin acting as a sniffer dog. Trying to track down April?

"We're good. The wolf hasn't been here," grunted a strangely familiar-sounding woman. My heart jolted. Were they avoiding April? It definitely sounded like she was at least still out there…

"Good," Black-Eye grunted back. "Leaving out fuckin' bear traps… what a farrak. She thinks she's better than the rest of us dumb animals, huh?"

The exchange was hushed, but even the beastkin at the very back of the column snorted heartily in response, clearly having no trouble hearing the whispers of their leader. In my ropes and gag, I bristled. Like the last time I'd encountered Black-Eye, I had no idea what his foreign curses actually meant, but he'd obviously just called April something terrible. Of course she thought she was better than these mangy mutts--she was! She wasn't going around kidnapping random people!

The only person who seemed to notice my reaction was the crocodilian carrying me. I felt his chest and shoulders jerk slightly--a suppressed chuckle?--and then my face turned red hot as I felt a scaly pair of claws on my Milestone-thickened thighs. Was he--was he groping me?!

"MffhH!!"

"Oi." As suddenly as they'd appeared, the crocodile-man's fingers shot away from my skin, chased away by the warning tone of Black-Eye. "Don't get her too excited. We don't want the wolf catchin' wind of the bait too early."

I could almost hear him looking nervously over his shoulder as he spoke. Were they really that scared of April? Had I perhaps overestimated their fighting ability? I tried to crane my neck to get a closer look at the other beastkin. The crocodile-man carrying me was obviously strong enough to at least give her pause… but maybe the others weren't so confident in a fight. They were just bandits, after all. Weak, cowardly bandits.

"MfhHH!!" I tried crying out again, this time without the crocodile-man's searching touch--but before even his leader could turn around to make him knock it off, the crocodile thrust a scaly finger straight into my pussy, right down to the last knuckle. His knobbled knuckles grinded their way in me with ease, helped along by the goo that I now secreted at all times.

"Hey," he warned me in a raspy whisper. "If you don't behave yerself, I ain't got a reason to behave meself either, ah?"

I fell still and silent. He--he had a point. If I was going to protest regardless of what he did, he was just going to go back to doing whatever he wanted… n-namely, treating my pussy as his personal little groping hole. After a few seconds of obedience, he withdrew his finger… and made an exaggerated slurping sound that I felt all throughout his muscular frame.

"Good girl."

I tried to ignore how his degrading compliment made my clitty stir in its cage.

Without the sun or access to a clock, it was hard to say just how long the bandits spent trudging through the Reedlands to get back to their camp, with me in tow. I had the vague sense that the moon(s) could be used to keep time in the same way as the sun, maybe, but I wasn't sure if that was actually true even in the real world, let alone in a fictional one with two of the stupid things. Despite the darkness, I did notice as trees began to crop up around us--and as they began to thicken, the gaps between them growing shorter and tighter. Had we left the Reedlands entirely? Or was this just a small copse of trees within the Reedlands?

And then, soon after I'd had that thought, I heard the burbling of running water. We'd reached the river. I stole glances to either side--the beastkin immediately behind me and my crocodile carrier had long lost interest in jeering at me--and found a host of shoddy-looking wooden lean-tos and scratched-up tents, most safely nestled in the shade of trees. The bandit camp! It seemed that the vole-man had been telling the truth.

The crocodile-man set me down on a sheet of coarse fabric--without untying me, of course. It was threadbare, and did little to insulate me from the roots and rough stones that lay on the dirt underneath it. He and the rest of the bandits began to mill around me, blocking out my view of the rest of the camp with their bodies. Between the putrid rag still gagging me--I still hadn't been able to spit it out--and the raw, unwashed scent of the bandits themselves (which was a hundred times more intense in the camp that they all slept and lived and definitely did not shower in) tears were beginning to prick at my eyes. I wished that they'd at least left my hands free, so I could pinch my nose. It wasn't like I was seriously going to attempt escaping them, with my ankles and knees tied, and the fact that they outnumbered me more than ten to one. And could track me by my scent. And had gagged me, so that I couldn't even cast spells, even with my hands free.

Black-Eye knelt down and reached for my face. I jerked back instinctively, but the ropes limiting my movement meant I could only escape his touch for so long.

"Hold her still," he growled. Something heavy and covered in prickly fur fell upon me, pinning me in place. Black-Eye swiped at my mouth--and easily removed the gag.

I spat and coughed a few times, trying to get the foul taste out of my mouth, then--before they could shove it back in, or do anything else--I started screaming for help. "HELP!! APRIL!!"

Black-Eye's fist came crashing into my face, tearing away a chunk of my health bar.

"Ow!!"

"Can it, girl," he snarled. "Your big bad wolf ain't nowhere near here."

"W-well, when she does get here, you're gonna regret it!" I spat back. "She's gonna--"

I broke off. Black-Eye's expression had changed: he was peering down at me, his squashed snout slightly agape.

"You're alaj," he said suddenly. "An outsider."

Murmurs broke out among the beastkin arrayed behind him. His own surprise gave way to an almost perverse joy, and he roughly seized my chin, still studying my face intently.

"Not even a scratch. Hahah! That wolf." His expression became shrewd. "She's gotta be an outsider as well, then, eh?"

"I don't know what that means!" I snapped, though I suspected that it hadn't really been a question.

Black-Eye raised an eyebrow--the one over his 'black eye.' "Outsider," he said slowly, as if that was explanation enough. "Your sort. When you get hurt, it don't show on your bodies, yeah? No scratches or bruises or nothin'."

I paused. That was… accurate. But something felt very weird about this situation. My body--every player's body--worked like that because this was a game, at the end of the day. Why could the NPCs notice that kind of thing? Why did they need to? Couldn't they just recognise players on sight, or something?

The bandits didn't give me much time to mull it over. Black-Eye, evidently satisfied with his conclusion that April and I were outsiders, raised a hand grandly. "Alright, boys. Dinner's ready."

Cheers from all around. My heart dropped through my stomach. The possibility had been playing at the edge of my mind for a while now--it had come to me when they'd tied me up, and been renewed when the crocodile man had tried to sneakily grope me on our way here--but the leader of these bandits had all but confirmed it. I was about to be…

Two clawed hands, covered in the same prickly fur as the weight pressing down on my back, took hold of my robe and began to pull.

"H-hey!! Stop that!! Get off!!" Panic filled my chest.

There was a strained groan from on top of me.

"What's takin' so long?" groused one of the bandits in the crowd.

"Can't rip it," admitted the beastkin still squatting on my back. Jeers and laughter shot out at him, but I shared a smug smile with myself. The 'sturdiness' that my Starry Lustregown had been enchanted with was the real deal.

That smugness only lasted a second--frustrated with his gang's mockery, the beastkin on my back simply gave the hem of my gown a savage yank. It ended up bunched around my waist, leaving the full length of my legs--and my ass--exposed to the cold night air.

A deafening chorus of howls and cheers met the sight. The prickly paws of the beastkin on my back came down upon my ass, playing my cheeks like tribal drums, and I couldn't stop myself from yelping and squealing at the stinging staccato, or flushing at the lewd smacking noises that came off my skin. In the flurry of shouts and laughter that followed, every last pair of muddy brown breeches was tugged off and discarded.

I swallowed thickly. The beastkin were already hard to the last man, and while their cocks weren't quite as hideous or grotesque as the goblins'... a few of them came dangerously close. They came in a variety of colours, ranging from fleshy pinkish-whites to vibrant reds. Some had bulbous heads like mushrooms; but most tapered to vicious points, ready to jab their way into the depths of my pussy.

I closed my eyes and whimpered to myself. The game was still forcing me to call my hole a pussy--and, worse than that, it had attached the same undercurrents of meaning to it. A pussy was meant to be fucked. It had evolved to be used that way. So when the game hijacked my brain to force me to admit that I had a pussy, it was also insidiously making me agree that it was supposed to have these cocks stuffed in it. Even though it wasn't!!

The beastkin jeered, thinking that my reaction was entirely down to the sight of all their cocks throbbing in the cold night air. Black-Eye swaggered forward, ignoring a few jealous glances from the beast-men behind him. Clearly, he hadn't just been the leader of the raiding party that had come to kidnap me; he was the leader of the whole camp here.

"S-seriously, stop!!" My voice cracked. "Y-you should be on the l-lookout! A-April's not gonna just l-let you get away with this!"

Black-Eye guffawed in my face. "You've got a lotta faith in this wolf, girl. She your bodyguard or summat?" He gestured grandly at his men. "There's almost thirty of us here. It'd take a bloody godling to take us all on at once. I bet that even if she tracks us down…" He closed his furry hands into fists. "She'll turn tail and run."

Some more howling cheers followed--and they intensified as Black-Eye strode the rest of the way up to me and dropped to his knees, his dark pink member flopping about just a breath away from my face. I couldn't help but stare at it, mesmerised by my fear. The thing was coated in rows of tiny white barbs, jutting out from it in messy circles all the way down its length. Some of them looked painfully long. Was I about to have that scraped in and out of my pussy??

"Oi." Black-Eye seized me by the lower half of my face, and my eyes flicked back up to his. "I'm only gonna say this once. No. Teeth."

And then his cock--his spiny, barbed cock--slapped wetly against my face.

"You know what to do, eh?" The men encircling us laughed again, and my face coloured. He was… he was going to make me t-take the lead?? H-his cock was far from the biggest thing I'd been forced to take, but to open my mouth and… a-and what, lick it?? I stared up into his eyes. They were mismatched, I realised: one was blue, and the other was a harsh amber. He was growing impatient.

My lips parted.

Then my tongue was upon him.

"WhoOOHH!!" Hollering halfway between jeering and cheering rose up in response to the sight. I ignored it as much as I could, devoting all of my attention to running my tongue up and down Black-Eye's spiked shaft without pricking myself on his spines. Unbidden, my memories of training with the Madam guided me along. I whined internally. It hadn't been twenty-four hours after I'd left her… tutelage, and I was already being forced to use the skills she'd taught me.

"That's the spot, girly," hissed Black-Eye. One of his rugged, furry hands clamped down on the back of my head, seizing one of my--Anne's--ridiculous girly pigtails. A jolt of electricity shot through my body. Shock at the sudden reminder of the strength that had let him pick me up and carry me earlier, during their fight with April, n-not a primal urge to let someone stronger than me take control!!

"Well?" he barked at the crowd at large, for the time being content with my lapping and slurping. "What are you waiting for? Bitch has more holes, don't she?"

Another hollering cry from the whole host of bandits. My stomach plummeted all the way down into my pussy. No, my p--no, my puss--a scaly pair of hands slapped up against my ass-cheeks. A familiar scaly pair of hands. The grabby crocodilian who'd carried me here!!

"I'll go first," rasped the crocodilian. "Any objections?"

There was some surly muttering mixed in with the resulting cheer, but nobody lifted a finger to stop him. My mind raced with ways to get away from him--to somehow burst free of my ropes?? Bite down on Black-Eye's cock and use the distraction to crawl to safety?? Try to--but, as if pre-empting any of these half-baked ideas, the crocodilian's grasp on me tightened, and suddenly I couldn't even wriggle my lower half at all. His strength was just… implacable. For a moment, the thought that April really might not be able to win against these guys popped into my head.

"Oi." Black-Eye cuffed me lightly on the head. I'd paused in my licking. Hurriedly, I pressed my tongue back to his shaft and gave him an extra-long, lingering slurp. "Thaaaat's it. Yessss."

"Let's see this pussy, boys," said the crocodile-man from my rear end. I whimpered into Black-Eye's cock, but that was about all the protest I could manage from my position, tied up and held in place by the beastkin on my back and the crocodilian's unshakeable grip on my cheeks. He pried me apart in a single motion--obviously, this was something that he had done many times before--and then several of the bandits gasped in unison. Face now burning with embarrassment, I buried it in Black-Eye's cock, to his considerable enjoyment.

"She's a sissy!" remarked one of the observing beastkin.

"That cage is tiny!" guffawed another.

"Heh." The crocodilian shifted behind me. Something flat and bony pressed up against the sticky little hole between my spread cheeks. "I knew there was something fishy about you, you little whore."

"Who'd you think caged her?" muttered one of the beastkin, not even a direct witness.

"I bet it was that damn wolf," snickered a cat-like beastkin--a woman, judging from her high-pitched voice and the clearly defined, if somewhat small, pair of perky mounds underneath her ragged top. Except… she had a prick of her own, m-much like the one that I was still lavishing with my tongue. A… dickgirl…?

"Hah!" Black-Eye barked a sharp laugh. "That so?" He was peering down at me again, though this time his curiosity had a mocking edge to it. "I bet she dicks you down nightly, a beast like her."

I stopped licking. "N-no!! She doesn't--we're not--she doesn't even have a dick!!"

Any further argument was cut short by a sudden thrust by the crocodile-man at my rear. The flat, bony part of him slammed up against my sopping wet pussy-hole, and then something stuffed itself straight inside me.

"AHH!!" It was like being punched in the gut. My pussy went from empty to bursting at the seams with all the writhing, clublike flesh of what could only be the crocodile-man's penis. "HAHH!!"

Another smack of my face brought me back to reality, but only barely. Unlike the crocodile-man's scaly skin, his penis was hot, and its surface was strangely squishy, but but but deep inside it, like the metal core embedded in a sheet of reinforced concrete, there was something as unyielding at the strength that he held me in place with. My pussy convulsed and shuddered around his length, eagerly exploring every inch of his circumference even as his inches explored mine. Trapped in its iron cage, my clitty strained and struggled and threatened to burst then and there.

I threw myself into worshipping Black-Eye's cock, more to stifle the moans and shrieks that the crocodile-man's cock was working out of me than anything. I puckered my lips, touching them to his shaft in a humiliating mockery of a kiss, and gazed longingly up into his mismatched eyes. He took the hint.

"You want more, huh?" Black-Eye proclaimed, to yet another chorus of bandit laughter. "The chief's right! Slut or sissy--if you wanna get a girl to behave--" He deftly seized the base of his own cock and shoved it down, so that my lips were at his tip, and he was aimed like a spear at the back of my throat--"you just shove it in!"

He jerked his hips forward, and suddenly multiple inches of spiked beastkin cock filled my mouth and gullet. I made an involuntary, choked squeal, and he laughed.

"That's the spirit, sissy!"

Tears streamed down my cheeks as his spines dug into the flesh of my throat and my tongue and the roof of my mouth, threatening to carve out furrows in them. Though my health bar didn't budge an inch, the damage too superficial to count or something, the stinging pain that accompanied them was all too real.

"MfhH!! HngfhHH!" He fucked my throat with reckless abandon, and once again--through the fog of humiliation and submission and pain that rolled out over my thoughts with each thrust--I couldn't help but notice just how girly my voice was. I sounded just like a pornstar in a hardcore blowjob, o-or worse, a hentai voice actress!!

"Ahh." The hissing voice of the crocodile-man buried in my pussy wafted into my ears. Slowly, slowly, he eased his hips back, having apparently tired of lying back and enjoying the sensation of my primary sex organ wrapped around his. P-primary sex organ?? That wasn't--my pussy wasn't my--

He glided back forwards. Fireworks erupted behind my eyes.

"MFHFHH!!"

"Hah!" sneered one of the spectators. "She liked that, Jhago!"

"Course she did," the crocodilian leered back. "These lil butt-sluts always cream 'emselves for crocodile cock."

Wolf-whistles and hollering followed this crass remark, and 'Jhago'--spurred on by his gang's encouragement--followed up his thrust with a few faster ones. Each one drove another squeal out of my straining lungs and--far worse--another spurt of sissy squirt out of my caged clitty. It was impossible to describe what his fucking was doing to my pussy. Tides of pleasure were roiling inside me, pushed and pulled by the irresistible smashing of Jhago's cock inside me, and each time they struck my shore I… I couldn't stop myself. The world shook, lights flashed inside my poor, oxygen-starved brain, and I came for him. It was like my whole pussy had become as sensitive as my sissy spot.

And then, with a thrust at an angle he hadn't tried before, the crocodile-man showed me that my sissy spot was still around--and more sensitive than ever before.

"HNNFHFHFHH!!" I shuddered in my bondage, almost managing to buck off the beastkin still sitting on top of me completely. My vision went black for a few dizzying, head-spun moments--and then the world faded back into view. The stinging thrusts of Black-Eye in my throat continued on, as did the orgasmic hammer-blows of Jhago behind me. His instinct for my bitch-button wasn't nearly as unerring as that of the timber-wolf Percy had set on me, but he still struck it as often as he missed--and though those hits didn't make me black out for a moment like the first time had, they still sent pleasure coursing up and down my spine with ruthless, electric glee. Between these spikes and the constant, battering tide of his 'normal' thrusts and the choking hammering of my throat that Black-Eye forced upon me, a deep fog descended over my mind. Even the jeers and laughter of the beastkin horde around us melted away, fading into a mild buzz in the face of the pair of beastkin cocks rutting me.

The cock in my throat throbbed, and then erupted, pouring hot goo directly into my stomach--and I simply gulped it down, ignoring the sluggish protest about progressing my Cum Guzzler Milestone that some dim part of my mind raised in response. Black-Eye made a luxurious sound, almost like a purr, and sauntered away--and then another beastkin took his place. The cat-girl with a penis, I realised dimly. My mouth fell open--or had it stayed open, drooling his cum down my chin?--and she jammed her own length into it. Hot. Thick. Long--but not as long as Black-Eye. Spiny.

"Hmfhhh…"

Unlike Black-Eye, who had been happy to seize me by my hair and throat-fuck me like I was a fleshlight, the cat-girl--cat-dickgirl--demanded far more active participation from me. Weakly, I bobbed my head back and forth for her, scraping the underside of her shaft with my poor, abused tongue, as she hissed cruel mockery into my ears.

"That's a good girl. That big bad wolf trained you well, huh?"

The thought of protesting flitted across my mind, but it did so at the bottom of a long and dark tunnel. The cum in my belly sloshed wetly around, churned by Jhoga at my ass and my own gentle blowjob--didn't Cum Guzzler do something when I had cum in my stomach like this? Something… bad?

My vague worries evaporated as the grip on my ass-cheeks tightened. Jhoga had more than outlasted Black-Eye--he'd penetrated me before him, and even the bandit who'd taken Black-Eye's place was nearing her last stroke--and now he was approaching his limit. The next few thrusts came in deep and fast, whipping that sensual tide inside me up into a mindless ocean storm. My pussy clenched down on his shuddering length, hugging him with terrifying adoration, and soon my whole body was wound just as tightly beneath him--

and then he yanked his cock free of my hungry little hole, and I had only a moment to gasp in shock into the cock half-buried down my throat--

and a thick jet of sticky heat showered me.

"HEY!" The beastkin on my back stumbled off, sputtering in disgust, but I barely responded. The lion's share of Jhoga's cum had found itself on me, soaking my robes, pooling in my ass-crack, clumping up in my hair and… to a defeated, muffled moan… staining my quivering thighs, and the pathetic, caged clitty that dangled between them. I'd thought that having monsters cum inside me was the height of humiliation, but having a man's essence sprayed all over me, marking me as a hole he'd conquered… that made my heart flutter in its own way.

N-no… m-my heart wasn't fluttering…!!

Smack. With one last, contemptuous spank of my cum-stained ass (and a matching twitch in my tiny clitty-cage), Jhoga ceded the hole he'd conquered to yet another beastkin. My heart pounded as I felt an almost familiar mix of pointed tip and wickedly curved cock sank into my pussy--and then froze when a definitely familiar Milestone popped up in front of me.

I-if this was a canine beastkin, then that meant--"MfhHH!!"

"Hah, was that your knot?" crowed the cat-girl, still forcing me to blow her.

"I think she wants it," sneered a deep, gravelly voice that I could feel through the knot pressed up against the very lips of my shivering pussy, and the shaft that extended from it and throbbed hotly in the goo-filled mess that was my pussy itself.

"Knot her! Knot her!" A chant rose up from the bandits around us, growing in volume and fervour as more and more members joined in. The canine behind me hemmed and hawed thoughtfully, though he continued to jerk himself back and forth in my pussy, enjoying the way he glided along my juices--and the way my pussy eagerly clamped down on his length, massaging him tenderly as if it, too, wanted him to plunge his knot deep inside me.

"Alright," he said with a long-suffering sigh, and the chant died down. "If she begs me for it."

I paused in my slurping, sloppy assault on the cat-girl's spiny cock, and even she did not growl at me to get back to work. A stunned sort of glee had spread out over her face, and the faces of every beastkin in the crowd that I could see mirrored her.

"Yeah… yeah." She nodded slowly, as if being convinced of something. She peeled herself out of my mouth. "Beg for his knot, sissy."

She said it so flatly, so matter-of-factly, that the thought of disobeying never even crossed my mind. Maybe it was the cum swilling around inside and upon me, o-or the weeks of training at the Lustrous Heart, but in that moment it was the most natural thing in the world to do exactly as this cruel woman had ordered.

"P-please knot me." My own voice came out so limply that I could scarcely believe it was me saying the words.

Another stunned silence rushed out over the beastkin--and then came a wave of guffaws.

"She did it!"

"Hah! Didn't even have to--"

"Didn't hesitate or nothin'!"

"She really wants it!"

Part of me bristled at the jeers. I wanted to take it back, to snap at them, to kick and bite and scream and deny everything they'd just mockingly inferred--but the heavy fog still lay over me, weighing down my thoughts and my feelings and my righteous indignation. The… the part of me that wanted to resist… it was just so small, and my clitty was caged, and the electric sensation of having a knot plunged inside me was still fresh after a week… so I hung my head and tried not to clench too tight when the laughter ended and the canine beastkin finally forced his knot forward. It was… I was just… I just couldn't…

The knot never came. Instead, there was only the deafening crash of thunder.

KRRAAAAKK.

Chapter 20: Bloodstains

Chapter Text

Something huge and black hurtled into the backs of the bandits gathered around me, bowling them over me and the two raping me in a crush of human--well, beastkin--bodies. I cowered beneath them, the ropes holding me in place allowing me to do little else. Screams and shouts filled the night air.

"Get back!"

"Fuck!"

"Get off me!"

"The traps--"

"She smelled us on 'em, idiot!"

"Grab the girl!"

KRRAAAKK. Another thunderous crack tore through their panic. My own heart hammered in my chest, even as the pile of beastkin squashing me grew lighter, individual bandits managing to scrabble their way out of the mess. This was April, right? Nobody else would have known to come here, and another bad guy wouldn't be smashing the bandits like this--

"Runrunrun!!"

"Stand yer ground, dammit!"

Through cracks of firelight between the thrashing bodies on top of me, I saw another black missile slam into the few bandits who'd managed to stay on their feet through the first one. They were more prepared this time--a dark silhouette who might have been the crocodilian Jhoga caught his section of the object, though he stumbled back and quickly dropped it, unable to actually pick it up like their mystery attacker could.

KRRRRAAAKK. Thunderous as the sound was, it definitely wasn't April's Thunderclap. Had she picked up a new spell, somehow?

More shouts of panic. "She's got another one!!"

"GET her!"

"Boss!!"

What was happening? The silhouette that might have been Jhoga surged forward, vanishing from my patchwork vantage point. A bone-shattering impact followed, and my heart leapt into my mouth--but probably-Jhoga slumped back into view, and fell still, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

"Incoming!!"

"AGAIN?!"

There was a rolling whumph, the sound I was beginning to learn was the sound of the mystery assailant throwing their enormous black missiles, and several cries of pain and alarm. The panicked shouting had thinned considerably now, most of the beastkin contributing it taken down, and the pile of bandits on top of me was completely still as well. A sharp, metallic stench filled my lungs. Blood? For all the realistic violence we'd gone through in this game, it struck me that this was my first time actually smelling blood.

Like everything else about VALKYRIE, it was all too realistic.

"WAIT!" The gruff voice of Black-Eye rang out. "Th-the girl's gone! We sent her down the river! Th-there's another--"

"Liar." The snarl in response was April, alright. But it was April as I'd never heard before. Goosebumps raced out over my skin, and my chest and stomach grew tight. She was terrifying. "She's--" She took a deep breath, and it had all the animal hunger of one of the Silverwood wolves-- "right there."

Another inexplicable thrill of terror ran through my body. Why did the thought of her knowing exactly where I was scare me so much? She was rescuing me. Only my clitty, straining in its cage, and my slickening, gaping pussy seemed to want her to be here--and that was troubling in its own way.

His bluff deflected, Black-Eye made a frustrated sound, then a furious war cry. April clapped her hands, and this time the sound that followed was the usual peal of a Thunderclap. Black-Eye grunted--I didn't have to see the fight to imagine him stumbling back, momentarily stunned, and his physical resistance reduced by April's Stormchild Milestone. There was the audible smash of April's follow-up attack--and then the wet whumph of a body dropping to the floor.

Silence reigned.

"Anne! Anne, are you okay?" April broke the silence by hurrying over to my position. The dark anger that had animated her just moments before was gone now, and--when it occurred to me that the feline cock in my mouth was gone too--I managed to call back out to her.

"I'm in here!" My voice was thin and weak, but April followed it unerringly. With her usual strength, she hefted the heap of unmoving bandit bodies off me, two or three at a time, and soon I was gazing up at her familiar, beautiful face. One powerful yank tore the ropes off my body, and she helped me to my feet. My whole body ached--legs and arms and throat and pussy--but I was free.

Immediately, she flung her own arms around me and folded me up in a crushing hug. My feet left the ground as she buried her face in the crook of my neck, stuffing my face full of her silky black mane--and the earthy scent that permeated her in-game self. A wave of elation washed over me, the same as any skin-to-skin contact with her but magnified a hundredfold.

Dimly, I realised she was saying something.

"I-I'm so sorry," she sobbed into my shoulder. "I shouldn't--I thought--I'm so stuPID!!"

My mind went back to our first night in VALKYRIE, when the wolves had… gotten me. Her grief had been the same as it was now, and the elation from her deep embrace deepened into something warmer and fuzzier, chasing away my trembling fear and pain. She… she cared so much about me. I tried to work an arm around her to pat her on her back, but with her own arms pinning mine to my sides, the most I could manage was awkwardly petting her front.

"I-it's okay," I mumbled back, fighting to ignore just how much my body hurt--and the hot flush of humiliation that was rising up inside me, now that the battle had concluded and we were reunited. I still had thick, ropy strings of cum from Jhago's cumshot strewn over me, and a belly full of Black-Eye's seed, and my dress pulled up over my waist, exposing my full, feminine thighs and, worse still, my caged little clitty. Swiftly, though taking care not to arouse April's suspicion, I grabbed the hem of my Lustregown and tugged it back down, concealing my clitty once again.

"It's not," April sniffed, peeling her face away from my shoulder. I managed to stifle a small noise of dismay; at least some of her warmth remained, in the form of the hot tears that now soaked that shoulder and the fabric of my dress upon it. "I-it's all my fault. I… I took too long… w-with the traps… and th-they didn't even work…!"

Her words were broken up by sobs that wracked her whole chest, and me along with them. Her grip on me hadn't lightened even a little--if anything, it got tighter as she spoke.

"I-it's not your fault," I tried to reassure her, even as tears of my own threatened to spill from my eyes. "Th-they could… smell where you went…"

April howled with sorrow. "I-it's all my fault!!"

She buried her face in my shoulder again, still weeping, and this time I stayed quiet. Maybe she just needed to cry it all out. A-at least she wasn't… laughing at me, l-like most of the people in this game who heard about my… experiences.

Silently, I surveyed the camp around us. April's assault couldn't have lasted more than a few minutes, but she'd left the place broken beyond recognition. Only a handful of the bandits' crappy lean-tos and tents remained standing. In the midst of their wreckage lay the scattered bodies of beastkin, some of which I recognised from the long walk to the campsite. The tang of their blood, sharp and tart, fought for dominance against April's own overpowering scent.

Between them sat the fallen trunks of three trees. Their bottom ends bristled with splinters and shards of shattered bark. The image of an indistinct black missile taller than two of the bandits stood on top of each other came to me. She… she couldn't have, right?

"Did you… throw those?" I asked weakly, when April's crying had abated somewhat. If I compared them to the other trees in the clearing, they weren't particularly thick or tall specimens, but… they weren't spindly little saplings, either. These were proper trees.

April pried her face away from my shoulder again to see what I was talking about, and nodded without speaking. She was still on the verge of tears.

"You're… you're really that strong?" I croaked, trying to keep the incredulity out of my voice.

Her breath caught, and for a moment I was scared that she was going to burst back into tears. "I… kind of. Sometimes."

Her voice was still tight, like she'd rather not go into any more detail than that, so I let the matter drop. It was probably a new Milestone.

The camp had gotten darker since April's attack, and it took me a moment to place why. The bandits had invested in keepflames of their own, mounted on top of wooden poles almost like tribal torches, and a few had been snapped in half or knocked over in the assault--and, most likely, in the more cowardly bandits' rush to escape her. We'd been lucky, I thought. Or had April just been clever? If all thirty or so of the bandits had been marshalled together, instead of scattered by April's opening attack--that tree trunk she'd hurled into their backs, while they were… distracted by me… well, April would have probably joined me, trussed up and on all fours in the middle of the horde by this point.

I was silently thankful that my cage stopped my clitty from poking April in the thigh at that thought.

If I'd had it my way, I would have stayed locked in the much more lovely cage of April's tight embrace until she was ready to release me, but my body betrayed me with a long yawn. April startled--had she actually fallen asleep with me in her arms?--and blinked owlishly down at me.

"Ohmygosh, you need to rest!" She wasn't fighting back tears anymore, which I took as a win--but then she set me back on the ground and started rooting through her inventory. "Here!"

The floppy blue log of her bedroll appeared in her hands, and she set it down in the driest-looking patch of dirt that didn't have a bandit lying on it. She patted the head of it, which had a pillow sewn into it, and--not wanting to refuse such a generous offer--I perched myself on it.

"I, um, I do have my own bedroll," I pointed out, though I was sorely tempted to say nothing and just enjoy the prospect of sleeping in April's.

"We're sharing," April said matter-of-factly. "If one of those fuckers comes back, they're not even gonna get a chance to try anything on you."

My face glowed. She'd just invited me to share a bed with her! Well, bedroll. And it was more of an order than an invitation. And her main goal was to prevent me from being raped anymore. But she'd been so cavalier about it!

"O-okay," I said, hoping that it hadn't been too quickly.

"I'm just gonna sweep the area," she grunted, looking out over the sea of fallen bandits with visible distaste. "Make sure none of them are playing dead."

I stayed put on the bedroll as she roamed the clearing, kicking at every bandit she passed by. My heart hammered in my chest, but for once my excitement wasn't mixed with fear or tinged with humiliation--it was pure and giddy. Sharing a bed with April… feeling the warmth of her body against mine… her breath slowing to the comfortable tempo of sleep as I held her in my arms… even though VALKYRIE was just a game, judging from every other sensation I'd ever had in it, this was going to feel just as good as the real thing.

Maybe even better, I thought with a blush as I took in April's lingering scent.

"I think we're clear," April said, returning. "I bet most of those cowards got up and ran off as soon as I took my eyes off them." She put special emphasis on the word 'coward,' as if daring any bandits lying in wait to jump out and try something that instant.

She'd definitely become far more aggressive since I'd been captured. Of course she was! If April had been the one to get captured, I would have been just as furious. (I fought off fantasies of her tied up and on all fours and at the mercy of thirty beastkin cocks.)

As naturally as she breathed, she plonked herself down on the bedroll beside me. The giddiness in my heart bubbled over--she was here! I could feel her hot body against mine!! She was warming me with her skin!!--and, to my instant embarrassment, I let out a squeal that I just barely managed to strangle.

"What is it?! Does it hurt?" April immediately launched into protective mode again, and I had to shake my head furiously.

"Nonono! I-I just, umm, I was surprised," I said hastily.

I could feel the tension ease out of her body. "Oh. Well, I meant what I said. If those bandits wanna get to you again--" She wrapped her arms around me again, this time from side-on, so that her breasts were smushed up against my side-- "They're gonna have to get through me."

My brain short-circuited as she laid herself down on the mattress, pulling me along with her. I twisted so that I ended up on my side rather than my back, facing away from April in spite of a momentary urge to turn so that I was gazing straight into her eyes. Th-that was… it was too soon for something like that.

And then we were just… lying there. Together. It--it wasn't exactly what I'd pictured, with April wrapping her strong arms around me rather than vice-versa, playing the big spoon to my little spoon, but… but I had April squashing her strength up against me, bathing me in her body heat, and her soft skin, and her stark natural fragrance, and her warm, firm breasts. Her every breath--long, deep, steady, snug--rolled against my body, and soon I was matching her rhythm. Her arms, holding onto me firmly but not tightly, remained a comforting presence, a tangible (very tangible) reminder of her promise to me. She was going to keep me safe.

My clitty squirmed. My pussy drooled. Dimly, I let her warm embrace bear me gently to sleep.

I woke up the next morning to chirps and whistles and caws. The wildlife of the Reedlands, perched on the twisted boughs of trees and scurrying amongst the stalks below. April's heat still radiated all over my back, and my heart fluttered as I realised her powerful arms were still wrapped around me. Her grip was loose enough that even my dismal strength attribute was up to the task of shifting her off me… but I didn't. Getting cuddled like this by April was a gift far too great to pass up.

The sky was light, but only just. If I turned just far enough--I was careful not to disturb the sleeping beauty clutching onto me--I could make out the faintest tinges of orange emanating from what I figured was the eastern horizon. The tail end of sunrise.

With my primary objective being to stay in April's arms for as long as possible, it rapidly became apparent that there wasn't much to do but catch up on my in-game inventory. We'd both collected quite a few drops from monsters during our travels through the Reedlands the day before, and while the bandits hadn't had drops, per se, each one we'd defeated had given me a hefty sum of gold.

I frowned. While there was the occasional green-rated item--'uncommon,' to use the terminology that April and I had heard from more experienced players of the game--the vast majority of drops here were grey 'commons.' It wasn't exactly unexpected, seeing as the same was true of the only other 'world area' we'd explored, the Silverwood, but I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed. Maybe our trips into the Breachwood dungeon had left me somewhat spoiled, in that respect.

April still wasn't close to stirring, so I decided to review my Milestones. I hadn't done it in a while, and I… needed to check on the one I'd received last night. I hadn't exactly been in the best conditions to analyse it back then.

Despite the… humiliating circumstances under which I'd 'earned' this Milestone, I felt my heart lift slightly as I read through the Milestone's gameplay effect. If I was interpreting it correctly, this thing had both offensive and defensive utility! Obviously, it meant my Charisma-based spells would deal more damage towards hostile beastkin, like the bandits that had captured me--but April was a beastkin, too, and I cast beneficial spells like Cure and Antidote on her all the time. And it wasn't just limited to beastkin, too--I felt pretty confident that 'beasts' was a category that included the wolves in the Silverwood, and maybe even the mud-rovers that lived here in the Reedlands. Overall, it was far from the worst Milestone I'd ever gotten. That crown probably belonged to… hmmm…

I scrolled back up through my other Milestones. At first, it was to weigh up their costs and benefits… but then I noticed something worrying.

There was no earthly way I'd been raped forty-five times since starting this game. Even counting each individual sexual partner in all the, well, gangbangs I'd been subjected to… there'd been… well, quite a few with the wolves… and then there were the goblins… four beastkin, if blowjobs counted… a dark fist scrunched up my stomach. Forty-five. Maybe… maybe it wasn't so far-fetched after all. I really had to avoid getting raped again at all costs. I didn't know what Scared Sissy actually did, but its base form was responsible for making my voice girly, and any Milestone that explicitly used the word 'sissy' in its name was not something I wanted to have.

I scrolled through my other oldest Milestones. I was worried about what I'd find, but I had to make sure that I wasn't getting close to evolving anything else. Stupid game--why didn't it give me a pop-up every time I got evolution progress in a Milestone?! It did that for levelling them up!

Cum Guzzler, thankfully, was still a long way away from evolving into Cum Addict… but I still had to stay vigilant. With a name like Cum Addict, there were vanishingly few options for where evolving this Milestone could go, and they were all terrible. If I ended up d-desperately hunting down monsters j-just to blow them and swallow their awful, sticky semen… I gritted my teeth. My clitty was already struggling in its cage, even though I'd spurted quite a bit as the beastkin's little toy…

I shook my head furiously. Milestones.

Pocket Healer--my first Milestone--hadn't made any progress towards evolving, but it had changed. At least, I was pretty sure it had. I would've definitely logged out and either tried to make a new character, or given up on the game entirely, if I'd read the words Pocket Pussy on my first day.

It did look like it and Pocket Bride were somehow tied to unlocking the weird 'bonus' Milestone tracks attached to my spells. Maybe these conditions had appeared exactly when I'd gotten those tracks, and there was nothing else to it… and maybe there were other things it could evolve into, if I unlocked the other spells that unlocked Milestone tracks? It was definitely something worth considering, if it meant finding an alternative to these two extremely feminine options.

Behind me, April's body shifted into wakefulness. A thrill of excitement at the sheer intimate proximity between us ran through my own body--I was close enough to literally feel her wake up!!--but it was tempered when April removed her arms from around me to let out a stretching yawn. The bushes and branches around us rustled with the frantic escapes of a hundred tiny reedland creatures.

"Oh, you're awake!" April sounded mildly surprised as she sat up, running a corded hand through her messy black hair and her fluffy white ears. After a moment's thought, I was surprised, too--April was usually out of our room and halfway through her breakfast when I came down the stairs in the morning at the Lustrous Heart. And that was always after she'd gone to sleep after me, too…

"You okay?" I asked her.

April blinked. "That should be my question, dummy. They… the game… it… y'know'd you again… d-didn't it?"

I contemplated denying it. It didn't really make sense to--the evidence was literally caked into my dress and my hair, and she'd seen it happen a couple of times already. I wasn't keeping any valour by pretending I hadn't been raped once again. In the end, I just nodded weakly.

April scowled. "This fucking game…"

"Um…" I peered up at April's eyes. I rose so that I was sitting up as well, taking pains to somehow avoid touching my thighs to hers while also keeping off the mucky soil around April's suddenly much-to-narrow bedroll. There was definitely something… off about them, and it wasn't just the colour change they'd had a week ago, when she'd unlocked that Rainfall Milestone. "Last night… did you get a new Milestone or something…?"

April flinched visibly, and the mood--already sober--clouded even further in an instant. I almost kicked myself. Had I just insulted her? Said something really thoughtless? She'd been crying so much last night…!

Before I could spiral any further, though, she sighed and nodded her head. "It's… I dunno. I… I guess it'll be useful on this… quest. But…"

I'd seen April furious, and I'd seen her grief-stricken, and I'd seen her bubbling with joy (my personal favourite, of course!)... but this was new. This was April… dejected. A palpable wave of sorrow rose up in me, almost like nausea but far more subdued, and I cast about desperately for some way to fix it--a-a joke? Maybe I could get her talking about strategy again… were we still going after the bandits? What if we went on a shopping trip? I could buy her a new outfit!

I opened my mouth, but April got there first. "Ah, just look."

She gestured open her Milestones, and tapped at the air.

"Th-that's…" My mouth was suddenly dry. "That's… weird."

"Yeah." April looked solemnly out at the camp around us, and without much to offer, I looked out alongside her. Murder. What a… confronting word to use in a video game. And it wasn't like these were just innocent NPCs! It was like the game was trying to guilt her for something that wasn't even a crime--it was just self-defence! "Look."

She gestured at one of the broken bandit bodies that lay scattered around us. Right. We… we hadn't exactly cleaned up after ourselves, once April had made sure there were no threats remaining. We'd mostly just curled up and gone to sleep.

"They're not like the monsters," she said. "When you kill them, they leave behind… bodies. Like they're…"

Real people, I finished silently, though I didn't dare say it out loud. "But they're not, right?" I said, hurriedly. "They're just computer programs. This game just has a… a weird double standard!"

April turned back to me, and I barely managed to repress a gulp as I stared into her eyes. Now that I knew what it was that had changed, I couldn't believe that I'd missed it. Her slitted pupils, cat-like and intent, cleaved down the middle of her sea-green irises like two black faults. "Maybe," she said softly, but she didn't seem convinced.

"April," I said, wavering between putting an arm on her shoulder and not. She had just spent an entire night cuddling me. A little physical contact was fine, right? I reached out gingerly, and when she didn't pull back at all, tentatively laid a hand on her firm, mountainous shoulder. "You're not a murderer."

She inhaled sharply, like she was about to shout, or scream, or say something, but she let the breath out without another word. This repeated a few more times, and the frazzled urge to try and find some way to help her get this next thing out sparked up in my head… but I had nothing. I couldn't even tell what she was going to say, let alone figure out a way to help her say it. What did people normally say to something like 'You're not a murderer?'

Eventually, she managed to find an angle on her own. "That… that vole guy."

"The one we--well, you--captured? And we interrogated?"

April nodded slowly. It had all the grim finality of an executioner's axe swing. "Roshin."

"What?"

"That's his name." April's eyes had grown distant, and… misty?

I'd just been shoved in front of a puzzle with all of the pieces missing. "Why do you know his name?"

"I… found him," she said, after a long pause. "While I was… setting traps. I… caught him, again, and then we… talked, for a bit. I… thought I'd take him to the camp."

I swallowed thickly. I could picture it in my head. I'd been there, in that part of the Reedlands, where the reeds had been so tall that I'd found it impossible to poke our heads up above their tips. The vole-man wasn't much taller than me, and he'd had a slight build. April would have towered over him, a mountain of beauty… but a mountain all the same. She'd… dragged him to the camp, or he'd come willingly, maybe scared of getting swarmed by monsters and hoping to share our keepflame for the night… they'd talked on the way there, at least long enough to exchange names… and then…

That was when they would have found our camp. My pink, two-woman tent, and my feeble little keepflame… and the scents of a dozen beastkin bandits, fresh from kidnapping me. A band that included the vole-man's--Roshin's--black-eyed cat-man boss. With all the power quite literally at April's finger-tips in this game… Roshin wouldn't have stood a chance.

"That's not--April, he was a bad guy too!" I said frantically. "He, he would have joined in, if he was here, a-at the gang…thingy! I know he would've!!"

"Do you know that? For sure?" April growled.

I blanched. "I, uh…"

"He didn't want to be a bandit, you know," she said, her growl lapsing into something sullen and somehow all the scarier for it. At least her growls made my clitty twitch, however involuntary that was. "He was a labourer, but then this whole war happened, and all the beastkin got fired…"

How long had she been talking to this guy?

"And when we reached the camp, our campsite, and I figured out what had happened, I… all that stuff just went out of my head, I thought he'd been lying to distract me, I thought they were going to come after me next, so I couldn't save you, and I just--" She'd accelerated as she spoke, surging over sobs like they were speed-bumps in her voice, but at last she broke off, if only for as long as it took for her to choke this last sob back down-- "I… I wanted him dead for it."

"H-he probably was lying," I jabbered. "He's just a--a bunch of code anyway, it's not like--"

"SO?!"

I halted in my tracks. "S… so? So there's… nothing to feel guilty about…?"

"It felt real," April sniffled. "He--he could have been a real guy, i-in the real world, and--and if his real-life friends had, had done the same thing to you, k-kidnapped you so that I wasn't sure I'd ever see you again, but he wasn't sure he wanted to be friends with those jerks, and he was only running with them b-because the government wouldn't let him have a normal job--I would have wanted him just as dead!"

There was a terrifying fire in those last few lines. How long had she spent awake last night, dwelling on this exact thing, while I slept on, oblivious, in her arms? My chest was tight. Every part of it--my heart, my lungs, my stomach--it had all been balled up and scrunched into a tiny little wad.

Seeing April wallowing in fear like this, suffering like this, it left me more than speechless. Everything inside me was wound up so--so tightly. Mixed-up thoughts, mangled and confused, swirled in eddying whirlpools, fighting over my throat from a hundred different directions--what was I supposed to say? That she was wrong? Was she wrong?

What she was saying--that was what I'd sensed last night, I realised in fitful dribs and drabs. Even after I'd heard her voice, identified her as my saviour, I'd still quaked in terror of her for a few moments. Was that another piece of VALKYRIE's uncanny realism? The… instinctive fear of a killer? Two weeks ago, I would have found it ludicrous that the game could even plant emotions as subtle as that in my mind. It'd felt like my own natural response. But April wasn't a killer. The part of me that was actually me, not the game imposing its patterns on my brain--that part of me knew that, implicitly. April was good, and pure, and heroic… we were only here in the first place because she couldn't abide knowing that someone was suffering as a slave in some far-off bandit camp, even if they were just a computer program in the real world! If I couldn't find the words to help her see that, then--

Resolutely, I looked April in the eyes, and, not letting myself even think about it in case I lost my nerve and backed down, I flung my arms around her midriff and pulled her into the deepest hug I could muster. With my spindly elven arms and miserable Strength attribute, it barely held a candle to the sheer warmth and security (and pussy-wetting arousal) that April's hugs gave me, but…

"Oh!" Her voice warbled with repressed tears, but there was no mistaking the joy in it--or in the way she hugged me back, squeezing my face even deeper into her breasts. For the second time in a matter of hours, April held me tight as unspoken feelings poured between us.

"You--you saved me," I said, finally, when the rush of words in my head had finally settled down, and even the self-conscious glow of my face and the frenetic struggling of my clitty that always came with such close proximity to her had abated. "A bad person wouldn't… a bad person would have just left me there until the Bug ended. And a bad person wouldn't have cared about… killing that guy. You care, April. So--so even if you're not perfect, o-or whatever, you're still good. You--you do good things… you care! You… you care so much!"

And that's just one of the things I love so much about you, I didn't say. Instead, April clutched me even tighter--I almost made a noise like a squeaky toy, and for one, crushing moment empathised with Roshin and the way his voice had climbed in pitch throughout his interrogation--and she started bawling in earnest. This time, her tears spilled out over my face, running through my hair and down my front in hot, salty tracks, but… she had a watery smile plastered on her, even as her bangs stuck to her cheeks and her eyes puffed up with tears and her nose glowed pink as if she'd been punched.

"Thanks," she said, finally, and released me from the hug. She'd lifted me up off my feet again at some point--my heart still wasn't used to the sensation, and was still thundering along when she finally returned me to solid earth. She'd picked me up so much since we'd left Lumberg. It was… I was used to the man picking up the woman in these scenarios, but… I could't deny that there was something peculiarly… exciting about being the one picked up.

"I really needed that. Let's… let's wash up in the river?" April rubbed at her eye as she spoke, but she was clearly also eyeing my hair. There were still crusted globs of the crocodile-man's cum staining it--I could feel them--and a pang of mortification struck me when it occurred to me that she could see the physical evidence of my capture right there. And… probably smell it, considering how good her sense of smell apparently was.

"Yeah, okay," I said, quickly but hopefully not hurriedly, and we set off to the riverside. April held my hand in hers… and, thanks to the size difference between us, my hand really was folded up in hers. It was a microcosm of the way she'd held me the night before. My heart stirred, and my clitty and pussy trembled right alongside it.

Hard as it was to believe, I'd fallen just a little bit more in love with April Cascelli.

Chapter 21: At The River's Edge

Chapter Text

Picking our way around crummy shelters, the ashes of exhausted keepflames, and the glassy-eyed bodies of beastkin, we headed down to the riverside. In the light of day, and now that I was no longer surrounded by the looming shadows of dozens of bandits, the copse of trees that the bandits had built their outpost in seemed far smaller. I'd never been particularly scared of the dark, but I had to admit it did have a way of making everything else a lot scarier.

The Samson River soon came into view, a sea of languid blue that lay between two vast forests of reedstalks. Its waters caught golden beads of sunlight as they rolled along, bearing them easily downstream alongside the fish and pondweed that resided in them. Here, in the depths of the Reedlands, the river was far wider than it had been back in Lumberg, and its banks were black with silt that swallowed my boots up to the tops of my ankles.

"AcK!" I stumbled over a sudden dip in the earth under the muck, and almost pitched right over, but April managed to catch me before I went head-first into the river. "Th-thanks."

My gratitude was short-lived, however, as April suddenly shoved me to the side--straight into a spiky nest of reeds--and whipped out her emerald-studded club. "Watch out!"

A silver streak shot out from the water, fast enough that April actually missed on her first swing, and latched onto April's extended arm. I caught a glimpse of a long, silvery body lined with thrashing fins, and two gormless black eyes--and then heard another splash from the river. I spun around just in time to see a raw cross of pink flesh and needle-thin teeth rocketing for my face.

"MfhfhH!!"

The whippersnapper had four narrow, triangular jaws, arranged in a vicious cross shape. Each one brimmed with needle-like teeth--as one, they stabbed deep into my pearly skin, and my healthbar instantly dropped to the red. I desperately fumbled for my inventory. Like the one around April's arm, this monster remained attached to me after its initial attack--in fact, its teeth seemed to be sinking deeper, bleeding out a little more red from my health with each passing second. I felt the reeds beneath me snap and shudder; the whippersnapper was heavy, and the way it flopped madly as it gnawed on my face wasn't helping in the slightest. Just when I managed to reach my wand, the splintering reeds supporting us both finally gave out completely, and I went crashing into the mud, bringing the whippersnapper along with me. My inventory winked shut in the process, and before I could even marshal up my rattling thoughts to try again, the last of my health blinked out of existence, and my body froze in place.

Reedland muck seeped into my clothes as my scalp grew warm. It was strangely calming, despite the thrashing fish monster still attached to my face. My hair--which I already considered 'impractically long'--extended out even further, though with most of my vision taken up by the ridged pink maw of the whippersnapper I could hardly tell just how far it had gone.

"Anne!" April was only visible as a reassuring olive blob in the very corner of my vision. She reached down with both hands, blotting out the sun for a moment, and seized the whippersnapper still trying to maul me. Instead of tugging it off, like I thought she would, she simply pressed down, choking the life out of the monster with her bare hands. Its thrashing intensified for a moment--was it smart enough to realise what was happening, or was it just an instinctive reaction to having its body inexorably crushed?--and then it vanished in a burst of water. A surprisingly tasty-looking slab of pink meat fell to my chest in its place and, on contact with my body, vanished into my inventory.

"Moonlight." April cast out a ball of warm light; her eyes flashed with electric power, and a spattering of rain fell over us both. My health rocketed back to more than half, lifting the paralysis that came with being at zero health, and she helped me stumble back to my feet. "Sheesh. We can't even take a bath without getting jumped, huh?"

Her good-natured complaint aside, the brief scrap seemed to have restored her usual cheer, and--without a hint of hesitation--she switched outfits, to a bathing suit I'd never seen before, and waded swiftly into the water.

"C'mon, hurry up!" she called out. "I think we got all of them for now, but who knows when more will show up?"

I scanned the waters warily, and after another wave of whippersnappers failed to materialise, trotted in after her.

The icy bite of the river almost felt like an attack in its own right. Goosebumps shot over my skin, but, thanks to April, I managed to soldier on. The sight of her in a bikini was always something I lingered on for ages when it popped up on my social media feeds, and to see it in person was enough to purge any discomfort in an instant. This bikini was a flirty jade number held together with strings in loopy knots; the top cupped her breasts nicely, and the sides of the bottom rode high on her hips, almost exposing the sides of her prominent mons.

"Aw, no swimsuit?" she said with a playful pout. I hurriedly looked up into her eyes, but she didn't seem put out by my staring--in fact, I thought I caught a gleam of pride as she matched my gaze with her sea-green eyes. Her newly slitted pupils gave me a moment of pause, but I let it pass over me. It wasn't like they did anything to diminish her incredible beauty. They were just… different.

"Y-yeah," I said. "I, um, didn't think about that."

Now that I was thinking about it, I did actually have a swimsuit on me--the 'periwinkle microbikini' that one of my normal clothing items had been rerolled into, all those weeks ago. But I was hardly going to put that on. Even if I didn't have a pair of petite breasts that I was still keeping hidden from April, wearing something like that would just… destroy any chance I had of April taking me seriously as a man.

Though… compared to the other ideas I'd had so far, it wouldn't be that bad a way to accomplish the Madam's quest of showing April that I was a girl. At least there was no raw sex with animals involved… or admitting to enjoying any of it…

"Did you get a new Milestone just now?" April said, cocking her head. "I coulda sworn you were at twelve this morning."

I found myself reflexively wishing that she wasn't quite so observant--and then realised that this Milestone, for once, wasn't actually particularly embarrassing. Yeah, the unlock condition of having to lose four fights without dealing any damage back was a little humiliating, but at least it wasn't yet another rape-related one.

"I, um, yeah!" I nodded. I pulled it up on my menu and showed it to her.

"Ooh, that looks really good!" April said excitedly. "It maxes out at ten creatures, huh? I wonder if summons count for that? Oh, or every single smidgen in a smidgen swarm!"

"Oh, uh, I'll check it out next time we fight one," I suggested.

"And… Bimbo track, huh?" she ploughed on. To my relief, there wasn't even a hint of mockery or pity in her voice when she said the ridiculous name. "Is that like my Stormbearer track?"

"That's the Milestones you got with Thunderclap, right?" I asked. When she nodded, I nodded back. "Yeah, I-I got that from Star Passage."

"I was pretty amazed when I saw those, huh?" April commented. "There's, like, two times two times two makes… eight for every starter spell, and then there's three starter spells, so… twenty-four different Milestone tracks! And I'm pretty sure we have different sets too, right? That's kinda crazy!"

"Yeah, it is," I said. I'd had the same thought process when I discovered the extra tracks, although I hadn't gone as far as actually calculating how many there would be.

"I wonder if I should try to unlock another track, or just start unlocking the higher-tier spells in my Stormbearer track when we get back to Lumberg," she mused. "I don't really want to be, like, a storm druid, but they all seem so synergistic, you know?"

She started tapping away in the air in front of her, absorbed in what I could only imagine were her Milestone tracks. I idly doused my hands in the river water--I'd adjusted to it, and it was now pleasantly warm--and began to comb the mud, and cum, out of my hair. Now that I was standing, and not paralysed and getting chewed on by a fish, I could take stock of just how long it had gotten; straightened out to its fullest, it now reached well past my buttocks. Hell, it went almost halfway down my thighs! I could only sigh. At least it wasn't larger breasts.

"Hmm. There's some melee fighter stuff in here… gah, but what if the other tracks are better for that? Maybe I'll try Pounce…"

Suddenly, I was keenly aware that we were both waist-deep in monster-infested waters, and that the person who could actually tank more than one hit from those monsters was currently invested in building her character.

"Should we maybe do this on land?" I said.

April blinked. "Oh, right, yeah," she nodded. "Sorry. You're all clean?"

I nodded. The cum from last night had come off easily enough, and while my gown was soaked through, that was hardly the kind of problem that could be fixed while staying in the river. She bounded out onto dry (well, dry-ish) land, and I followed in her wake. We headed back to the deserted camp, where she shook herself dry (in remarkably dog-like fashion) and switched outfits, back to her current 'adventuring' kit of practical brown breeches and form-fitting green tank-top.

"You okay in that?" April said. I had to admit that I was feeling pretty bedraggled in my soaked Stargown, but… it wasn't like I had much else to wear. There was the hot pink dress… a pair of silk stockings… the microbikini… the nun costume...

"Oh!" There, in the midst of a number of clothing items I really didn't want to think about, sat two long-forgotten treasures: April's yoga pants and sleigh bell sweater. Hastily, I equipped them. Losing the bonus to Charisma from my Stargown would be a bit of a blow, but it would dry off in my inventory soon enough, and it definitely beat staying cold and wet all day.

"Oh, you still have those?" April said with mild surprise.

"I, uh, yeah, sorry," I said, chagrined.

April waved away my apology. "It's no problem! I forgot I even had those, honestly."

Her eyes fell on the camp, and a heavy pall fell over both of us, bringing an end to that short exchange. The bodies of the beastkin were still strewn across the place. Their wounds had mostly crusted over, and the blood that had pooled under some of them had long since leached into the soft earth beneath them, leaving behind only macabre splotches of faded brown.

"Are you still… good with this?" April asked softly. "The… quest?"

I stayed silent for a while, trying to hold together an expressionless mask of consideration as I mulled it over. If I was being perfectly honest with myself, although she was asking me for my choice, I couldn't help but feel as if she wasn't leaving me with much of one at all. Yeah, I had no doubt that she would respect my decision, and not drag me along with her if I told her 'no,' but… if I did say no, I had the distinct suspicion that she would go on ahead anyway. Alone. April was strong, and smart, and driven, and she had that scary Milestone buffing her Strength now, at least against the bandits, but without me to support her with Purify and Antidote and Cure and Infuse… well, I couldn't be sure she even had a chance at storming the bandits' home base.

Not that I could be sure she'd have a chance even with my support.

I swallowed. Maybe honesty was the best policy here. "I… I see why it's important to you," I started. April nodded along seriously, hanging onto every word, and that--more than anything I could see in my own logic--bolstered me enough into continuing. "But… I don't think we can… take on the bandits like that again. I… I think we'd just… lose."

And get gang-raped by the entire camp again, I didn't add. The thought had probably occurred to her, now that we'd seen why, exactly, the bandits wanted to capture us.

"You're right," April said, finally. I almost stumbled, even though we were both standing still.

"R-really?"

"But that just means we have to fight smarter, not harder," she went on. "I… I think I have an idea for that, but I'll need to test something."

She turned around in a slow circle, surveying the camp in its entirety. She wasn't looking at the tents and shacks that made up the physical location, though--she was looking at the bodies that lay between them.

"What, um, what are you looking for?" I asked.

"Last night… were there any, ah, wolf-people?" April asked. "Among the bandits? I-it's okay if you can't remember! It would just be helpful if you saw one!"

There was the one who'd given me another level of Doglover… with their knot… had he been a wolf? Maybe. "I, um, I think so… h-he was… s-some kind of dog, at least…!"

Mercifully, April didn't ask the obvious question of how I'd learned that, and instead turned to the cluster of dead beastkin on top of the coarse fabric where I'd been raped just a few hours ago. In the heat of the moment, and the darkness of the night, it had felt like I was being crushed under half the gang--but looking at the pile in the light of day, there were just four bodies remaining.

"Here." April found the canine man easily enough. He was more dog-like than wolf-like, with the short black fur and sober jowls of a doberman. I bit my lip. His cock had remained stiff even in death: a fleshy pink spike perched atop a bulbous knot. Shaft and knot alike glistened wetly in the sunlight. It was a lewd reminder of how he'd used me the night before. I glanced at April, half to check that she hadn't noticed my lewd expression, and half to check her own reaction to coming this close to one of her… victims.

Her face was taut, mouth a thin line that spoke to tension beyond words. But after a few moments, she seemed to ball up some of that guilt and exhaled it away, in a breath that started shaky and finished firm. When she spoke, her voice was steady. "Maybe not him. He's a guy."

"I-is that a problem?" I asked nervously, still not seeing what the plan here was.

"Kind of," April said, looking around. "Hm. Maybe it'll be better if they're not a dog."

Her eyes fell on the body nearest to the doberman; a ginger cat-person who lay spread eagle, her limbs bent at angles that made me wince, by his side. My face heated up as I realised that I recognised her--by the pale, spiny cock that jutted out over the waistline of her unfastened breeches. It was strangely poetic, in a way. The two bandits who'd still been fucking me when April made her appearance, killed because she'd caught them with their literal pants down.

"Huh." April peered more closely at the cat-woman's body, and it quickly hit me why. I might have been used to the sight of dick-girls, from all the porn and hentai I'd watched, but this might have been the first time April had ever seen breasts and a penis on the same person. "I didn't know they could be trans…"

I exhaled. Right. Yes. Trans representation, in this virtual reality game where players could h-have their bellies pumped so full of cum it actually rounded out their bellies. It clearly wasn't some dev's personal fetish at all. "S-so, um, what's this thing you wanted to try…?

"Well, it's more… testing something out," April said. "It might not even work, in which case we'll need to come up with something else… but if it does…"

She looked back down at the body of the ginger cat-woman, and closed her eyes, as if summoning up a distant memory. Or… trying to sear a new memory into her mind, maybe.

"Wild Aspect."

Shaggy orange fur, long and unkempt, rippled across her olive skin, hiding it in an instant. Her hair followed suit, swallowed up in a wave of the same orange that swept over even her wolf ears, and her fluffy white tail. Each of her nails darkened and grew longer, sharpening themselves to vicious points. Her ears shrunk, turning into tiny triangles that only just peeked out over the top of her newly ginger mane, and her tail extended, until it was long and cat-like… and the sea-green of her irises bled out into the white around them, filling them up until two slit-pupiled cat eyes stared unblinkingly down at me. For just an instant, her gaze flicked down, and I thought I saw her hands twitch towards her crotch--but then she snapped back to my face, and there wasn't a hint of a blush under her new layer of fur.

The cat-woman did have, well, a little something extra there… but that wouldn't have been copied over, right? The timber-wolves' penises hadn't. At least… not as far as I knew…

"Well," she said. Her voice was the slightest bit higher now, and rasped like sandpaper. "I think that worked." She gave me a twirl. "How do I look?"

"I… well." I paused. Though the transformation had been quite dramatic, now that I'd had a minute to adjust to it, it was pretty obvious that it hadn't really changed April's facial features at all. She might have had the dead cat-woman's ginger fur, but the narrow edges and angles of the cat-woman's face hadn't come with it. "You're basically just… April in orange fur."

April scrunched up her face and whipped out her tiny pocket mirror. "Aw. I am."

"Sorry."

"Aw, it's not your fault." She lifted one hand experimentally up to her nose, which had shrunk down to a pink dot above her mouth, and gave it a sniff. "At least I smell right. Mostly. We'll just… we'll just have to show up at night, I guess."

I took a nervous breath. "So… you want to try and… disguise yourself as one of them? And… sneak in?"

"Yeah," April said. "We'll… we'll use my attack as cover. Say that's why I'm showing up so late. Hopefully, if I have you as my, um, 'prisoner', they won't look into it too closely, and they'll take me to where all the slaves are kept. Then, we can grab the farmer guy's son, bust outta there, and finish the quest!"

I paused. As far as plans went, it… it didn't sound awful, actually. The big issue would be convincing the bandits that April was, in fact, one of their fallen comrades. Especially since we didn't actually know the name of the person she was trying to impersonate.

"Should we maybe pretend you're a… new bandit, instead?" I suggested. "We don't even know what your name is supposed to be."

April made a thoughtful noise. "Yeah, that makes sense. Maybe if they don't immediately recognise me? Oh, I could say I'm just joining up! And you're my, like, tribute, or something!"

My heart brimmed with happiness. Watching her warm up to my suggestion like this was warming me up inside. Even if the plan still involved me pretending to be a slave. The… captive of April, no less.

"Hm." She looked back out over the bandits, fidgeting with the hem of her shirt, blissfully oblivious to my stirring clitty and watering pussy. "It… it feels kinda weird, but… maybe I should…"

I followed her gaze. "Maybe you should…?"

She indicated the body of the dead cat-woman between us. "Maybe I should dress the part…?"

"Oh… oh!" That was what the awkwardness was about. She still felt some guilt for killing all of those bandits. She'd hardly want to disrobe one of their corpses, then parade around in the clothes they'd died in. Game or not, with their bodies splayed out around us, the thought did feel a bit… off. "I, um…" An idea popped into my head. "Oh! What if they have spare clothes somewhere?"

"Huh?"

"Like, in a chest, or something?" I said. "They probably don't just have the clothes on their back, right?"

April beamed. "Oh! Good thinking!"

And so we spent the rest of that morning ransacking the ruined outpost, searching for supplies to make April's bandit disguise more compelling. There were indeed a pair of ratty kits of leather armour lying in a wooden trunk near the centre of the camp, though when April tried them on they both struggled to contain her impressive physique--particularly her more, um, exciting assets. Her swimsuit had covered up more of her skin. She pulled a face, but kept them in the end. Evidently, April-the-bandit cared little for modesty.

There was one corner of the camp that had been particularly bruised in April's attack; a ring of rickety old weapon racks. Most of them were empty, and knocked to the ground to the floor to boot, but a couple of rusty old spears remained attached to one of the racks that had been left standing. The product of a mad rush of beastkin last night, I guessed. Some would have hurried here to grab weapons for the fight against April… and some had probably just stopped here for a way to protect themselves in the middle of fleeing the camp entirely. I wondered which group would've had a better survival rate. April had almost definitely wiped out every bandit who stayed… but if the bandits' keepflames were any indication, they weren't any safer from monster attacks at night than we were. Had any of them made it back to that main camp in a cave that Roshin had mentioned?

April grabbed one of the spears: they were rather terrible in terms of stats, but they were certainly authentic bandit gear. I thought about taking the other, but decided against it. I couldn't even equip it, my Strength being below 7, and with VALKYRIE's commitment to realism, I somehow doubted that a weapons seller would be interested in buying such a crooked, poorly-maintained thing.

Nearer the river, on the path we'd taken to get to the riverside earlier, we found a low wall with a bunch of fishing rods leaning up against it. Well, 'fishing rod' was being generous--these were little more than whippy wooden sticks with lengths of twine attached to one end, and a collection of rusted metal fish-hooks in an equally rusted tin. The bandits were clearly not worried about contracting tetanus. There was also a rope net lying in the silty soil; it stunk badly of fish, but April pocketed it alongside the rods.

"Who knows?" she said. "Maybe we'll end up fishing one of these days."

And then, back at the rag where I'd been… g-gangbanged, April sniffed out a grimy chest that lay underneath one of the cloth's tattered corners. This contained a collection of what were unmistakably pet collars, and matching leashes. Thin, black, and studded with stubby metal spikes, they immediately called to mind the kind of videos where girls were made to bark and beg on all fours by burly men who brooked no imperfections. The leashes were long chains that clinked menacingly as April gingerly pawed through them, confirming that there wasn't anything else underneath them.

All told, this stuff was surprisingly clean, compared to the rest of the camp--a few bits and pieces had been stained by some yellowed substance of interminable origin, but their iron buckles and dangling name-plates and the links of the chains were a far cry from the rusted state of most of the other metal in the camp.

"We… we should, right?" April said awkwardly, picking one up and very pointedly trying not to breathe through her nose.

"I'm… I-I guess so."

She handed it to me, alongside one of the matching chains, and I pocketed them. I already had a… collar of my own, thanks to the efforts of the Madam, but explaining that to April was, um, unnecessary.

By the time noon arrived, we'd sifted through the campsite twice over. Surprisingly, the bandits didn't seem to have any gold stashed away… though it wasn't like we were searching the bodies themselves. Perhaps they just didn't trust each other enough to leave their money out of easy reach.

"Should we go again?" April asked, setting down a chest that I wouldn't have been able to even budge in the real world. She glanced up at the sky; it looked like we were still a long way away from midday. We'd still have plenty of time to travel even if we took the time to search the camp a third time, but…

"I… I think we're good." Truth be told, I was getting increasingly worried that we were going to stumble over some sex toys even more risqué than the collars and leashes. I was pretty sure April wouldn't pick up, like, a dildo or a buttplug or something and suggest we incorporate it into my slave disguise, but… w-well, that was a bridge I'd rather we never even walked up to. "I think we have enough stuff f-for the disguises, anyway."

"Alright! Then… I guess we can head off!" April marched off in the direction of the riverside, and stopped just short of the line where the boggy earth of the Reedlands segued into the black silt of the river's banks. "Hmm. Which direction do you think the big camp is?"

I frowned and looked down both of my options: upstream and downstream. Upstream meant being closer to Lumberg, which intuitively felt like the worse option for the bandits, but I wasn't sure my intuition was really worth anything in this situation. "Um. Can't you just smell where the, uh, escaping bandits went?"

"Not really," April said with a shrug. "They kinda took off in all directions. Some of 'em went straight into the river."

Crocodilians like that Jhoga guy, maybe. Or… were there fish beastkin? Dolphins? I stared across the clear waters of the river. There were monsters in there--at least the whippersnappers, and probably a whole menagerie of other kinds, too, if the other two biomes I'd visited in this game were any indication. Being half-dolphin probably made you a better swimmer than even the best human swimmers in the world, but… could it make you better at it than actual monster fish?

"Wait, then maybe they took a boat?"

April slapped a hand on my shoulder; with our respective differences in size and physique, it felt a lot like having a bag of bricks dropped on me. "Anne, that's brilliant!" She waded into the mucky silt ahead of me, peering over the tops of the reeds. "We just gotta find, like, a dock or something. What do you call that, like, wooden thingy boats stop at, anyway?"

"A… pontoon? A wharf?"

"Ah, whatever. C'mon! I'll sniff it out. Just help me watch out for those fish guys!"

I sized up the reeds, which were still taller than I was. I wasn't going to be doing much watching out for anything if I was swallowed up in there… but they'd probably work as cover against the whippersnappers, too. I hurried in after her, keeping my wand drawn, ready to at least react to the next attack, even if I wasn't going to be able to pre-empt it.

Chapter 22: A Day in the Reedlands

Chapter Text

The trek to track down a dock didn't take long. We'd walked for maybe ten minutes downstream when--rather than a dock, or a pontoon, or a wharf--we came upon the scuttled remains of a wooden sailing boat. Its front half had been buried in a thick bed of splintered reeds; great, jagged chunks of its back half were missing, leaving behind messy crevasses into the boat's interior. The mast had been snapped almost cleanly in half; its sail dangled forlornly over the reeds, almost perpendicular to the mast's base. Though the boat seemed to be deserted, a dark splotch of rusty brown against one side suggested that this was a very recent development.

"You think a monster did this?" I asked. The missing chunks were in the shapes of rough crescents. They could have easily been left behind by a giant mouth.

April looked out at the river with renewed respect… and, if I was being honest, more than a little fear. "Must've been, right…?"

"Isn't this supposed to be an early game area?" I asked. "Why would anyone even try to sail down this river if there are things that can do that living in it?"

April shrugged. "Well, at least now we know what direction they were trying to go in, right?"

She did have a point.

I was about to ask if we should try and loot the thing, like we had with the camp, when a chorus of low growls interrupted me. From the reeds on the other side of the boat advanced a cluster of squat, grey goblins.

True to their semi-aquatic existence, the claws and toes of these goblins were webbed, and the enormous, floppy ears that were characteristic of most of the other goblins we'd encountered had become pointed fins that they fluttered at us in some kind of threat display. Instead of daggers or spears, these goblins held tridents scabbed over with tiny black barnacles. There were eight of them, all wearing ragged yellow and grey loincloths much like their land-bound counterparts, and their grey skin--as far as I could see--was totally hairless.

"Sheesh," April said, drawing her club. Her lip was curled downwards with distaste she hadn't shown for any other monster type yet. "It's fight after fight out here, huh?"

I pulled out my wand. "Yeah. Angel Down!"

A stream of pink and white light poured from my wand, and the battle for the bandits' boat began. April leapt into action, unbothered by my dazing spell as she swung her mace left and right, pulping the goblins with ease. Unlike the mud-rovers, the other primary front-line monsters we'd faced in the Reedlands so far, these goblins went down in a single hit--and in embarrassingly short order for the goblins, we'd wiped out all eight of them, taking little damage in return.

"Huh," said April. "You know, I was kinda hoping they'd be stronger than normal."

"Um, why?" I had gone ahead and started picking up their drops--most of them had left behind nothing but their gross ears or toes, but there was a silvery pearl among them that I'd recognised from the pysie we'd killed before.

"Well, I was thinking that something on the boat was attracting super-strong monsters to the area," she explained. "Which was why the big thing that attacked it showed up. Buuuut…I guess it was just a fluke?"

A thorough search of the boat revealed nothing in that vein; just a few foul-smelling crates of fish, some of which had been smashed open and were now beset by a tiny horde of industrious crabs. We left them alone, though April did snatch up a handful of the crabs, and they disappeared into her inventory.

"What?" she said when I gave her a weird look. "It counts as forage, you know!"

No more monsters, goblin or otherwise, had come to investigate the boat in the interim, and we set off again, following the river to what we hoped would eventually be the bandits' main camp.

The next couple of hours were a brutal slog over the riverbanks. The black silt clung to our boots, and even though April was far stronger than me, it was offset by her much greater weight--she sank into the mire far deeper than I did with each footfall, meaning she had to work harder to extract her feet from it. The reeds remained as stubbornly high and densely packed as ever, and though I did have April clearing something of a path through them ahead of me, icebreaker-style, there were still plenty of opportunities for ambushes on either side of us--and beneath us, in the case of the muddleborgs, which were rapidly becoming my least favourite enemy type in the game.

First of all, they were ambushers, like surl creep and breach vipers and all those other annoying monsters that leapt out at us when we least expected it. Unlike those monsters, however, muddleborgs were huge, resembling enormous, mossy carpets almost as wide as the bandits' boat was long--several times, I'd been toppled off my feet when a muddleborg revealed itself, because I'd been standing directly on top of it. They were also hellishly tanky; April's strikes, normally enough to outright kill or at least seriously wound almost every other monster in the Reedlands, sank into a muddleborg's oozing flesh with little more than a wet smack. And because their faces weren't much more than a disgusting mass of stubby brown tendrils and antennae, and they seemed to slough off thick masses of mud as they moved whether they were being injured or not, it was difficult to tell how close one was to dying until it actually collapsed into a pile of muck and gave up its drops.

The worst part, though, was definitely their signature move. Muddleborgs were slow-moving and seemed to be dim-witted compared to something like the timber-wolves, so at first I'd figured that they were meant to be little more than mildly irritating damage sponges with a couple of slow attacks to watch out for.

Then one of them got its face--its horrible, wiggling, tendril-ridden face--right up to mine, and I felt a sudden surge of calm and contentment wash over me. The tendrils parted, undulating like the fronds of a sea anemone, revealing a surprisingly smooth black chute into its body. Goopy brown mucus oozed over its rim, pouring inwards in a soft, mushy, deluge: and I knew immediately that I had to follow it, pushing my head deep into sickening hole, no matter how my stomach turned, then angling my body so that my narrow shoulders could be slurped up next--

"ANNE!!" A pair of powerful arms closed around my body and hauled me back, disgorging me from the filthy, nauseating brown muck of the muddleborg's innards. I kicked and thrashed against my unseen attacker, desperate to try to get back into its mouth--and then the spell broke. Pain and disgust exploded over me, inside my head and out, streaming down my body in hissing, reeking tracks of muddy brown acid.

"FucKfuckFUCKfuck!!" My skin burning, I stumbled backwards, straight into yet another bed of reeds, then toppled over face-first into the black mud. The clammy ooze was surprisingly soothing--it seeped into my skin, easing the burning sensation. I peeked at my health-bar, about the only thing visible with my face buried in the ground, and found that I was dangerously close to empty.

I jabbed myself with a quick heal and hurried to my feet, just in time to see April land one last hit on the monster's marshy body. It disintegrated into nothingness, leaving behind a pile of incongruously glittering gold, and April turned to check on me.

"Did it get you with its charm?" she said.

"It has a charm?" I sputtered. I was still soaked in mud and the muddleborg's filthy goo; I would have felt less dizzy and bedraggled if I'd fallen down a manhole into a sewer.

"Hang on, let's get you cleaned up."

Mercifully, there were no further encounters in the minute it took to get to the waterside, and in short order a bracing dunk in the river had me feeling refreshed once again. A single whippersnapper did hurl itself at us, but by this point April had gotten quite used to smacking them out of the air, and it died soon after.

"I'm so sorry!" Even by the time we'd left the river, April was still apologising. "I forgot you don't see all the tooltip stuff!"

"How come you weren't getting charmed?" I groused, wringing some of the water out of my extremely long hair. She'd had her head close to the muddleborg's quite a few times, but she hadn't ever been compelled to ram her face down its throat like I had.

"Well, probably my Wisdom?" April said. "Mine is pretty high, and I think it protects against mental effects like that?"

"What's yours?"

"Um… let's see… twenty-nine." A conflicted look crossed her face, but eventually curiosity won out. "What's yours?"

"Eight," I said miserably.

April made a sympathetic noise, and instead of pursuing this line of conversation turned around in a circle, sweeping the world above the reeds with a careful eye. "I wonder if maybe we shouldn't be on the riverside?"

"Huh?"

She turned back to me. "It kinda feels like we've been fighting non-stop since we came down here, right? I'm wondering if maybe we're on the boundary between two different, like, biomes."

"Sort of like… river and land?"

"Yeah, exactly."

"I… I guess we don't have to be right on top of the river to follow it," I said. "And it'd be nice to get out of this crap."

I squelched my boots emphatically.

With that, we retreated to firmer land, where--true to April's speculation--our encounters with monsters dwindled to a much more normal rate, and lurking muddleborgs and whippersnappers no longer leapt out at us. Was April's biome theory right, then? Or was the river just more heavily populated for some reason? I didn't really have any ideas for how to confirm either of those theories--that was something that the VALKYRIE fanatics were going to have to puzzle out some day.

The day wore on, though not nearly so painfully now that we'd left the marshy riverbank. The River Samson, wide and serene and very visible past the reeds that thronged around us, was easy enough to follow from our vantage point, and April kept an ear--and her nose--out for any evidence of bandits in the area. Between bouts of combat, she would occasionally glance up at the sun, in all its glowering watercolour yellow. A few times, she made as if to say something afterwards… but she stopped herself each time.

"Is there, um, something you want to say?" I said, finally, hoping I was coming across as suitably supportive and open to having her hug and cry on me again. It was late into the day, and the sky was just beginning to darken to a husky orange.

April scrunched up her face, but it didn't look like she was getting close to tears. Rather… she was trying to decide whether she wanted to say anything at all. That was something I could empathise with. "I have a weird question," she said, finally.

"Go for it," I said, with nonchalance I didn't feel. A weird question? In the empty space before she spoke, possibilities roared through my head, fighting to be heard. Did I cum when the bandits raped me? Where had I gotten my magic rope? Why had I gotten my magic rope? How many bandits had fucked me before she'd shown up to save me?

"Do you have a penis?"

My mouth fell open limply.

April immediately started backtracking. "I-it's okay!! You don't have to--that was way too much--I'm sorry I--"

"I-it's okay!" I said back, even as my cheeks grew warm and my clitty strained to stand up straight and my pussy drooled into my panties. "I-I was just, um, surprised! I don't--well, it's kind of weird but--you mean my game body, r-right??"

"Y-yeah," April said. "So, um. Do you?"

"I--"

I do. It was all I had to say, but my mouth caught on nothing. April was watching me, waiting for an answer--

"N-no. I don't."

Great. So not only did the game insist I think of my… organ as a clitoris, but I couldn't even vocalise anything to the contrary. If someone asked whether or not I had a penis… I had to say no. At least it hadn't made me clarify that I had a clitty instead, I thought sourly.

"Oh." April seemed somewhere on the milder side of crestfallen at this news, and I prayed internally, with all the desperation of a man stranded in the desert, that she hadn't been asking because she was seriously considering having sex with me. On the one hand, why else would she have possibly been interested in the possibility I had a penis? On the other… there was no way that she'd be open to having sex with me in a virtual reality game, right? Yeah, on a detached, surface-level view of things, it wouldn't actually be so different from roleplaying in a chatroom, or phone sex… but sex in this world felt several orders of magnitude more real than any other online connection. We were both intimately aware of that. There was no way to take the proposition 'April would have sex with me in VALKYRIE' as anything less than serious evidence for the proposition 'April would have sex with me in real life.'

"I, um." I faltered a bit as I spoke. Did I even want to know the answer to this question? "Wh-why do you ask?"

One of April's hands found the keepsakes hanging from her throat as she considered her answer. The helical Protean Charm we'd picked up from the Breachwood… and the amber ball, wherever that had come from. She fidgeted with them as she spoke. "It's… it's complicated. I want to stay by you, to protect you, but… I've also… at night… I've gotta…"

She trailed off limply, and I almost wanted to break off the line of questioning there, just to spare her the awkwardness.

Almost. "You've gotta…?"

She exhaled heavily. "Promise you won't… judge me for this…?"

I reached up to place an arm on her shoulder, and stared deep into her beautiful, black-slitted, seagrass eyes. I swallowed back a remark about how gorgeous she looked at that moment, and a heartfelt admission that nothing she could do or say would stop me from loving her. Instead, I stuck with a simple, "I promise."

One tap brought the Milestone up in front of me, and I realised that she must have already had it open for a while.

"O-oh." Aroused. There was that ridiculous status condition again. Was it just designed to psychologically torture the players of this stupid game? My eyes went to the unlock condition. Losing your virginity to a monster. So she'd been dealing with this one ever since… ever since the Breachwood. Two weeks…! "This is…"

"Y-yeah," April said shakily.

"A-and you can't… um…" I fished in my head for a suitable euphemism. "... use your fingers?"

"I-I tried that," she told me glumly. "I… I think I need a partner."

"Oh," I said weakly. At the start of this conversation, the gears in my mind had been whirling madly… but now, they were locking up, jittering and shuddering in the face of an onslaught of new information. New… possibilities. Like… "Oh."

"N-not that it has to be you!" April blurted. "Or, um, not be you! Oh my god. I-I just don't want you to feel like you have to do this, okay? Or that I, um, need you to do it… oh my god."

I struggled as hard as I could to follow what she was saying. Did she think there was even a ghost of a chance that I wouldn't want to do this? Maybe I'd been doing a better job of concealing my crush than I'd thought.

"Y-you don't even have a penis anyway, right?"

Th-there was that obstacle. "Um, y-yeah…"

Her face had gone a hot shade of pink, and from the warmth in my cheeks and ears I had to imagine that mine looked much the same. We'd lost eye contact a while ago, our eyes darting everywhere but directly at each other. This was not how I'd pictured April inviting me to… have sex with her.

Sex. With April.

Paradoxically, the sheer titillating excitement of the thought was what finally brought me back to earth, stopping my brain from melting out of my ears completely. Ahead of me lay a rollercoaster of indeterminate length, wickedly hot and packed to the brim with thrilling curves and climbs and drops, and--and now, all I had to do was figure out a way to get on it.

My clitty was… out. I had to laugh. Even now, one right move away from being allowed to fulfil its most ardent dream, it was out of the running, sealed away by my cursed cage. That one cruel addition to my outfit pinned it down, kept it a straining prisoner against every fibre of my will and being.

But clitoris-in-vagina wasn't the only type of sex that existed. I'd seen plenty of examples of girls getting brought to orgasm with finger-play, or oral! (I stolidly chose to ignore that most of those examples were between lesbian lovers.) My fingers didn't stand a chance of reaching as deep inside her as hers could, admittedly--and if I really thought about it, neither would my clitty, which had started short and only gotten shorter--but maybe, w-with the added simulation of my lips and tongue…

"I-I, um, I could still… help…" I said, haltingly, imagined visions of April's pussy flying across my mind's eye. Would it be dark… thick-lipped… d-dripping with her arousal…?

"Y-you don't have to!" April said hurriedly. "I-it was a stupid idea. I-I can…"

She bit her lip. She could what? If she wanted to stay close enough to protect me from any other bandits while still getting her rocks off, the only alternative was… my eyes went wide and my clitty's struggles redoubled in intensity and my pussy, already wet with anticipation, began to positively drool into my panties.

"N-no!" I shook my head furiously. There was no chance in hell that I was going to watch, or hear, or just generally be around, April having sex with a monster, especially with my clitty caged up. That would just be beyond emasculating, and the temptation to ride on the Bitch-Breaker would just be… n-not that I would! I kept shaking my head. "I-I'll do it. I can--I can use my mouth… and if that's not enough, I…"

I trailed off as I thought through the ramifications of explaining to her that I owned a giant pink dildo. H-had I even cleaned it since the last time I rode on it? Wouldn't she be able to smell me on it??

"Really?" April sniffled as she spoke, and this was enough to spur me into daring to look up at her. Her eyes were watery, and she had a shaky smile on her face as she gazed back at me. "Ohmygosh, th-that's so… thank you, thank you, thank you!"

With lightning quickness--how was she so fast?--she lunged for me and scooped me up, and I was once again treated to a full-body April embrace, my face snugly squeezed up against her magnificent jugs, and hers pressed down into my hair from above. She inhaled deeply, and for a moment I thought I heard a purring sigh… and then she set me back on the ground. Like always, I wished that it had lasted just a little bit longer.

The last leg of the sun's journey across the sky crawled on with agonising slowness. An electric new tension had settled between us, making me twitch nervously every time April turned towards me. Each time our eyes met, we both flinched and glanced away, a smile that even I had to describe as coquettish playing about my lips. My heartbeat refused to fall below a brisk gallop the entire time, and my brain didn't help matters as it expanded on the theme of April's dripping pussy with visions of her moaning my name--my real name, not 'Anne'--and closing her majestic thighs around my head. It was all too easy to imagine her gentle strength pulling me in closer, tighter, inexorable but comforting, keeping me in place but only as I wanted to be kept…

Even the few monsters we came across were poor distractions. I casted basically on autopilot, no longer worrying about conserving mana; we were close to setting up camp for the night anyway, and my natural regeneration was enough to tide me over until then. April, by contrast, seemed more alert than ever--a few times, she dove on top of monsters that had managed to slip past her to get to me, tackling them to the side before they could land an attack. I'd pictured myself playing the same role for her, once, what felt like years ago… but this way round made my heart throb for her too.

And then, when the sun had become an orange disc that touched the horizon, and its light poured out over the sky around it, dyeing it a rosy range of pinks and yellows and kissing the white tufts of the clouds beneath it a silent goodbye, April came to a halt, a freight train reaching its final destination for the night.

"Let's set up camp here?" she said. She'd found a small sort of clearing in the endless sea of reeds, where the earth was a touch drier and crumblier, and scraggly scrub at its edges managed to hold the reeds and moisture at bay. For a moment I thought it was incredibly lucky that we'd stumbled upon this clearing just as the sun was setting--and then it occurred to me that with her head and shoulders standing comfortably above the reeds that dwarfed me, April must have seen this clearing a while ago and intentionally steered us towards it.

"Sounds good," I said, and April immediately took out her tent--our sole remaining one, since mine had been left behind after my kidnapping. Getting a spare had been a shrewd investment after all. Keen to help, I took out one of my keepflames and set it up. I still had twenty or so left in my inventory, and as far as I knew April hadn't used any of hers yet--we'd be able to camp out here safely for quite a while, if we had to.

When April was finished with the tent, we sat down on either side of the keepflame and shared a quiet dinner together. The fire wasn't really hot enough to cook anything with, and in either case we didn't have pots or pans--instead, we had sandwiches that we'd bought back in Lumberg. Despite everything, VALKYRIE was still a game: stuff in our inventories wouldn't go stale or spoil, as far as anybody knew. April kept an eye on the sky as it darkened, tearing her way through three or four sandwiches in the time it took me to get through one. She must have been hungry--the way she was flinging herself into each sandwich was positively ferocious.

When she finally finished, just the tiniest glimmering bead of orange remained above the horizon. She brushed the crumbs off her mouth and cheeks and lowered her arms, and gave me a deep, searching look.

"Are you… ready?"

She was still opposite me, a campfire away from allowing me to put my lips to her pussy, but I knew from experience that meant little. She could lunge across the fire and be on me in a split second. My head felt light; my thoughts, soft and springy. April's expression betrayed nothing of the sort--if anything, it seemed heavier than usual. Sober. Like there were misgivings about this that she hadn't voiced.

And… if I really thought about it… why wouldn't she have those misgivings? If I set aside my giddiness for a moment, it was clear that April wouldn't have asked me to do this if she hadn't unlocked that Milestone. As… as hard as it was to admit, in and of herself, April didn't really want to… do anything sexual with me. The game had just forced her hand, by making her need to have sex every night, and… making it disturbingly likely that I was going to be abducted if it wasn't with me.

Surprising even myself, I stepped around the fire between us and laid a hand on her bulky, mountainous shoulder. In the flickering firelight, my fingers were just so… pale and dainty against her tough skin.

"I-it's okay," I said. "I… I know you're only doing this b-because the… game is making you. But…" I took a deep breath. "Th-that doesn't mean we… that doesn't mean we can't enjoy ourselves d-doing it."

It was like I'd roused April from a deep sleep. She stared up at me, her jaw slightly slack, the cindery firelight dancing across her beautiful eyes, turning their sea green into a warm jade.

Her face fell into that brilliant smile that never failed to make me smile back. "Thanks."

And so the night darkened just the slightest bit more… and the Aroused icon popped up above April's head.

Chapter 23: A Night in the Reedlands

Chapter Text

April, still sitting by the fire, took a deep breath. It shuddered and groaned in her chest, a beast held in check by only the barest of chains. A thrill of excitement shot down my spine. This was happening. The need in her was audible--almost palpable, as she exhaled and the air around us seemed to warm by a few degrees.

"S-so, um… how are we doing this?" I chirped nervously. My voice was still as high-pitched as ever--a little higher, even, given the anticipation mounting in my own breast. Faintly, it occurred to me that my voice was even higher-pitched than hers, and had been ever since our first night in the game.

As if roused from a daze, April glanced up at me. Her slitted pupils had rounded somewhat around their middles, in catlike fashion. In a single, easy motion, she pushed herself to her feet, swelling up above me once more, and took another deep breath, this time through her nose. Drawing in my scent. My mind went to the pheromones that my Doglover and Beastkin Bait Milestones had given me. Did they really work on her? She was a beastkin… and she was, in a manner of speaking, canine…

Her powerful hands found their way onto my slender shoulders. Not for the first time, I found my body reacting to her sheer musculature. These were hands that could pound a timber-wolf into sawdust. The hands that she'd clubbed the Breachwood's spider boss to death with. Though her touch was gentle, and she didn't push or press me down in the slightest, their weight alone posed an incredible pressure that left me sinking down to my knees without another word. I tilted my head further and further back as I fell, keeping my gaze fixed on her face, ignoring the way my absurdly long hair pooled between my feet. Her legs, long and shapely, stretched up like tree trunks on either side of me--I had to stay upright on my knees just to keep my head level with her hips.

"Good girl," she said softly. My pussy ached at the praise, short and simple though it was. I'd barely taken in her choice to use 'girl' when, with a sensual brush at her waist, her adventuring breeches disappeared, unequipped back into her inventory.

I sucked back a gasp. Inches from my face, hidden in the white cotton package of a pair of very sensible panties, and topped with a small pink ribbon, was April's pussy. Her earthy musk, already filling my head from sheer proximity, seemed deeper now, rich with undertones of salt and sweetness and copper. The scent was… thicker than the cocks I'd encountered so far, for lack of a better word, a soupy, decadent cloud that I could imagine swirling about my head. True to the stories I'd read online, there was even a hint of fishiness swimming in there, but only the barest one.

One of April's hands settled on the waistband of her panties. Her tan skin stretched out like an olive sea around them, turning them into a tiny island upon her. She hesitated for a few seconds, fingers playing at the cotton strands as I stared, rapt, my breath bated--and then, with a muted giggle that might have been out of nervousness, and might have been from seeing how completely her pussy had arrested my attention, she unequipped her panties, too.

I'd dreamed of this moment. Spent nights and weekend afternoons and cold mornings stroking my clitty--my real clitty, not this tiny, caged one I was stuck with for now--picturing her fat and juicy lips, and the sheer and sloppy warmth of their touch, and the way they would part, like the petals of a spring flower, for my co--my c--my clitty to finally enter her.

The real thing--well, not the real thing, but the astonishingly convincing facsimile of a woman's cunt that was going to make April feel all the things that actual stimulation of her body would--was incredible. Unshaven and raw, it reeked of sex; her panties had been suppressing much more of her scent than I'd realised. The scrawl of fur that crested it, the crown of the steamiest queen imaginable, was the cottony white of her ears and tail rather than the raven black of her hair. Her lips were a flushed pink, and they protruded lewdly out of her body like they were pouting for a kiss. The faintest hints of moisture already glistened upon them, beading like dew-drops under my suddenly laboured breath.

Face-to-face with her forbidden fruit.

What next? I dared to glance up, half-afraid I would find hesitance, reconsideration, maybe even disgust, and that April would make her clothes reappear and decide to try her luck getting off in some other way after all--but instead, I found her chewing on her lip, straining against her own breath.

She made eye contact with me, and her words came out in a rush. "Sorry but I really need this--"

Before I could react, or really even before she'd finished speaking, April lunged forwards with her hips, mashing her pussy up against the lower half of my face. Out of instinct more than anything, I jerked back, but a powerful hand took me by the back of my head--it was so big and strong--and pressed me back against her crotch. Her pussy seemed to pulse against my lips and nose, throbbing with a desperate urge for release. Belatedly, I realised that this was exactly what I'd signed up for, and I let my lips part, and set about pleasuring her pussy.

Slurp. My first lap at her was tentative, exploratory. I was glad of it, too--if her musk had been strong, her flavour was positively overwhelming. There was the salt and sweetness of her scent, and the earthy undertones that I'd grown to accept as naturally hers, too, but atop all of it there was an almost acrid sharpness. I might have spat it out if I'd tasted that at a restaurant, but not here. This was different. This was sacred. This was April.

I gave her another slurp, this one long and lingering and deliberate, and some of her wetness peeled off onto my tongue. She let out a low, growling moan, her grip on the back of my head not lightening in the slightest, and pressed herself harder against my face. Shivers ran across my body. She was enjoying it. She was enjoying my fumbling attempts at cunnilingus.

With my next lick, I dug into her pink folds, trying clumsily to part them or at least flick through them. A burst of flavour attacked me, somehow even sharper than before, but I doggedly kept my tongue worming away at her labia, searching for some kind of foothold, somewhere to work myself under and find myself inside her. Despite my efforts, I made little headway--April's grinding against my face, and her reflexive tugging and shoving of my face with the arm on the back of my head, kept making me lose my place in her musky folds. Though speaking up would have been as easy as tilting my face down, freeing my slick-smeared mouth to ask her to hold still for just a minute… I kept my mouth pressed to her body, silent except for the muffled schlicks of my tongue and lips. Her enthusiasm was far too enthralling to even risk interrupting, and in the twisted, humiliating recesses of my pussy and the bitch-button that controlled my clitty, part of me loved the sensation of April humping my face.

"Haa~!" April let out another sigh into the night air, divine and yet oh-so-needy. She slammed her hips down on my face with sudden force, and my knees buckled, sending my ass crashing down on my heels. I pitched backwards, the dropping of my gut momentarily taking precedence over the pure bliss of pleasuring her, but April managed to half-catch me, half-lower me to the ground, keeping her pussy joined to my tongue the entire time. In the jumble of our descent, my sticky lips left her for just a moment--only for her to find my mouth with her hips in an instant.

"Sorry!!" Her tone was apologetic, but her motions were anything but. The grinding of her hips continued. With surprising speed, I found myself lulled back into the rhythm of servicing her, my mouth working industriously away at the rich, tangy fruit between her legs.

I was on my back now, the soft fabric of April's bedroll keeping me from the soil and dirt, and April's cunny now on top of me outright. Her full weight loomed behind it, smearing me into the ground without any effort required, and both of her tree-trunk thick thighs squeezed up against either side of my head, pinning me in place. She was sitting on my face. Under another person, the arrangement would have felt claustrophobic--but under April, all I could feel was a heady rush of joy. My clitty squirmed and strained away in its tiny cage, and my pussy drooled a horny river into my panties, but even that felt lighter somehow, less painful and emasculating now that I had a gorgeous pussy to feast on.

And, though April continued to thrust herself against my face, almost disturbingly as if she had a cock of her own, having my head allowed to stay still made it far easier to navigate her folds. They'd become rather gooey, and now each eager stab at them with my tongue gave me a burst of cloying sweetness, the taste of her sex juices as they flowed freely from within her. I found the deep little crevasse that went all the way inside her a few times, and though I struggled valiantly to work my tongue inside it, April's relentless humping left my efforts in vain.

"More," she moaned softly, almost inaudible through the soupy fog of her musk and the brilliant flashes of her flavour and the constant whumph of her body coming down on my face, again and again and again. "Hahh~~! Please…!"

There was a swishing noise from right behind her, at the very base of her spine--her fluffy white tail, wagging furiously as she rode me. In a fugue, my only goal to give her the more she'd asked for, I wrapped both of my arms around her thighs. Perhaps some instinctive part of me, more male than the game had left the rest of me, had thought that it might work, that I might be able to hold this woman in place and give me the chance to finally squeeze my tongue into her needy little fuckhole--but instead, she easily brought my arms along with her. I'd barely even slowed her bouncing down.

A needy whine escaped my mouth, and April paused mid-thrust. "You… okay?" Her words were halting, though it wasn't from any physical exertion. If anything, judging by the way her hips kept jerking slightly towards my face only to stop in their tracks, it was taking her far more effort to hold herself back than it would to keep going.

"I, um, yeah," I said, weakly. Now that our momentum had been interrupted anyway, I had the chance to make my request. "B-but, um, could you try holding still for a second…?"

April lowered herself down to my face, her pace controlled but urgent--she'd started moving as soon as my lips had finished forming the word 'yeah.'

"I-I'll try," she said, biting her lip fiercely. "B-but it's really hard to… control myself right now…"

In an attempt to conceal my elation at that embarrassed confession, I threw myself back into her pussy, peeling her lips apart with mine. My tongue found the sweet, sour little slit between them--and like that, April's back went ram-rod straight, and her pelvis jerked forward, grinding me and the bedroll beneath me even further into the dirt.

"Mfhh!!" I managed to hold out against the raw physics of the situation and keep myself attached to her pussy, but not without a muffled yelp.

"S-sorry! You good?" April seemed about to pull herself off me again. Without my mouth free, I did the only thing I could to keep her on me; pressing my tongue further forward. "Oh~!!"

With her worry about my muffled cry melting away, April soon resumed her sensual gyrations against my face. Her pace had softened, now that she had my tongue darting in and out of her faintly parted slit, and she wasn't pulling so far back on each thrust. The heat pouring out over my face had grown almost unbearable, stifling and sticky and steamy, but I soldiered bravely on.

As April's arousal grew, I found it easier and easier to delve into her pussy, and with one particularly deep stab at her quivering flower--or had my probing lips found her clit?--she let out a sweet cry to the night sky.

"Fuck~!"

Had she cum?! My heart leapt, then fell--I wasn't ready for this to finish so soon--and then rose again. She still had the Aroused icon by her healthbar, hard as it was to see from this angle. I could keep going. She continued to grind herself against my face, and a spattering of something oozed out onto my tongue, eased along by the steady trickle of her juices I'd already coaxed out of her. It was thick, far thicker than anything else April had produced so far, and had an overpowering bitterness… one that was strangely familiar.

April let out another wanton cry, and I banished any thoughts of figuring out what it was for the time being. I still had the most gorgeous woman in the world riding my face, and the way things were going, she'd be cumming any minute now. I had to savour each second until it finally ended.

"Unghh… c'mon…!!"

Every part of my face ached. My nose, bruised by the endless mashing of April's groin against it, ached. My tongue and lips, numb and sore with overuse, and still woefully working at the luscious pink lips I'd wanted so badly to service, ached. My lower jaw, which had tanked what was approaching a full hour of April's bouncing weight… ached.

April wasn't cumming.

"I don't… get it… ngghhh… I just wanna… cum!!"

Even April's inexhaustible good cheer and strength had started to flag. Though she hadn't exactly slowed, her humping had become desperate and unco-ordinated, and her cries had taken on a distinct impatience. For the very first time, the blasphemous wish that she would just hurry up and finish already flitted across my mind. No! I just had to… work harder, or… or maybe…

"God… fuck it!" I almost couldn't keep myself from sighing in relief when April suddenly peeled herself from my face, and rose to a staggering stand. The next thing she said came out in a breathy rush, almost too quietly and quickly for me to make out. "I really didn't wanna try this, but I think I've gotta… Wild Aspect!"

My brain locked up for a moment, running through all the things she'd ever Wild Aspected into as I wondered what the hell she meant to do… and then the orange fur sprouted from every inch of her skin. The form of the cat beastkin she'd tried out back at the bandit camp. The… the cat beastkin that happened to have a penis.

A strange paralysis fell over me. There was no way that she was growing a penis, right? She had to believe there was a better way than that. She… she couldn't seriously think that I was better at making cocks cum than pussies, right? That was technically true, if you looked at my… history in the game, but I-I was still straight! I'd… I'd hated every minute of e-every single cock I'd had to service… well, b-besides the Bitch-breaker…

But what if… what if it was her penis…? Would I really…

"Okay!" I was saved from developing this thought any further when April, now fully transformed, stepped back over me and squatted back over my face. She took a deep breath. "Ohh… you smell so good~!!"

I stared up at her… and found that April's muff was still intact, with no beastkin penis--barbed or otherwise--in sight. Like the rest of her skin, orange fur now ran down both sides of it, a far more robust forest than her previous white mane… but between the fur lay the pink folds that I'd grown so intimately familiar with over the last hour.

Before I could so much as breathe a sigh of relief, April plunged her cunt back in my face, and it was back to work. I went at her pussy like a m--sissy possessed; the brief rest had done a lot to soften the fatigue that had set in around my mouth. April, too, moved with renewed vigour, clearly still as eager as ever to get off. Her thighs, now prickly with ginger fur, squeezed hotly against the sides of my face, gripping it as intently as ever.

"Ohhh yes~!" The fur wasn't the only change that April's spell had caused. Her moans had changed, too. She'd clearly been enjoying herself before, but now--in that raspy, high voice that was still a touch deeper than mine--she'd started saying things that didn't just speak to Anne-the-formerly-male-gamer.

"Good girl~!!" she hissed, the juices pouring from her intensifying and taking with them yet another congealed lump of that strangely familiar bitter goo. I swallowed it all down, aware that she was calling me a girl again but utterly unable--and unwilling--to do anything about it.

"Fuckkk~!! Eat that muff… you lil… hahhh… yesss~!!"

It was coming. Even I could tell--the way her muscles shifted and constricted, drawing my tongue deeper in… my mind went to my own pussy, and the way it seemed to tighten as my orgasm grew near. Was this what it felt like from the outside…?

"Fhaa~!! Oh god~!!"

A Milestone popped up, and I couldn't exactly swipe it away, robbing me of the hard-earned sight of April coming to her very first orgasm by my hands… well, mouth.

"Yesss~! Oh god, take it, you little slut~!! Take my… hahhh…!!"

But there were still the sounds, and the scents, and the glorious, mind-popping sensation of April squeezing down on my skull from every direction, thighs and cunt and ass clenching me between them as her orgasm rocked her body. My face was sore, and the sudden influx of pressure only made me sorer… but the knowledge of what that pressure represented, of what I'd done to earn that crushing bliss made the pain of it dissipate between my ears. All that remained was ecstasy.

And then, as if it had been waiting patiently for me to fulfil my duties for the night, exhaustion overtook me. April had scarcely finished her chain of mildly demeaning, and very much orgasmic, cries and moans when I slipped into a deep, dreamless, and overwhelmingly triumphant sleep.

Chapter 24: Walk All Tiresia

Chapter Text

The next morning, I awoke to find April munching on a sandwich by the fire. She was back in her normal form, not a hint of orange fur in sight.

"Good morning!" she said cheerily, lowering her breakfast when she noticed that I'd stirred. "Are you hungry?"

I nodded weakly. Everything looked and felt so different in the damp morning air. The sky had taken on the dour grey pallor of a carpet of rainy clouds, and a faint drizzle fell over our little campsite. It had just been a matter of hours, but already what had happened last night had taken on an almost dreamlike quality.

I looked back at April, who was holding out another sandwich for me, and a faint blush warmed my cheeks and pointed ears. Last night… we'd… we'd done it. There were a few… qualifying conditions, yeah, but at the end of the day, I'd succeeded in my lifelong dream of having sex with April. I didn't know exactly where 'she was happy enough with me to offer me a sandwich the next morning' fell on the performance review scale, but it had to be on the good side, right?

Unsteadily, I took a seat by her--close, but keeping a respectful distance between us, even though I wasn't exactly sure why--and accepted her sandwich.

"Thanks for, um, helping me out last night," April said, a touch awkwardly. "It was… you were great. I'm sorry I got, um, a bit… you know."

"It's okay!" I said quickly. The last thing I wanted was for her to think I'd been put off by any aspect of having her ride my face! No, it wasn't my first choice for getting this gorgeous, funny, kind, brilliant beauty off, but that didn't matter! "I-I mean, it's a pleasure! My pleasure! Oh god."

April held back a giggle at my fumbling attempts to reassure her, but eventually she nodded gratefully. "That's good."

We sat in companionable silence for the next few minutes as we finished our breakfast, listening to the faint patter of the rain on the reeds, and the croaking of an adventurous frog on the other side of the clearing, near our bright pink tent.

"We probably shouldn't have even bothered with this thing," April said, nodding towards the tent and rising to her feet. She stretched luxuriously, with all the easy grace of a house cat, and set about dismantling it. "That's two nights we haven't bothered to sleep in it, now."

I stayed by the keepflame, which had survived the drizzle quite happily, and was only now beginning to droop as the twelve hours it was meant to last finally reached their last leg. I realised that I was sitting on my bedroll, and retrieved it back into my inventory… which led to the realisation that the bedroll I'd been sleeping on before I'd come to sit down with April must have been April's again.

Had she… cuddled me from behind again…?

My heart quivered, and I hurried to help April with the tent before my clitty could get too excited this early in the day.

It was still raining by the time we ventured out into the reeds again. The drizzle hadn't gotten much heavier, but it didn't seem to be lightening up soon, either. Apri scrunched her face up in mock consternation.

"Man, I didn't think we'd need umbrellas in this game." She wiped her brow, wicking off a smattering of rain that had accumulated on her forehead.

"It's not so bad," I said lightly, though the cold and the damp had scattered goosebumps over my skin. Internally, I wondered why I couldn't just equip both my Lustregown and April's sweater and yoga pants at the same time. The game seemed happy enough to lean into realism everywhere else.

We followed the river, like we had the day before, fending off the occasional monster attack with what had become almost mechanical efficiency. To our combined surprise, there were a couple of new monsters here, among the host of the usual reed-stalkers and mud-rovers.

"I wonder if the weather affects which monsters show up," April said thoughtfully, when she was done reading through the tooltip and drops of our latest discovery: the marsh popot, which had resembled nothing so much as a hippo that was fifty percent mouth and fifty percent extremely bad temper. It had been a brutal tank of a beast, almost putting the muddleborgs of the riverside to shame--and it hadn't been a slouch in the offence department, either, moving with astonishing speed for its fat, stumpy legs and lunging at us with its enormous, stinking maw in strikingly fast charges.

"Maybe," I said, still panting as my stamina went back to full; I'd had to do a lot of running away in that fight, since even April's titanic strength hadn't been enough to counter the popot's own bulk and power. Her attempts at tackling it out of its rushes at me had mostly ended with her being trampled underfoot. "Or… maybe it's because we're… stronger now?"

Between the two of us, we'd collected a few Milestones over our adventures in the Reedland so far: April was at 10, and with last night's acquisition of Muff Diver, I was at 14. The fact that my lead was mostly due to my… extracurricular activities with NPCs who treated me like a girl didn't need to be mentioned.

"Oh, like the world's level is going up with us?" April considered this for a while. Absently, she set off again, and I scrambled to follow her. "Yeah, that could be it. But… I coulda sworn that worked differently… there was something about 'prestige ranks,' I think…"

She trailed off, and I shrugged. The term had been mentioned around us a couple of times now, but we hadn't exactly been given an explanation of what it meant. In all honesty, for all its revolutionary graphics and combat, VALKYRIE didn't seem to have much in the way of tutorials--the short scene with Madam Humbert had been the only full-fledged instruction as to how to play the game, and everything else we'd had to gather from a mixture of tooltips, random advice from NPCs and other players, and sheer experience.

Suddenly, April tensed up, her emerald-studded club reappearing in her hands. I snapped to attention, whipping out my wand. She was gazing intently at something over the tops of the reeds around us.

"What is it?" I asked, mostly to fill the dead air. I was probably going to open with Angel Down no matter what it was, unless it was a pysie--in that case, I'd use Star Passage on April. And there was no rush to decide between the two spells, since April had seen whatever was coming, ruling out any one of the Reedlands' annoying Ambush monsters.

"No idea," April said. Her expression was hard, and her ears lay flat along the back of her head. Her fluffy white tail stuck out stiffly behind her, about as far from wagging as it could get without being completely limp. "It's… invisible."

"Invisible?" Her voice had dropped to a whisper, and mine followed suit, though I didn't exactly know why. Whatever it was had most likely already seen April, marching head and shoulders above the reeds.

"Yeah. It's like… coming through the reeds. Right for us."

I went through my spells in my head. Glitterdust stuck to whatever it hit… would that help us track this invisible monster? The only other option was to put a Starcharge on April, and hope that she could catch it at random with a sped-up attack.

Before I could suggest one of those spells, she glanced down at me and spoke first. "Stand back, I'm gonna Thunderclap it when it gets in range."

"Oh, please don't," droned a man's voice, slightly muffled by the reeds. "Soul Reap."

A wall of silver flame rushed over us. I staggered back, cowering, and heard the thudding footfalls of April doing the same in front of me--but the wave of searing pain that should have accompanied it never came. In fact, it didn't even warm my skin as it passed through me.

The same could not be said for the sea of reeds around us. Them, the flame tore through with ease, reducing them to black cinders. When it was over, we stood in the middle of an ashen clearing, a wide arc of scorched earth fanning out behind us. Ahead of us, at the very point of the arc, the air warped and wobbled, like a far more extreme version of the way heat rose off tarmac: and from this distortion in the air stepped out a man.

He was tall, dwarfing even April, but skeleton thin. Even the shiny black plates of armour that adorned him added little bulk to his silhouette; the most apparent volume came from the silver cape that descended from his shoulder-plates, which flowed behind him as he approached us. His face was invisible behind the helmet of his suit of armour, as unyieldingly black as the rest of the set. And it definitely was a set--I'd grown used to seeing other players in all sorts of mismatched armour sets back in Lumberg, especially on the lower-levelled ones like myself, but every piece of this guy's armour had the same chitinous texture, and the same hooked spines coming off them. There was something strangely insectoid about it--even the pointed, vertical slats of his visor were faintly asymmetrical, ever-so-slightly evoking the gnashing fangs of some monstrous spider.

Atop his helmet sat a triangle-brimmed hat, perched at an almost jaunty angle; and from that extended an enormous white plume. Above that floated his health bar, and above that, inscribed in the air in blood red text, were his name and Milestone count. From his look, I'd half expected him to be called something awful like xXShadowWarrior69Xx, but instead it was the relatively un-embarrassing Taciturn113. His Milestones sat at a cool 116. If Percy or even Layla had been any indication, we wouldn't stand a chance against this guy in a fight.

"You're a long way away from Dryad Falls," he observed. Now that the reeds around us had been obliterated, I realised that his voice hadn't been muffled by them at all--that was the work of his black visor.

"We, um, we know," April said uncertainly. Her ears had come back up a little since he'd made himself known, but her tail was still rigid. Something about him was still setting her off, even now that we knew he wasn't some kind of invisible monster. Was it the red name? That weird spell he'd just used?

"We're doing a quest, first," I supplied helpfully.

"Hm," he said thoughtfully. "You're in no rush, huh?"

April and I exchanged confused looks. "What do you mean?" I asked.

"I guess you haven't seen it yet. Dryad Falls is swarming with noobs right now. After that little conference--" Contempt dripped from the word, plainly audible even without his face visible--"they flooded out from Lumberg to check it out. I guess Lifespring is a pretty popular divinity for new players."

April shrugged, as if conceding that it was why she'd chosen it.

"But you two…" He put a gauntleted hand up to his chin. It clinked ominously as he stroked it. "It's been a week, and you're on some two-bit quest instead, huh?"

"Is there something wrong with that?" April said, her tone just short of biting. I glanced at her sidelong. It was entirely unlike her to be this defensive.

"Whoah whoah!" Taciturn threw up his hands in a placating gesture, though from his own tone it was undeniably sarcastic. His voice grew more sincere as he went on. "Not at all. If anything, it's reassuring."

I spoke out. "Reassuring?"

"Walk all Tiresia, where none dare to tread," he recited softly. It was vaguely familiar--especially the word Tiresa. A line from a movie?

"That's one of the lines from the prophecy," April said suddenly.

Taciturn inclined his head. "Bingo. The one from your god."

"Her god?"

"Yeah. Nerea Akhione." A strange tingle, electric and older than words, passed through my body as he said the name, and the light of recognition dawned in April's eyes. "The source of all Lifespring magic in this world."

He turned back to April. "Including yours."

"What does it mean?" When he looked back at me blankly, I elaborated. "The prophecy line. The one you just said."

"Ah. Well, Tiresia is where we're standing right now. It's the name the people here call their world. Like how we call our planet Earth."

April's face lit up. "Ohh, Tiresia. That's meant to sound a bit like 'terra,' right?"

It was hard to be sure with the onyx visor over his face, but I had the distinct sense that Taciturn struggled with himself for a moment before his answer. "Yeah. That's the one."

"So… walk the earth." April's hostility had mostly melted away since Taciturn had started discussing the lore of VALKYRIE with us, and now she was deep in thought. Her tail had even started to swish a bit. "So basically we need to explore?"

Taciturn nodded. "Travel the place. Broaden your horizons a bit. Have some new experiences."

I frowned. It wasn't like he knew what kind of 'new experiences' I'd been fielding in this stupid game, but something about his choice of words still rubbed me the wrong way. And what was this advice even based on? Some line in a video-game prophecy meant to foreshadow their first global event? The odds were insanely good that neither of us were the 'chosen ones' it was going to revolve around. Why did we have to care about this?

"Or what?" I hadn't meant for it to come out quite as challenging as it had, but I didn't take it back, either.

Taciturn chuckled easily under his helmet. Like he'd been expecting that reply, and had already prepared a matching rejoinder. "Well. You can hardly expect to save this world without knowing the first thing about it."

"Huh?" I looked at April, hoping to find her similarly nonplussed by the cryptic remark, but she was still gazing abstractedly at some point past Taciturn's shoulder, giving no sign that she'd even heard our last exchange.

"I'm afraid you're going to have to figure that out yourselves. I've got places to be."

And with that, he waved us goodbye and sauntered off into the scorched swathe of reedland behind us. Three paces later, he vanished, swallowed up by a distortion in the air the same way he'd appeared.

April was silent for a while after his departure. When she finally spoke, neither of us having moved an inch since the strange encounter, I realised why.

"He didn't smell of anything," she said, frowning furtively over her shoulder. She'd been waiting to see the furrow in the reeds behind us that meant he'd actually left, instead of just hanging around invisibly in the clearing to listen in on us.

"That's… weird," I said after some consideration. I wasn't used to the idea of people just normally having smells: yeah, there were a few people who I could confidently say had a smell (including April herself, though I thought of hers as more of a fragrance)... and if I had to, I could maybe even pick those people out by scent alone, though outside of April it wouldn't strictly be a pleasant experience… but the idea of being able to do that for anyone, to the point that I could immediately tell if they didn't have a recognisable scent, took me a moment to accept. To April, even I had a scent. And--my heartbeat quickened a little--thanks to some of my Milestones, it was one that she liked. She'd even said as much, hadn't she?

"It is weird," April agreed, oblivious to the spike in my pulse. "I wonder if that's an enchantment or spell or something."

"Sounds like a weird spell to waste Milestone points on," I pointed out.

April hummed thoughtfully. "We could've used it against the bandits."

"That's… a good point." I turned around to gaze in the same direction as April, where he'd apparently gone. He was protected from being tracked by beastkin… in an area where we knew beastkin bandits were active and marauding. There was a chance that it was just a coincidence, but…

"Wait, you don't think he was just at the main camp, do you?"

April's eyes went dinner-plate wide. "Dammit! We should've asked…"

She started in his direction, clearly wondering if she could hurry after him and interrogate him about the bandit camp… but then she swiveled around, and instead set off in the direction he'd approached from. It was easy enough to find, since his silver fire spell had razed a black triangle beneath us that pointed it out exactly. I hurried after her.

"I just need to catch a scent," she said tersely. "Once I have that, we can follow it to their hideout cave thing."

"And then we sneak in and rescue, uh, the guy," I finished.

"Right."

It didn't take long before the first part of the plan came to pass. We'd scarcely run into three sets of monsters when April went stock still and lifted her nose up in the air. It reminded me a little of those cartoons where a sniffer dog pointed out Bugs Bunny… though the comedy was lessened a little when it occurred to me that she was serving exactly that role. And we weren't quite on Bugs Bunny's trail.

I gulped. "Is it… one of them?"

She nodded. "It's not fresh, but it's definitely… some kind of beastkin."

I gave the air a tentative sniff of my own, but I couldn't pick up anything but the muggy scent of the marsh itself. Just being a beastkin--at least, one with a good nose--in this game had to be a totally different experience from being an elf like me.

"Hmm." April made a noise of deliberation. Before I could ask April what it was about, she came to a decision on her own. "Wild Aspect."

In short order, April-the-orange-catgirl stood before me again. She glanced back at me, one tiny yellow fang niggling at her bottom lip--it was far narrower than the slight fangs she usually had--and then her adventuring outfit vanished, to be replaced by the skimpy set of leather armour we'd looted from the first bandit camp. My breath caught at the way it hugged her rack, and her finely sculpted ass… but some part of me did wish she'd changed before transforming. Obviously April was gorgeous in any form, but in the privacy of my own thoughts, I had to admit I really wanted to see what that all-too-revealing outfit would look like on the original model.

"You think we'll be there soon?" I said, saying out loud what she'd left unspoken. A chill ran through my body. Yeah, I had agreed to do this with her, and this time we had the initiative, so to speak, but… were we really ready?

"Maybe," she said. "The trail's older, but… if it really does lead to the camp, we might run into bandits on a patrol, or something. It'd be best to stay in disguise."

She grimaced slightly as she spoke.

"You okay?"

"Yeah. I'm just… still not used to having fur." She picked at one of her wrists, then trailed her hand all the way down the length of her forearm. I clamped down hard on any thoughts of repeating that for myself--I might have eaten her muff for her, but that allowance had strictly been because of the game.

Though… if the fur felt weird for her, why had she turned it on last night, when she'd been having trouble… finishing? I'd been too exhausted and pussy-drunk to even wonder about it at the time, but with the sobriety of daylight…

"You wanna put on yours too?"

I stared at her blankly.

"Your disguise!"

"My… oh." Right. The spiked black collar we'd also looted from the camp… and the chain we'd found alongside it. It wasn't much of a disguise, not compared to April's transformation and outfit change, but it would make it clear to any bandits we ran into that I'd been taken prisoner by April.

Taken as a slave by April.

My heartbeat rose, and yet again my clit struggled against its cage. Silently, I scrolled through my inventory and equipped the collar.

It popped into existence on my throat, closed around me with claustrophobic tightness. I pulled at it feebly, but there was no loosening it. By design, most likely. Under its constricting grip, there was no forgetting what was around my neck; to the bandits' slaves, these collars were a constant reminder of their new roles in life. At least I was just dressing the part.

"And the chain?" April held out her hand for it, and I was struck by the mental image of her leading me along like a dog on a leash, me on all fours and her bouncing happily along in her stolen bandit-wear. My constantly-leaking pussy tightened at the thought, clinging to a cock that didn't exist.

I took out the chain and gave it to her.

"Hmm. Let's see…"

April took one end of it and, with an experimental air, lined it up with the front of my spiked collar, where a metal hoop jutted forth from between two of the spikes. A force that felt almost magnetic tugged at the front of my throat, urging it forward, until the hoop met the chain with a barely audible clink. April let out a soft gasp.

"What just happened?" I squealed, groping at the front of the collar with one hand, and flicking through menus to get back to the collar's tooltip with the other. Was this thing cursed?? The chastity cage was bad enough--"I thought they weren't magic!!"

"I don't think they are," April said slowly. She took hold of my hand at my throat, peeling it away with gentle ease, and inspected the situation there. "Looks like they're just attached together. I guess it's a quality-of-life thing?"

"How is this a quality-of-life thing?"

April put an arm on my shoulder. A big, strong, well-muscled arm. "Breathe."

I breathed. In and out.

"Everything okay?" Even with her slitted pupils, it was all too easy to see the concern in her eyes. "Is there, um, something you want to talk about…?"

I had to fight not to bite my lip. No matter how badly I did want to confide in her, to open up to her the way she'd opened up to me on these last two days out here in the Reedlands… I couldn't. The cage that had brought about this panic still had my clitty as a hostage. The Madam didn't want me to give away her game--the way she was blackmailing me into humiliation after humiliation--and, if I didn't want to be wracked with agony until the Bug was finally fixed, I... I had to play along.

"I-I'm good," I said. "Sorry. I… um, I-I thought the collar might be… c-cursed, or something."

"Huh. I didn't even think about that… it's not, is it?"

I shook my head, and April made a relieved sound. "Can you, um, try to take the chain off?"

"Of course!" April grabbed it and gave it a tug--and then, with another clink, it popped free of my collar.

I made a relieved sound of my own. "Okay. That's good. I, um, you can put it back on now."

"You sure?"

"Yeah. I just… well, it looks like I can't unequip the collar while it has the chain on it. But you can just pull it off, so I think it's fine."

"Huh." April looked at the chain in her hands. "That's a little weird."

She turned back to me and held it out again; I lifted my chin, exposing my throat. With a third and final clink, chain and collar were joined again. There was a long, long pause. Neither of us spoke, or even shifted on our feet. April fingered her end of the chain, her eyes fixed on me, gaze and body language alike more rigid than I'd ever seen before. Warmth tickled the ends of my pointed ears. Was she… was she checking me out? Taking in the way I looked when I had a collar on?? A collar that she was holding the chain for…?

"Um, e-everything good?"

April startled. "Uh, yeah, yeah. I was just--let's just go."

She spun around, her long, orange tail swaying sedately behind her in spite of her agitation. My eyes fell on her clawed hand, holding onto the chain attached to my collar. There was plenty of slack in the chain itself, since I was following her at the same pace and I wasn't really her reluctant prisoner… but her hand was balled up in a tight fist, clinging to the chain with all her white-knuckled might.

We… we were heading into the bandits' headquarters, after all. She just wanted to keep me safe. And, in this specific scenario, that meant keeping a firm hold on my leash. It was all very reasonable and not sexual in the slightest.

Regardless of what my squirming clitty happened to think.

Chapter 25: The Main Camp (Pt. 1)

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

The scent of the unknown beastkin saw us through the Reedlands, up until we reached a sea of trees. It was a forest, but one totally unlike the Silverwood: its trees were squat, sprawling things, closer in thickness to the enormous tree that housed the entrance to the Breachwood. Their roots formed gnarled webs in the marshy earth, running over it and plunging down into it in equal measure. Overhead, their branches mirrored them, interlocking like a hundred clasped hands underneath an impassable leafy canopy. Every inch of bark beneath this barrier against the heavens glistened wetly in what little light managed to penetrate it.

Between them, and the air so thick as to cling to the walls of my lungs with each breath, and the dull drone of countless flies and cicadas and beetles lurking in the undergrowth, it felt more like a jungle than a forest. And maybe it was.

"Are we still in the Reedlands?" I asked. It felt a little unfair, having our very first quest in this game--not counting the private one I'd gotten at the Lustrous Heart--take us out of the area it had been assigned in entirely. And we'd probably have to backtrack all the way to the old farmer who'd given the quest, too, once we had his kid in tow.

"I… think so," April said. My chain clanked lightly as she padded softly forward, still clinging to it. "It's not meant to be all reeds in the Reedlands."

She sniffed the air. "And we're definitely close. There's a bunch of trails here." She sniffed again. "Another wolf, I think? It's kinda hard to tell."

Despite the ceiling of greenery they formed together, and the bulk of their trunks, the trees themselves were spread a comfortable distance apart from each other. That wasn't true of the undergrowth, though; despite the considerable lack of sunlight getting through the forest canopy, a veritable carpet of shrubs and crawlers filled the space between the trees. They didn't rise up quite as high as the reeds did, but April still had to fight to clear a path for us.

"How the hell did they get a horse in here?" I complained, after a rubbery green frond that April had brushed aside rebounded to smack me in the face.

"They used a boat, remember?" April pointed out. "Oh, maybe we should go back to the--"

Something clammy wrapped itself around my ankle, and I yelped, cutting her off completely. Before I could apologise or even try to figure out what it was, it suddenly tightened and yanked me clean off my feet; the world spun, head-over-heel, until I found myself upside down.

"Anne!!" April shouted, club materialising in her hand.

Following the call of gravity, my dress flipped upside down, completely exposing the lacey pink panties I'd been wearing since I'd started playing the game… and then there was silence. I swayed gently back and forth in the air, dangling from one leg, and the tension left April's body.

Her eyes followed the path up from my ankle to whatever was holding me up. Though it was hardly comfortable, it hadn't tightened any further, and unlike the last thing to have wrapped itself around my limbs, it wasn't creeping up my leg to get at the stuff underneath my skirt.

"Oh. I think it's just a… vine… trap… thing." She almost sounded disappointed.

"A-ah. C-can you get me down?"

"Yeah."

Thankfully, the vine had only lifted me to a point just above April's head, which meant my ankle was in easy reach for her powerful arms. Despite the death grip it had on my ankle, it didn't respond at all when April seized it in both hands and snapped it into two--and the moment it was snapped, the fragment around my ankle instantly browned and fell limp. Together, we watched it sink into the mossy dirt underfoot, where it soon became nothing but a withered strand of black. Overhead, the oozing remains of the rest of the vine retreated back into the leaves, never to be seen again.

"D'you think the bandits set that up?" April said.

"Uh, probably."

"It looked kind of magical. But like, not super magical. You know?"

I kind of did, so I shrugged. "Yeah."

With that, we ventured deeper into the forest, treading a little more lightly now that we knew there were traps. No monsters came to fight us, even during the ample period of distraction that came with each vine I stepped on.

"Why aren't you tripping these?" I finally snapped, after the fifth one. "You're the one in the front…"

"Maybe they don't trigger on beastkin?" April suggested. "Assuming the bandits are the ones who set them up, they wouldn't want to trap themselves every time they came in here."

"Hmph." The theory made sense, but that didn't mean I had to like it. "I just--"

In one violent movement, April hurled an arm in front of my face and snatched up the chain (she'd dropped it to get me down from the last trap) with the other. "Shhh!!"

I fell silent. There was only one thing that could have created that reaction. April held up two fingers.

Two bandits.

Neither party was trying particularly hard to be stealthy, but it still worried me that the bandits were the first ones to lay eyes on us, even after April's early warning.

"Salot!" Though the word was harsh and foreign to my ears, the intonation was friendly enough. Probably a greeting of some kind? April picked up on it, and raised her hand in a friendly wave before she spoke.

"Salot!" she said back, swivelling to face the direction that the voice had come from. After a moment, a little toad-man popped out of the undergrowth in front of her. He was a squat, grey-green thing, even shorter than me, with wide-set eyes that protruded inches from his skull and a bulbous, pale chin. He wore a thick coat of furs over his scrappy brown armour, having given little apparent thought to the range of colours and shagginess of its constituent pelts, or to keeping it clean--the end result was an ugly patchwork thing that was caked in mud in several places, and smelled absolutely foul, even to my weak nose. In one clawed hand he held a slightly bent spear, much like the kind April had looted from the camp.

There was no sign of a second beastkin.

"Great Genna, what is that smell on ya?" jabbered the toad-man, in a patter and accent that almost made me crack a grin with how poorly it suited his grotesque face.

"What's it to ya?" April said, suddenly dropping the friendliness of her greeting to affect an aloof disposition, and doing her best to match the man's accent. Her voice had dropped half an octave, and I was reminded of her interrogation of Roshin, the vole bandit. Instead of burying my face in my hands, I tried my best to maintain the sort of pained grimace I imagined a confused, newly-captured slave would have.

"You smell like a bloody half-breed," the toad-man grumbled. His enormous, flabby mouth crinkled up in what might have been a smirk, a scowl, a smile, or an expression of disgust.

"So what if I am?" April said tersely.

The toad-man pursed his lips for a moment. "I s'pose it don't matter."

April relaxed visibly--only to tense up again when he peered around her impressive frame to leer at me, leashed and collared and not exactly having to act like his attention was unwelcome. His other expressions so far had been hard to read, but there was no mistaking the perverse light in his beady little eyes as he took in my feminine body.

"What's this little filly, then?"

He was talking about me like I wasn't even there--no, worse. I just didn't register as a person to him. Like I was just a piece of meat that April had on display.

"She's… my slave," April said, after a beat.

"That's clear as sun," laughed the toad-man. "Yer scent's all over her face."

I blanched, drawing out another laugh from him.

"Nah, what's she doing out 'ere with you? This ain't exactly a good spot to be cartin' 'round slaves on yer own."

"I… I've heard about your… dealings, and I… I wanna join you… lot."

"Oh?" One of the toad-man's protuberant eyes shifted upwards, independently of every other feature of his face, including his other eye. His way of showing surprise? "An' why would ya wanna do a fool thing like that?"

I could almost see April summoning up every last detail of her conversation with Roshin, looking for a plausible motive in all the lore he'd shared with her. "I… I want revenge against the, uh, the plainskins." She rattled my chain. "Her lot did us dirty… by the border."

The toad-man let out a low, croaking chuckle, darker than night. "That they did." He nodded at me. "That your offerin', then?"

"Huh?"

"To the Chief. Surely you don't think we'd be chiefless, just 'cause we're in the bloody Geldish bosom up 'ere."

The idiom, if that was even what it was, sailed cleanly over my head--and April didn't seem to fare much better. Instead, she brought the conversation back to me. "Right. This elf is my offerin'."

"Grand. We ain't had elf in a long time, y'know." Lazily, one beady eye--the one that had moved on its own earlier--swivelled my way and squeezed itself shut. A vulgar wink, made all the more vulgar by his slime-crusted appearance.

"What should I call you's?" April asked, gruffly switching the subject away from 'having' me.

The toad-man's face crumpled into a wide grin, showing off far too many yellowed teeth--and a couple of gleaming silver false ones. "The name's Sau."

"And yer friend?" April turned her head ever so slightly, so that her pointed look was aimed at a patch of shrubbery on Sau's left. To her credit, her delivery on this line was almost chilling--Sau actually took a step back, his jaw slack.

He recovered swiftly, though, and his grin soon returned, accompanied by a belching laugh that teetered on the edge of becoming a coughing fit. "Ha! You cats ain't no slouches with yer sniffers. Come on out, Rastley."

Just as Sau had before, 'Rastley' emerged from the undergrowth where April was looking. She was just about the same height as her toad-like compatriot, though in his case this had more to do with her posture--she stood hunched over, bent almost double, her hands clasped on the shaft of the spear she held in front of her like a particularly pathetic beggar. Unlike the other bandits, she was almost furless, besides the scraggly grey on her round, mouselike ears; and almost hairless too, besides a wisp of white that did a poor job of concealing any part of the scalp between them. Behind her extended a wormy pink tail, which twitched nervously as we sized her up.

"Ohh, I dunno, Sau," Rastley said, in exactly the mousy high-pitched squeak I'd pictured based on her appearance. "She talks weird! Ain't that tell she's alaj?"

Alaj. There was that word again. The other bandits hadn't exactly explained the word, but it seemed to have something to do with being a player of the game.. and April hadn't been there when they'd said it. I tried to glance headlong at April, who had arranged for herself an expression of thoughtful contemplation, as she carefully stroked her chin.

"What? I, uh, didn't catch that," she said, feigning ignorance to cover her ignorance.

"Alaj," repeated Rastley, slowly, like she was talking to a toddler.

"An outsider," Sau followed up with what I guessed was the English translation of the term, though that opened up a great many more cans of worms than it closed. Was English the language actually being spoken here? What language was this stuff being translated from? Outsider from where??

April nodded sagely. "Right, right."

"Well?" demanded Rastley. She and Sau raised their spears in unison; this was a question that they wanted an answer for.

April crossed her arms challengingly, and my chain clinked softly. "So what if I am?"

Sau and Rastley exchanged glances--and then, to Rastley's visible exasperation, Sau shrugged and lowered his spear. "I s'pose," he said, much like the last time April had used this line, "it don't matter."

"It don't matter?" Rastley squealed. "She could bleedin' do us all! Lookit those eyes!"

April flinched--but Sau had turned to face Rastley amid her sudden outburst, and Rastley wasn't looking her way at all as she beckoned emphatically in her direction.

"She's big," Sau conceded, "but she ain't the only bugger with those eyes."

He grinned again, wide as a wound. I leaned back involuntarily: on closer inspection, his beady little eyes were marked with the same hungry slits as April's.

My eyes flicked to Rastley. Her eyes, at least, were normal.

"'sides," continued Sau. "The Chief's got his bloody artifacts now, don't he?"

"Artifacts?" April asked, before she could stop herself.

Sau winked at her, not nearly so lecherously as he had at me. I didn't know whether to be insulted on her behalf or not that he was rather nakedly more attracted to me. "You'll see."

With that, he turned around, revealing a gunk-stained tail like the squat head of a spade, and sauntered off into the forest. Rastley grumbled to herself for a moment, but scampered after him, glancing furtively back at April every few seconds, as if expecting her to materialise a spear and plunge it into her back at any minute.

With a glance back at me, April followed suit, leading me along by my chain.

"So, what's your name?" Sau called back, seemingly unbothered by the prospect of being overheard.

Though I couldn't see April's face as I trailed after her on my leash, I'd seen enough of it to picture her running through several calculations in her head. "I'm… Cat…alina."

If Rastley hadn't still been peering over her shoulder at us every few seconds, I might have shaken my head in disbelief. April was so kind and sincere--ordinarily, that was one of the things I loved so much about her. It was not helping us here.

"Catalina," grunted Sau. "Sounds Draconic."

"I, uh, maybe," April said, noncommittally.

"What if she's a spy from Rhodeia?" Rastley piped up. "They got transmorgifyin', don't they?"

"Then they woulda given her a bloody better fake name than Catalina," Sau said testily. "Excuse me cowardly partner here, miz Catalina. She gets a bit on edge around catkin."

"Because she's a mousekin?" April guessed.

"What? No, course not." Sau laughed, but it had the same dark quality to it as when April had brought up revenge earlier. "No, she just has an… 'ealthy respect fer the Chief."

So the Chief was… a cat-person, same as April was impersonating? That could be useful. Did beastkin prefer other beastkin of the same… what was the word here? Species?

"The Chief, huh?" April said, picking up on the same thread that I had. Sharing a train of thought with April almost brought a smile to my face before I tamped it down. "What's he like?"

"Strong," said Sau.

"Mad," said Rastley, almost simultaneously. Sau spun around and cuffed her behind one of her enormous ears.

"Can it," he said threateningly. Rastley cowered; April bristled, clearly torn between a desire to stand up for this random bandit and to keep her cover. I tugged on the chain between us, hoping to remind her of our plan here--and her muscles relaxed.

"Strong, huh?" she said, steering around the minor altercation between our two guides.

"Yeah. He showed up a few years back. Took down the old Chief, and been our new one ever since."

April's head bobbed in another sage nod, though it was really only for Rastley's benefit--Sau kept his eyes forward, even as he casually yammered on about his tribe and the Chief who ran it.

"They say he took down an alaj in single combat. An' not just once, neither. A whole three dozen times, it was. The blighter never showed up again after the last one. Got tired of getting beat, I reckon."

Translation: he'd killed the same player about thirty-six times in a row, driving them to the point of rage-quitting. That was thirty-six or so opportunities that the player had to switch up their strategy, upgrade their gear, learn some new spells… and the Chief had still won every time. And, since he was still alive… he'd also won against any other players who had challenged him between these rounds.

Sau drew to a stop and turned to face us. Rastley, still scurrying closely behind him, almost tumbled into him, though an absent-minded shove sent her into a nearby tangle of roots instead. "Does it 'urt?"

April blinked. "Uh, what?"

"Dyin'," he said, face wide in his creepiest leer yet.

"Um." April cast around for a clever response, and could not find one. "Kinda, yeah."

"Huh." Seemingly satisfied for the time being, Sau turned back, and resumed leading us into the swampy depths of the bandits' forest.

"'ere we are. Home sweet home."

A few minutes later, the four of us stood in front of a tree that looked exactly as squat and fat and sprawling as every other tree we'd passed on the way. April gave the air an inquisitive sniff; Sau crossed his arms, almost smugly, when her eyes went wide and she glanced at the mud under our feet.

"Hope you don' mind a little dip."

Before I could puzzle out this little quip, the earth beneath us fell away. For a moment, my stomach lurched, and the crystal clarity of what was about to happen next spilled over my thoughts--and then, with a horrible glorp, the mud sucked us into the nothingness below.

"AHH!!"

"AHHH!!"

Our matching screams--one high-pitched and girly, one April's--mingled together in the mud, muffled under a host of squelching and squirting noises that felt almost biological at moments--and then came to an abrupt stop as we landed. A wave of heat washed over us, surprisingly comforting for a sensation produced in the middle of a lair of bandits camped out in the woods; when it stopped, it took with it the mud that had coated us, leaving us bone dry and clean at the very end of a dim, damp, and resoundingly underground hallway. It was a cramped, narrow affair, even for my short and slender body. April just about blotted out everything in front of me just standing there. I almost breathed a sigh of relief, though it would have been very out-of-character for a captured slave-girl at this point--we hadn't been split up, and April was still clinging onto my chain like a lifeline.

"Me deepest apologies." Sau's voice drifted down the lair like crude oil on a lake. "The others insisted we stick that bloody Unwhiffer down here, on account of all the mud." He laughed a gravelly, less-dark laugh. "I'm sure yer just gutted yer soak got cut short like that."

Unwhiffer? I glanced over my shoulder. Half-embedded in the wall behind me was a large stone apparatus that almost resembled the guard of a floor fan, made up of slender concentric circles bundled together by straight lines. It was a dull red--but as I watched, this colour swiftly faded to an even duller grey. Cooling off, I supposed, after it had produced that warm breeze.

Sau and Rastley led us down the tight cavern, down being the operative word; we were definitely heading downhill. The ground underfoot felt strange as I silently trailed April, and it took a moment before I figured out why--I'd gotten used to sinking slightly into the mud of the Reedlands, but here, underground, the floor was tightly packed earth. Wooden frames supported the earthen walls and ceiling, keeping them from collapsing in on us. The only light came from strange vines that grew in messy clusters, irregularly spaced along the passage walls; it was sickly green and wan, but it was just enough to navigate by.

Soon, the passage widened and the ceiling rose, giving April's frame some much-needed extra space to inhabit. A couple of other passages appeared in the walls, probably leading from similar secret entrances all over the forest above us. The pale glowing vines on the walls grew fewer and further between, until they vanished entirely; but somehow the light levels only rose, fading smoothly into the warm amber of an open flame.

It didn't take long after that before I heard the crackling of the source, and peered around April's hulking form to see it for myself--a fire sitting in a brazier, somehow burning without smoke. A figure covered in silver fur, with small, pointed ears and a long dark muzzle and a bushy tail tipped with brown like a paintbrush, was hunched over it, tended to it with a poker as long as one of their arms. A fox-kin, maybe?

"What's this?" he said with some interest, looking over April and I. His gaze lingered on the chain between us.

Sau gestured at April. "New recruit." His meaty hand glided over to me. "New meat."

"M'name's Catalina," April said helpfully, having apparently deepened her take on the beastkin accent.

"Boxel," said the fox-kin with a lazy nod.

"How's the boys?" Sau asked.

"Enjoyin' themselves." Boxel's black lips curled up in a sardonic smile. "Kaj's lot is back."

Sau's horrible grin had returned. "Wine again?"

Boxel nodded. Without another word, Sau and Rastley led us straight past him, around a corner--only for April to stop in her tracks.

"Whoah."

I peeked out from behind her again--and froze to the spot. Before us yawned an outright horde of tents, and fire-pits, and enormous wooden crates, filling the rocky cavern before us to its brim. Braziers like Boxel's cast splintered circles of light--and bigger circles of shadow--over the tents in their immediate vicinities. And between it all lurked the beastkin bandits of the camp; sitting around fire-pits in loose circles, wandering down the narrow paths left between the tents, sharpening weapons and whittling and twanging away at instruments that resembled guitars with an extra shaft sticking out from their sides.

This was hardly a 'camp in a cave.' This was almost a city.

"I'll bring you 'round to the main tent," Sau said, pointing it out for our--well, mostly April's--benefit. It was the largest tent in the camp by far, an enormous, decagonal dome of canvas that dominated the centre of the campsite. A dark trickle of a river ran along its side, starting from some point at the other end of the cavern--probably the exit that opened out to the River Samson. "Kaj'll take a shine to you, I reckon. And yer little offerin'."

My skin crawled as he leered at me.

April swallowed. "I, uh, I'd like to… introduce meself before I, uh, before we dig into her. Anyplace I can leave her before I do that?"

Sau shrugged. "Arright. We got the slave pens. They're on the way anyway."

"Good!" April said brightly. She brought herself back down to the aloof attitude of 'Catalina' a moment later. "Good."

As we headed into the camp proper, a thick musk rose up around us, threatening to choke me outright. Heavy and hot and sour with sweat and… other substances, it soon had me on the verge of tears. I switched to breathing through my mouth, but had limited success at best. All these beastkin in close quarters, living and eating and relieving themselves together, without any visible form of ventilation… they stunk. I glanced at April, wondering if she was faring even worse with her sensitive nose, but from behind all I saw was her hulking physique, plodding steadily onwards. If she could make out the awful stench that I could, she was hiding it far better.

We attracted a few more stares from bandits as we passed them by, but nobody stopped Sau to ask about us like Boxel had. Just the looks were bad enough on their own. Leer after leer loomed lewdly out at me, as did the occasional audible smirk and several outright wolf whistles. April tensed with each one; I was torn between joy that she was being so protective of me, embarrassment that I was in this position at all, with men creeping on me right in front of her… and worry that she'd lose control of her temper and blow our cover entirely. The mounting scarlet in my cheeks was one thing, but each bandit we passed added to a matching pile of dread in the very pit of my stomach.

This cave was packed with our enemies, even if none of them realised it yet. We were buried deep in their territory, without any helpful trees for April to uproot and use to scatter these bandits in sight. If our pretence failed and it came down to a fight, we didn't have a chance.

"'ere we are." Sau came to a stop, just a few tents down from the enormous walls of the main tent, and nodded at a messily nailed-together signpost. Instead of words, it featured a square of streaky black paint with three vertical bars slashing it into thirds. A crude image of a jail cell. The tent behind it was narrow, maybe two Aprils in width, but it was long, too. Following Sau's lead, we filed into it one at a time.

There wasn't much to the tent's interior. An uneven table, bruised and bitten with what were probably tooth marks; a set of drawers beneath it, each drawer crammed chock full of yellow sheets of parchment; a collection of chains and collars just like the ones I wore, dangling from a rack that hung from the ceiling of the tent; and a long and threatening column of human-sized cages, a range of heights and colours and widths between them. Every last one was empty.

The pit of worry in my stomach deepened. Where was the farmer's son? Where were any of the other slaves? Had Roshin lied to us? Had we just stumbled upon an entirely unrelated camp of slavers?

Sau snatched up a piece of parchment and a ring of keys from the desk, then went down the line of cages, consulting the sheet.

"Where's the others…?" April asked, nodding vaguely at them.

"Main tent, prob'ly," grunted Sau.

"Right, right."

"This'll do." Sau had selected a cell for me. He held it open and leered our way; the instruction was clear. Put your slave in this cell for safe-keeping.

April took hold of my arm and shoved me in front of her. I swallowed, the sensation of the collar around my neck more intense than ever. I--I seriously didn't want to be in this cage. But if I put up too much of a fuss… a-and April was just going to bust me out anyway, once she tracked down the farmer's son we were here for…

"P-please," I moaned plaintively. I had a much easier role to act out than April.

April's hand on my back tensed, hesitation stalling her for what might have been just a moment too long. "Shut it. Go."

Haltingly, but not quite digging my heels into the earthy ground, I staggered forward (with April's hand planted squarely between my shoulderblades), all the way up to Sau and his cage. On the very threshold of the cell, I paused. I didn't dare to breathe a word, or turn around to make eye contact with her, or do anything to openly communicate with her, but… the plan was slowly peeling off its rails. I had to know that she'd come up with a new one.

"C'mon." With that muttered contraction, April released the chain on my collar--it fell lifelessly against my front, no longer keeping the two of us together--and gave me a final, forceful shove. I stumbled into the cell, just barely catching myself on its steely bars… and the door clanged shut behind me. Sau was upon the lock in a flash, his keyring jingling with the movement of his hands.

Click.

That was it. I was locked up. Sau strode back to the entrance, whistling tunelessly, twirling the keys on one stubby, claw-tipped finger.

"Hurry up," he called over his shoulder. "The wine don't last long after one o' Kaj's wee expeditions. We'd best be hustlin' there now."

When Sau turned away, April gave me a very deliberate look, and did not take her eyes off me.

"Got it!" she said loudly. "I bet it'll be a real rite o'passage. Let's catwalk outta here."

I breathed a sigh of relief, and smiled for just long enough that April could catch it. Even though it was my own spell, I'd forgotten all about Star Passage--but she was right. If things got hairy in here, at least I could teleport out of my cell. I wasn't totally at the mercy of any bandit that walked in here while April was gone.

"What?" Sau turned back, his face crumpled in something that might have been bemusement, but April had already turned away from me and hurried up to his side.

"Let's go get drunk!"

Sau clapped her heartily on the back, though with their height difference it fell just short of a smack on her fantastic ass. "That's the spirit."

And just like that, they were gone, the entrance to the slave pen tent falling shut behind them.

Notes:

hey everyone! sorry for the long gap--work got pretty hectic for a while there!! anyway, we're heading into a part of the story that i've been excited to write for quite a while now~! fingers crossed you all enjoy it!

Chapter 26: The Main Camp (Pt. 2)

Chapter Text

I stood in my cell, alone with my thoughts. It hadn't been long since April had left to join Sau and Rastley for wine in the bandits' main tent--and, unbeknownst to them, to track down the farmer's son we were supposed to rescue--but already the minutes ticked by with agonising slowness.

At first, it had been the agony of trepidation. Indistinct figures lurched, flitted, and sauntered past the front of the slave tent in dribs and drabs, each one threatening in its own right. They trailed tails behind them, bore horns and ears and other beastly appendages, gesticulated with their spears as they said things I couldn't make out… and could, at any minute, burst through the opening flap to the tent and catch me in my cage. I flinched each time one reached that midway point, reaching for my wand, which I had open in my inventory, ready to be equipped at a moment's notice.

But as more and more of the bandits passed by the tent, and not one even poked their head in to take stock of the slaves, I found myself starting to relax. Worse than that: I was starting to get bored. There just wasn't a lot to do, or even look at, in this slave pen tent. There was the brown of its canvas walls, and the brown of its dirt floor. Then there were the other cages, which I didn't exactly want to study intently until April got back. Other than that, there was the desk near the entrance, and the drawers full of sheaves of parchment.

That, admittedly, was a little weird. The bandits didn't exactly seem like the types to keep meticulous records of anything. Or… to be literate at all, if I really thought about it. Wasn't literacy supposed to be limited in the sort of quasi-Medieval time period that this game was set in? Did that not apply to the world of VALKYRIE, or were these bandits just weird?

On the edge of my vision, a shadow fell over the front of the tent. It was big, maybe the biggest one so far… but it glided onwards like all the others. Another bandit joining the festivities in the main tent. I turned my attention back to the records, and thoughts of bandits sitting in schoolrooms, learning the alphabet.

The shadow stopped.

Something thick and black and orange shot into the tent and hurled the front flap aside.

I didn't just flinch--I flung myself back against the back of my cage, frantically tapping the Equip button for my wand.

A monster stood in the entrance to the slave tent. From top to bottom and left to right he filled it, an impassable mountain of flesh and fur. His was the smouldering cinder of the sun's rays as they bled out over a sunset, streaked with stripes the same charcoal black as long-dead kindling. He wore a suit of armour, like most of the other bandits we'd passed, but his was no common leather; though it bent along with his movements, supple and pliable, it caught the dim light of the tent almost like metal would, dyeing its deep brown with a reddish gleam.

He inclined his head as I looked on, rooted against the back of my cage, my arms behind my back. His expression was almost solemn: and his face was unmistakably that of a tiger's. On either side of his snow-white snout, two sets of whiskers twitched in the dim light once, twice: and the pink, black-ringed nose between them sucked in a deep breath. On and on it went, air rushing into his lungs as if terrified to disobey… carrying with it every last scent that swirled in the tent before him. Mine, April's, Sau's, Rastley's, the smell of the mud and the forest above us, the Reedlands we'd trudged through, the river water we'd waded in--it was impossible to say what traces he'd actually picked up, but I felt nakedly seen all the same, every secret of the last few days potentially laid bare in a single, monstrous breath.

Behind my back, my fingers curled around the shaft of my wand, and I pressed the pointed tip of the gaudy star that crowned it deeper into my own skin. He was blocking the only escape route for now, but the moment I had an opening, I was teleporting the hell out of there.

"How curious," he said suddenly, his voice deeper than dusk. His golden eyes were affixed directly to me: they followed each errant twitch I made with unnerving ease. "Did I not make it clear that all our slaves were to be mobilised tonight?"

His elocution was sharp and precise. Here, there were no omitted syllables, no dubious grammar, no confusing slang: he spoke with all the regimented poise of a man who did anything but run a lawless gang of criminals who hid out in a cave in the woods.

He strode forwards, and a second figure stumbled into the tent after him. She was barely half his height, if you didn't count her long, floppy ears, and she minced around gingerly on the toes of her enormous, elongated feet. A rabbit-kin, or a hare-kin, or something. Besides her head, which was mainly covered in a close-cut blonde bob, every inch of her skin was covered in creamy white fur, and around her throat was a spiked black collar identical to the one around mine. On her face sat a pair of delicate round glasses, their rims made of gold so thin it almost resembled thread. She was otherwise completely naked--and though it was hard to tell, I could've sworn that the white fur at her crotch and along the inside of her thighs was matted and sticky.

"I-I, um, yes, sir!" She set upon the table by their side with frantic energy, rifling through the parchment scattered over it, until she at last found the sheet that Sau had picked up earlier. "Sh-she's new, sir! I, um, it says Sau brought her in, sir!"

The tiger-kin hadn't taken his eyes off me for an instant since he'd entered the tent, and he kept them on me as his… slave? Aide?... reported her findings to him. "I see."

In just a few strides he was at my cage, still gazing unblinkingly at me. Up close, his own scent rolled over me, thick and earthy and with a tart edge that pricked at the front of my mind. I pressed myself even further against the back wall--even as my clitty, secure in its own cage, strained towards him. I grimaced. My heart was pounding in my chest and I had this giant towering over me. Of course my clitty was starting to squirm now.

"Why are you clothed, girl?" The tiger-kin's expression didn't change as he addressed me. His eyes simply swept over me, not even a foul leer coming over his face. I… tried not to feel disappointed. It was good that he wasn't staring at me like he was trying to undress me with his eyes!

"I-I, um, th-they let me keep it on!" I babbled.

He sighed, but in his heavy voice it came out as a low growl. "How uncharacteristically sloppy." He flicked a hand built like a sack of cement in my direction. "Off with it, then."

My hand automatically went to the hem of my gown before my brain caught up with it. I stole a glance at the rabbit-kin aide/slave accompanying him. She hadn't moved from the desk at the entrance since she'd come in, but it didn't exactly look like she'd be able--or willing--to do anything to stop me… especially if I surprised her by suddenly materialising next to her.

"Don't be an idiot," the tiger-kin said warningly.

My breath caught. Had he noticed where I was looking?

"Star Passage," I mumbled under my breath. Completely nullifying my attempt at stealth, the honeycomb aura of my spell sprang into existence around me. The tiger-kin unleashed a roar, and I flinched--but then the honeycomb around me disintegrated with the sound of shattering glass, and the tiger-kin stumbled back, eyes widening almost comically.

A tooltip popped up helpfully in the corner of my vision, but my mind and body were elsewhere. Pure adrenaline swung my wand arm into position. If he'd seen where I wanted to go, I had to disable him first.

"Glitterdust!"

A spray of multicoloured sparkles rained down on his face. He let out another roar, this one without the bite or the pressure of the first one, and lumbered towards the cage. Ten massive, claw-tipped fingers closed on the bars of its door. A horrible shrieking sound filled the air--was he going to rip the door off?! I spun around to jab my wand at the entrance to the tent.

"Catwalk!"

The whole world collapsed in on me like a rubber tube. The tent, the dirt floor, the bars of the cage--it all squeezed together, smooshing me forward--and then, with an audible pop that I felt in my bones, it all sprung back out, and I was disgorged at the set of parchment-stuffed drawers. I was out of the cage.

An enormous hand closed around my wand arm.

"Enough." I spun around, a strangled squeak dying on my lips as I came face-to-face with the tiger-kin. Sparkles still stained his russet-and-black fur--but his amber eyes remained firmly upon me all the same. He wasn't the slightest bit blinded.

"Angel--AAGHH!!" He gave my arm a cruel twist before I could finish casting my next spell, cutting me off and angling my wand away from him in a single, brutal move. I desperately lunged out with a foot, trying to catch him in the crotch--but his other hand appeared in my path, almost faster than my eyes could follow, and stopped my kick in its tracks. The fist on my wand arm shot down to my wrist--a hot flash of pain wracked my arm. I howled in agony--and then, just like that, my wand fell to the floor with a dull whumph.

"Lemme--go!!" I threw a punch at him with my free hand. It was like hitting concrete. "O-ow!"

He barely grunted. I squirmed and struggled in his grip, held awkwardly by one arm and one leg, and even tried to lift my other leg and throw my whole weight at the ground in an attempt to retrieve my wand--but he held me in place with ease. Despite myself, my body thrilled under his ironclad grip. My full weight wasn't even enough to make him sweat. J-just how strong was he??

"Pick that up," he told the bunny girl, kicking at it.

"I, um, yes, sir!" The bunny girl scrambled to snatch it up, fumbling it several times in the span of a second, though I hardly had a chance at contesting her. "G-got it, sir!"

When she straightened up, clutching my wand tightly to her naked breasts, I thought I caught a hint of guilt in her round, rose-pink eyes.

"Now," breathed the tiger-kin. My clitty stirred. In the wake of our brief scuffle, a new light had entered his eyes. "A spellcaster, are we? How curious."

He released my arm: newly emptied, his hand shot to my throat.

"Before we interrogate you, I think I'll make sure you behave."

In a blur of black and orange that rattled my brain senselessly in my skull, I found myself on my back, and pinned to the ground by the throat with one hand. My black collar, and the chain attached to it, lay discarded a few feet from me--the tiger-kin had snapped it in half and torn it off me, all the better to get at my exposed neck. Now he loomed over me, his arm stretching between us like some twisted bridge, and mine clawing at his wrist futilely. With our newfound proximity, his scent settled over me like a heavy blanket, turning every breath I took into a searching gasp. My legs were splayed wide in the air, almost perpendicular to each other, and his lap came up under my wide hips, hoisting them up so that my ass was squished dangerously close to the gleaming crotch of his armour.

Gravity had taken care of flipping my skirt up, exposing my frilly pink panties. Beneath them, my pussy grew wetter and tighter, salivating for this new contender.

"Nonono--ghkk--"

Just the slightest flex from his fingers around my throat was enough to crush my protests. I flailed my legs weakly at him, but the position he had me in gave my kicks very little leverage--they fell limply against his barrel chest. Bigger than me. Stronger than me. With just one hand, he had me pinned so completely that not one corner of my gasping, bruised brain could conceive of a way out. And I just couldn't keep my clitty from shuddering in its cage in response.

He sneered down at me, revealing yellow fangs that somehow made my pussy water even more desperately--and then, when his free hand grazed my quivering ass-cheeks, and a single black claw played at the frilly hem of my panties, I almost squirted a little trickle of my pussy's wetness out for him. Embarrassment welled over me like a hot flood. I-I hadn't cum for two nights now, b-but there was no way I was on this much of a hair-trigger!

"What's this?" Clit and pussy stiffened with a jolt as his curious claw found the tiny bulge at the forefront of my panties. He pushed down, squeezing my clitty into the feeble little ballsack beneath it.

"Hnnggh~~" I couldn't stop a breathy, strangled moan from slipping out from under his chokehold on me.

"A sissy, too," he breathed. "You're certainly full of surprises, girl."

He twisted his claw, slitting the rosy bridge of my panties cleanly in two. The two strands flopped lifelessly after the upturned crown of my dress, leaving my straining sexes--clitty and pussy both--fully exposed to his hungry eyes.

"Nn… nnnrkkk--"

He angled the hand around my throat forward, easily blotting out my next set of cries. The world fluttered and warped, dark spots flickering at the edges of my vision. He was quite literally single-handedly squeezing the resistance out of me--and still my clitty continued to strain towards him.

"Hm." He brushed his claw-tipped finger along the rim of my naked pussy. It swam through my juices, lewd and searching and hard. And then, almost nonchalantly, it slipped past my entrance and buried itself inside me.

"EeP!!" I was surprised to hear my own squeal--his grip around my throat had lightened, perhaps so he could hear exactly this cry. More followed, wordless and humiliatingly wanton, as he rubbed me from the inside, his huge finger filling and stretching me as much as some of the cocks I'd taken in this game.

"My apologies if you're used to… heartier fare," the tiger-kin said dryly. "I must confess that my stamina has already been quite exhausted today."

He nodded in the direction of the naked bunny-girl, who stood clutching my wand in the corner of the tent, watching us both nervously. His assault on my squealing pussy continued as he spoke, and through all my gasping and twisting and moaning I couldn't help but feel mildly indignant. How could he be so casual with his finger buried up to the knuckle in some stranger's gooey cunt?!

"Ahh~!!" Even though it was just the lightest of grazes, for a fraction of a moment, my sweet spot met his claw--and I released a moan fuller and warmer than the last few. I clapped my hands over my mouth, but it was an effort in vain. A shot of something electrifying forked across his eyes. The well-spoken patrician was gone, and a storm-tossed sea of feral hunger towered over me in his place--and then, he was back.

"Exquisite." He unsheathed his finger from me for a moment, and I let out a pathetic, wavering sigh, half disappointment and half relief. A second claw fell upon the drooling rim of my pussy; and before I could do anything but suck in sharply, he thrust in me with both fingers, stretching me twice as far.

I clapped my hands over my mouth, muffling myself, but the blissful moan that came when he found my sweet spot again was unmistakable--and this time his fingers lingered there, fluttering teasingly against my weak-point.

"Mffhh~~!! Hfffh~~!"

"So inexperienced," breathed the tiger-kin. A terrifying smile had come over his face, parting his pale muzzle and widening his slitted pupils. "And yet, you have all the makings of a legendary whore. Cassiopeia herself couldn't have sculpted a better slut."

His eyes flicked up to my wand, still in the scared clutches of his bunny-girl slave. "If you'll forgive the blasphemy."

He did something with his fingers inside my pussy--splayed them apart, maybe, stretching my button in a maddening burst of pleasure--and my whole body balled up, legs and arms clenching inward. Before I knew it, my clitty had erupted, and a shameful trickle of white spurted free from the end of its cage.

"Hah!" The tiger-kin's laugh was a roar, and I quivered beneath it. "And to quicken so easily, as well? Whoever placed this cage on you did well to, girl. You would be nothing as a man."

My heart crumpled. Above it my throat tightened, for once nothing to do with the hot paw still around it, and a heaving, chest-wrecking sob ballooned up to the very back of my mouth. Tears spilled down my cheeks in hot rivers--and, through it all, my pussy squeezed down on the tiger-kin's still-stroking fingers, eager to reinforce his dismissal of my manhood.

"Are you crying?" Far from the sadistic glee I'd expected, the tiger-kin seemed almost bemused by this turn of events, and his stroking of my sissy spot slowed. The surprise was short-lived: he leaned over me, so that my whole body was bathed in his enormous shadow, and brought his face almost all the way to mine, so that our lips were almost touching. "Perfect. You already agree with me."

His breath, rank and fetid, poured into my lungs, spurring on another wave of sobbing grief. I… I did, didn't I? All of my indignation, a-and my embarrassment, and m-my fruitless desires to impress a-and man up for a-and show off for April… i-it was all just my way of trying to deny the truth. No matter what I tried, n-no matter how hard I fought, the moment I got separated from her, I just ended up with half my clothes torn off under some overpowered monster hellbent on violating my pussy and shattering any semblance of pride I had in myself.

The tears kept flowing, and the pathetic, hiccoughing sobs kept spurting out of my lungs--and the tiger-kin kept thrusting his fingers in and out of my weeping cunt, striking at my sweet spot again and again.

"No… p-please…!"

"No?" His fingers stopped. He drew his face down to mine again, amber eyes fearsome and unblinking. I lay still, heart hammering in my chest, my pussy still aching contently around his unmoving digits. No… please… n-not again… "That's not what your face is telling me, girl."

He jerked his hand forward, jabbing me in my weak spot. I kicked out with both my legs, more in shock than any sincere attempt to get him off me again--and I could feel the way my face contorted to reinforce his point, lips parting and eyes crossing and tongue lolling for his amusement.

"Let's try again, shall we?" He dug his claws into my sissy spot, and fireworks flared behind my eyes--and then he tugged them back, dragging my speared sweetness back and forth. My clitty wilted under the pressure, spurting out another dismal spray of my weakness that fell back onto my navel.

"Hahhh… fuh… nn…*gkkk*--!!"

His grip around my throat tightened.

"Ah ahh," he tutted. "Let's be more honest, shall we?"

He relaxed his hold, but with the way he was watching me, and the sheer, oppressive weight of his hand as it lay placidly on my neck, the feeling of suffocation still loomed over me.

"Y… y-yes," I moaned limply.

"That's better." He thrust his hand in deep again, this time slipping a third finger in alongside the first two--a twisted reward for playing along. I made a feeble yelp, which soon gave way to a series of moans and squeals. Jolts of pleasure raced up my spine with each three-fingered dive inside me.

"Ah~!!"

"More, you little slut."

"Y--ah!!--yes!"

"Louder."

"YeS!!"

Another burst of pleasure buzzed its way up to my clitty, and shot free from my body in the form of my thin goo. This time, he hadn't even needed to torment it out of my sweet spot--just the normal grazing of his fingers inside me had been enough.

"I-I, um, sir," the bunny-girl said nervously. Her master glanced her way but ignored her, and she fell silent without elaborating, her whole body quivering in fear… o-or, perhaps, some other feeling. The tiger-kin peeled his fingers out of me, riveting my attention back to him. Locking his eyes on mine, he brought his sticky, squirt-stained hand up to his white muzzle and gave it a long, deliberate lick, a teasing quirk at the ends of his mouth. He reached down: and just like that, I was made to watch him tug, in all the full-throated graphical brilliance of VALKYRIE, off the front guard of his leather leggings.

A monster erupted from within them. Pink and fleshy and coated with row after row of tiny white barbs, it sprung free from its prison in an instant, catapulted forth by pressures I could scarcely begin to imagine. It stiffened to its full length in an instant, a mighty prow that needed no sails to slap itself heavily against my upturned, hairless, tiny little ball-sack. The impact of that alone rocked my body, all the way up to the tips of my pointed ears.

"Would you look at that?" The tiger-kin sneered wickedly down at me. "You managed to bring my appetite back."

Before I'd even made another sound, his choking grip returned, crushing my pleas with more than a vengeance. His other hand, no longer buried in my dripping snatch, fell to the base of his monstrous cock (my heart sank to see that even his giant fist barely covered the bottom third of the thing) and guided it swiftly to the now-openly-slobbering gap between my ass-cheeks. I tried to shake my head, even as my lungs screamed for air, but he had me close enough to the base of my skull that even that small defiance was impossible.

His bulbous head prodded at my entrance… but went no further.

"I am going to use you now," he said simply, and though his tone was composed, his eyes… and his throbbing pink tiger's cock… thrummed with glee. "If you intend to behave for us, every time I push forward--" he jerked his hips forward and into my raised ass, making a smack straight out of a porno-- "you will say yes to me. Do you understand?"

This time, when he released my throat, he brought his hand up to my chin, and cradled it almost lovingly. I stared up at him. At the two pools of amber that made up his eyes… and the pitiless black lines that cleaved them in two. I-if I really still believed in myself as a man… I-I'd resist here, right? It wasn't like he could actually kill me… and even if he dropped me to zero hit points, I'd… w-well. I'd survive… but I'd also be even more at his mercy. I thought of April, still yet to return from her… solo part of our plan. If… i-if she was coming back at any moment, ready to tackle this beast off me, it would be best if I could move without her healing me. Even… even if obeying for now would be… humiliating.

I… I cast my eyes downward. It… it was the more pragmatic option.

"Yes," I murmured.

I tried to ignore the way my body thrilled with joy as I said it.

"You perfect little slut," the tiger-kin breathed. The hand on his shaft glided up to its head… and he began to feed it into my cunt.

My pussy squealed. There was no better way to describe it. The moment his enormous pink head breached my gaping sphincter, and met the tight crush of my anal tract with all its unflinching, diamondlike firmness, every fibre in my pussy strained to receive him, to take him deeper, to bring him straight into the deepest depths of my guts. I could feel the shock etch itself into my face--no cock had forced a reaction like that out of me before.

My expression must have pleased him, because he didn't punish me with another bout of choking for immediately failing in our agreement; he just worked himself deeper, and brought his muzzle to my ear. "Behave."

Thruuuuust.

"Y-yes~!!"

Back again.

And then… thruuuust.

"Yes!!"

With his head up against the side of mine, our position was even more intimate than before. His tart scent wasn't just a suffocating blanket over me anymore; it filled me, reaching deep into my lungs and addling my brain with its intensity. My ass was still hoisted up in the air, where it could rest on his laps between his thrusts into me, but with his upper body now lowered against mine, my legs were pinned between us, thighs between our stomachs and calves sandwiched between my tiny breasts and his formidable chest. If kicking out at him had been awkward and futile before, it was thoroughly impossible now. I bit back a moan of defeat--how did he keep finding new ways to completely dominate me??

His next thrust brought another surge of pleasure to my tight little snatch, and my clitty spat out yet another weak dribble for him. "Ahh… yes!"

"That's it, girl. Moan for me."

Thrust.

"Yeeees!!"

His pace picked up, and mine moved to match him.

"Yes~! Yes! Yes!!"

The barbs on his penis seemed to grow stiffer the harder he ploughed into me. They caught on the roiling flesh of my pussy, tugging at my insides each time he drew back as if loathe to let me go for even a second. My pussy responded to the constant bombardment of tiny pinpricks with its usual enthusiasm, spurting out a veritable river to ease his way back and forth inside me. Unlike my clitty, my hole's supply of juices seemed to be utterly inexhaustible.

"Yes!! Yes!! Hnghh--yes!! Yes--!!"

At some point, he'd let go of my throat entirely: his arms had fallen to my elbows, which he now gripped with a strength every bit as implacable as April's. His thrusts grew fewer and further between, though they remained monstrously fast--I was deliriously reminded of a fencer, pacing slowly around the ring, pausing only to lunge at his opponent at lightning speed. Pace… pace… strike!

"Yes~!!"

These blinding bursts of size inside me were enough to force out another couple of pathetic squirts from my sissy spot, though by now it was running on fumes--and then, as I sank down from the electric high of my second dry orgasm, the tiger-kin's whole body tensed on top of me.

A chill ran through my panting, squirming, moaning body.

He was on the edge. I didn't know how I knew--w-was it just experience from all the other times I'd been raped so far?--but I could feel it.

"Y-yes!" My voice wavered, but I kept following his order for me, even as his length throbbed dangerously and he started to leave himself buried to the hilt inside me after each thrust, holding himself as far in my gushing depths as he could go for a few seconds each time. "Yes~!!"

"Yes," he hissed back, whisper unfurling straight into my ear. He pulled himself back, back, back, until the head of his cock was the only part of him left inside me, and the ridge between it and the rest of him clung obscenely to the tight-but-stretched ring of my sore little pussy's entrance. "One last time."

He slammed his hips forward--and in that instant, dragged with him a tide of heat and lust that reached all the way to the dismal roof of the tent above us, bringing me along for the ride. The mindless rhythm of his rape had overcome me, become a reflex: as the final, missile-strike thrust filled my cunt, and launched a steamy jet of his essence into my eager bowels, I screamed to the heavens with all the joy my girly body could contain.

"YES!!"

And then, before I could so much as sink back down into reality, the tiger-kin snatched me up in his powerful, heavily-furred arms and planted his muzzle against still-parted my lips. The thought of resisting as his rough, scratchy tongue shot into my mouth didn't even cross my mind--for one endless, ecstatic moment, he was wrapped around me, and all I knew was following in his wake. My lips tingled with warmth.

His scent, his body, his sheer presence… my eyes fell shut, and I let it all sweep over me. Wherever I was, he was too, and overwhelming me with the barest effort. His arms pinned mine to my sides… his tongue swam over mine in my mouth… his breath mingled with mine in my panting lungs. And, through it all, his cock continued to pump his warmth into my quivering guts. Dimly, I could tell that another dry orgasm was shuddering its way free of my clitty, but that paled under the sloshing weight and heat and force of his orgasm.

Abruptly, the tiger-kin broke away from our kiss. A needy whine escaped my throat--but when I turned to follow his gaze, it died on my lips. At the entrance to the tent stood April, her stance wide, and her orange-furred hand clinging to a chain very much like the one that lay on the floor beside me. Behind her cowered a collared girl with tiny little horns, covered in fur and the black splotches of a dairy cow.

Ice-cold sobriety bludgeoned me over the head.

"ANNE?!" April was aghast; but soon her horror gave way to black fury, and she rounded on the tiger-kin whose lap I was still attached to, and whose arms were still wrapped possessively around me. "YOU."

"Ah," said the tiger-kin. He rose to his feet, peeling me free from his cock with all the ease in the world, and held me aloft by the throat; my feet dangled helplessly a fair distance from the ground. No longer plugged up inside me, his semen began to leak its way out of my cunt. "So you're this little slut's owner."

"She doesn't belong to anyone. Let her go," April snarled. The cow-girl behind her had started to back away, but the chain April still held didn't let her get very far. Faintly, I registered that she had a little metal cage affixed to the front of her crotch; a tiny, hairless sack dangled uselessly beneath it. A sissy like… me.

"Oh?" The tiger-kin let out a low laugh. His eyes didn't flicker from her for even a moment. "Your scent's all over her face, girl."

He took a deep breath, as if to emphasise his point. My face grew warm… but April's remained set. She was studying him just as closely as he was studying her. If his lewd observation had given her any pause at all, she wasn't showing it.

"I said let her go." Her free hand twitched, and suddenly her emerald-studded club appeared in it. The tiger-kin's expression shifted, some kind of recognition lighting up his slitted eyes. What was the word the other bandits had used? Alaj?

"I don't think I will," he rumbled. Far from letting me go, he pulled me closer to his body, running his free hand tauntingly down the gentle curve of my waist where it gave way to my wide hips. "I've quite enjoyed her company today… and I believe the feeling is mutual."

"Get your fucking hands off her!"

April took a threatening step in his direction, and I felt his body tense up against mine. A trap. He wanted her furious, off-balance, predictable--the moment his taunts got to her and she lunged for him, he was ready to exploit the opening she'd leave him. I almost blurted out a warning to her… but even with his cum bloating my belly and exhaustion clouding most of my mind, I caught myself. She already knew, didn't she? That was why she hadn't done anything more than posture yet, even though her temper had been sincere. She was… waiting for an opening of her own.

"What will you do to stop me?" Slowly, sensually, the tiger-kin planted a meaty finger in the cleft between my thighs; my dress had fallen back down over my lower body now that I was upright again, once again concealing my cage situation from April, but it did little to keep the tiger-kin from stroking my drained balls through it. I squirmed weakly in his grip, letting out an involuntary, wordless moan.

An opening… n-no, this was way too obvious. He moved with such blinding speed…a-and this was nothing to how he'd touched me before. He was holding himself back. Keeping his attention on April and her club. Which meant…

"Hahh~~!"

"I said stop it!" April roared.

His attention wasn't on me. I just was an afterthought to him, a way to get an edge against April. He'd disarmed me, after all… b-but because I'd kissed him, o-or, well, he'd kissed me… I had a brand new Milestone to use on him. I could make an opening!

I brought my arms up to his hand, still wrapped around my throat and holding me aloft. Out of the corner of his eye, he gave me a fraction of a glance--and then his attention snapped back to April. I put one hand to my mouth. Blow a kiss. I'd never done it before in the real world… but it was part of how I used the Seduce action in this ridiculous game, and Percy had made me use it on a Timber-wolf once, what felt like aeons ago.

The tiger-kin drew breath, about to give April another goading, sneering response: and I touched my fingers to my lips.

"Mwah… Starcharge!!" I stretched my arm out to point directly at her--would that be enough? The last thing I wanted was to Starcharge myself… or the tiger-kin holding me prisoner.

As if in answer, a golden glow settled around April. For one long, delicious instant, the eyes of every single beastkin in the room fell on me; the tension between April and the tiger-kin dissipated, replaced by a stunned silence.

Then a pair of roars shook the world, and the silence was no more.

Chapter 27: Cat vs. Dog (Pt. 1)

Chapter Text

Her club already drawn, April wasted no time in hurling herself at our foe. My Starcharge turned her into a golden meteor, and she howled like one as she flew. The path she took was arced, so that she threatened the side of his body opposite me--even in the heat of battle, I had to marvel at her foresight and care. There'd be no friendly fire between the two of--

THWACK.

The world spun away in a blur, and the oaken creak of agony exploding against my face blew my train of thought to pieces.

"ANNE!"

My health bar dropped to zero, no match for one of April's trademark two-handed timber-wolf sawdusters. The golden glow around April vanished, exhausted alongside its caster. His human shield expended, the tiger-kin tossed me callously to the side, leaving me to lie paralysed in the dirt as he advanced on her.

"What a disappointment," he drawled. On my back, I watched as April took another desperate swing--and, with all the easy grace of a curtain of water parting around an obstacle, the tiger-kin stepped around it. "I had high hopes for you, girl. An allogene who already has the eyes of a killer… you would have made a fine addition to my tribe, you know."

April's club vanished and she slammed her hands together. The peal of a Thunderclap blew the tent apart around her, revealing the dull orange glow of the campfires outside it. The two slaves, one cow and one rabbit, had managed to escape her range by virtue of turning tail and fleeing--an option that I sorely wished I had at this moment.

The tiger-kin barely flinched. I swallowed thickly, still watching from on the ground. 'My tribe…'

This was the Chief, wasn't it? We weren't just in over our heads here: we'd taken the plunge straight into the deep end. April, seeing that her spell hadn't worked, had recast her Wild Aspect, shedding her orange fur and disguise in order to take on the bark of a timber-wolf. The golden glow of my Starcharge had vanished when she'd taken me out, but still she lunged for him, hands braced over her head.

"Oh?" said the Chief. This time, when April's club reappeared in her hands and she brought it crashing down on his head, his enormous body blurred to the side and he caught her--not her club, her--by the arms and launched her up in the air and over his hulking shoulders and straight into the dirt where the entrance to the tent had stood. She let out a broken gasp, wheezing like she was winded.

"A white wolf," he remarked. "Are you the one who slaughtered Turg's troop the other night?"

April's shallow breath caught at the reminder of her massacre, but she managed to struggle to her feet and, still gasping for breath, lurched at him with her club once again. Exactly as before, the Chief stepped to the side and flipped her. Another voiceless cry rushed from her lungs as she thudded into the ground again--this time, right by my side.

"What an embarrassment. You're slow. Sloppy. Used to relying on your instincts, not using them." He advanced on us as he continued, his pace as lazy as it was self-assured.

Ignoring his taunts, April gestured weakly at me: the Chief's throws had blown through a sizeable chunk of her health bar, but she needed me up and casting for us to have a chance. I braced, ready to leap to my feet and hit her with an Infuse the moment I had health again.

"M… Moonli--"

The Chief lunged for her. His biting jab caught her straight in the face--hard enough to leave a crater in the dirt under her head--and cut her off in an instant. The shield from her Spring Hide did little to reduce the damage from the hit.

"Hey!" I protested, unable to do much else.

"I suppose this is what you get from combat with nothing but monsters," sighed the Chief, rising back to his full height. April, still panting and wheezing, clapped her hands together; again, the resulting Thunderclap barely tousled the Chief's striped fur, though it roared over me. His snout wrinkled in annoyance. "Enough of that."

Once again moving with that impossible quickness, he slammed one boot-shod foot down on her throat. A horrible choking noise wracked the air, brutal and pained and lingering, and tightening like thumbscrews as it went on.

"STOP!!" I screamed shrilly. His fist around my throat had been awful--but the way his body shifted, he had to be putting his entire weight on the foot crushing the life out of April. Thoughts of respawning and churches evaporated from my mind: in that terrified, frenzied heat, the hideous gasps of April filling my world, he was crushing the girl I loved to death, and I was utterly powerless to stop him. Tears poured down my face, hot and harsh and helpless.

"Fear not, girl," he murmured my way, though he pressed nightmarishly on. "She simply needs to learn her lesson."

"LET HER GO!"

He sighed and turned to the bunny-girl, who'd taken to cowering a very generous distance away from the fight. "Cotton. Gag this squealing little pig--"

A crackling roar tore into him mid-sentence. White light, blinding and brilliant, exploded across my vision. Between the two, my ears ringing and eyes blistering, I could only make out faint shouts and snarls, and the occasional dark spot for a few seconds--and when they finally cleared, April stood tall, and the Chief sported a new wound on his leg. Sizzling and mauve with his half-boiled blood, it hissed amidst the orange of his fur like a brand new stripe, angry and raw.

On April's left arm sat a wooden buckler. It wasn't particularly big, and seemed even smaller against her impressive frame, but from the way it glowed it was clearly enchanted. It took me a moment to place it--I hadn't seen it in almost two weeks--but at last it clicked for me. The shield she'd bought in Lumberg. She hadn't had cause to pull it out yet, relying on my healing and her own passive abilities to get through most damage… but this was a fight that warranted some extra defensive punch.

She raised her shield challengingly at the Chief, and it crackled alongside her, biting at the air around her. The Chief's eyes snapped to it for a fraction of a second, as if taking in what had just happened, and then went back to her. His snarl overtook every feature on his face, twisting them so that he was hardly recognizable. Gone was his bored serenity, and his effortless mockery, and his faint air of disappointment.

"You little whore." Every follicle on my body jumped at the vicious anger in his words, and even April shifted uncertainly, though she kept her shield and her club firm and at the ready.

He bared his fangs. I scarcely had the chance to take in just how wickedly sharp and tightly packed in his mouth they were before he hurtled forward, almost too fast for my eyes to follow. April tried to match him with her buckler, shifting it into place in the hopes of intercepting his attack, but he was impossible to catch. In a smattering of seconds he'd weaved his way through her guard and placed himself right in her face, so that he was practically between her shield arm and her body, and snaked one rippling arm under her armpit and wrapped it around her back to seize her club arm from behind. Even from my outside vantage point, the manoeuvre felt overwhelming--April could only let out a surprised yelp--

and then the tiger closed his jaws around her throat.

There should have been a spray of blood. Would have been, if this were the real world. But then, if this had been the real world, we wouldn't be in this situation, fighting desperately for our lives against a hideously overpowered half-tiger warrior.

"APRIL!!"

"Enough, Cal," said a woman from outside my frozen field of view. Her voice was husky and gentle, and though it floated close to a whisper, it cut through the air and stopped us all in our tracks like a shout. "We wouldn't want the darlin' dead on day one, would we?"

The Chief withdrew his mouth from her throat, and his fangs and muzzle looked incomplete, far too clean for the killing blow he'd just made against her--and rolled his eyes sullenly in the direction of the newcomer. "She's an allogene. She can take it."

There was still a stubby caterpillar of green above April's head. Taking full advantage of it, she strained to tear herself free of the Chief's hold--and when that failed, she lunged out with her own head, snapping angrily at his neck with her own, much blunter, fangs. Only the Chief's other hand, snapping into place to seize a fistful of her hair and yank it back, kept her from reaching her target.

"You see?"

The newcomer sighed. "Dominate."

April's body seized up. Face, arms, legs--a pall of something locked up each and every one of her muscles in an instant. Her pupils shrank to terrified dots… and then began to glow a sickly, twisted green.

"Be still." The pall passed, but the sickly green in her eyes did not. Her arms no longer strained against the Chief, and her mouth fell shut, no longer snapping at the air.

The Chief released her. She stood impassively in front of him, her face now an indifferent mask… and didn't react in the slightest when the Chief took a swipe at the too-tight top of her bandit's armour, snapping it in half and allowing her breasts to bounce free. She still had the timber-wolf armour preserving most of her modesty, but…

"A-April!" I cried out weakly.

"Cal," snapped the newcomer. "I can't keep her under if yer gonna do shit like that."

"Then bite her," the Chief grunted back.

"After all the shit you put her through? She'll cark it."

It was the Chief's turn to sigh. "Very well."

He loped easily over in my direction, and though every fibre in my body tried to crawl away, the paralysis of being at zero hit points was as inviolable as ever. All I could do was let out a low whine as he scooped me up in his furry arm and tossed me over his shoulder. His cum drooled miserably out of my pussy, as if taking the opportunity to renew my absolute humiliation at his hands.

"What's this?" In my new position, the newcomer had entered my view--and I'd entered hers. She was another towering figure, just an inch or so shorter than her Chief, though she was only about as broad as myself, giving her silhouette a spidery spindliness. Smooth scales covered her body, ranging from pale greys to a deep bottle-green in a tessellated gradient. Her limbs and shoulders and hips were slender, as was her elongated neck, which bent and twisted through the air with disconcerting flexibility as it brought her long, thin, diamond-shaped head up to me. With a guttural hiss, a forked tongue flitted out from between her lips and caressed the bridge of my nose. Behind her trailed a gently swishing tail, almost as long again as the rest of her body was.

A snake-kin. Unlike practically every other bandit we'd passed by, she wore no armour; instead, she was (rather sparsely) clothed in a ragged black skirt, cleaved to one side to reveal a lascivious slice of her left thigh. Her top, if it could be called that, was a simple beige ring of cloth wrapped flatteringly around her breasts. Necklaces and bracelets laden with carved teeth and glittering stones adorned her neck and wrists and ankles, and in her left hand she held a wooden staff as tall as she was, draped in its own dense collection of tribal trinkets.

"Another allogene. She won't be an issue," grunted the Chief. He started walking, and though I couldn't see exactly where, there was really only one possible outcome here. We were heading to the main tent.

"Lovely," hissed the snake-woman, following along behind him. On the end of her freakishly long neck, her head turned to face behind her, while the rest of her body remained pointed to the front. The sight made me a little queasy. "Dismiss that spell and follow me."

The bark covering April melted away, revealing her bare skin--and bare breasts--in all her gorgeous glory. Her eyes still glowing that eerie green, she silently shuffled into place behind the snake-woman, the final member of our procession.

"Cotton!" roared the Chief. It reverberated up from his shoulder and through my body, and my clitty shuddered at the reminder of his sheer power. Really? "Grab that sissy cow and get in your cages."

"Y-yes, sir!" cried out the Chief's rabbit-kin slave from some interminable point ahead of us.

"And gimme that wand," added the snake-woman.

"Yes, ma'am!!"

'Cotton' flounced up to the snake-lady and handed my star-tipped wand to her. She turned it over in her spindly fingers, peering at it intently. The only sign that she was aware of my futile glare was the sly smile that played at her lips.

"Exquisite," she murmured, just loud enough that I could hear it. I couldn't tell if she was talking about the wand… or me.

The clinking of tankards and the merry din of a dozen different conversations playing out at once enveloped us as we entered the main tent. Beastkin of all stripes were packed together as far as the eye could see, piled on a collection of mismatched stools and tables that must have been amassed over years of banditry. The conversation died down wherever the tiger-kin carrying me passed, the members of the tribe falling silent and saluting their Chief for a few moments before picking their conversations back up. Even the few who were plainly already drunk out of their minds managed to get their hands most of the way to their foreheads, between giggles and rapacious stares at April and I.

Amidst the rank stench of the bandits, and the mouth-watering scent of the dishes that had been set out before them, there was also the raw smell of sex; and the source of this was quite clear. Scattered throughout the tent, alternately mounted on tables or sat on laps or bent over on the ground itself, was a collection of collared slaves. They were all naked, the same as the cow-sissy and the bunny-girl I'd already encountered, and wore a variety of expressions as their partners used them, each one plainly oblivious to the Chief striding through the tent in front of them. All ten or so of them had animal ears peeking out from under the hair atop their heads--considering that April was a beastkin too, I was beginning to feel bizarrely out of place.

In the middle of it all, equally out of place between the wild assortment of furnishings and the scruffy bandits and the bedraggled slaves, stood a silver cage. Stretching up to the ceiling, but narrow enough that I'd probably have to stand on April's toes if they stuffed us in it together, its willowy bars gave the impression that they would bend at the slightest touch--and yet, surrounded on all sides by an unruly horde of increasingly drunken beastkin, its finely ornamented surfaces lay unmarred. As we wound a circuitous route around it, I couldn't stop myself from glancing at it out of the corner of my eye.

All too soon, we came upon the longest table in the tent, which had been mounted on a sort of stage near the back, and was ringed by full-fledged chairs rather than stools… though they were still woefully mismatched with each other. The beastkin seated in them had meaner looks to them than the ones below; their flesh and armour were notched with pale scars, visible even through their fur, and the weapons that leaned against their chairs glittered more wickedly in the orange torchlight, their edges sharper and shafts thicker. They lined the far end of the table, so that they looked out over the rest of the tent.

Among them, two conspicuous gaps leapt out at me--two empty seats at the very centre of them all, one taller and upholstered supremely finely in comparison to the other chairs, and a single one near the very end. A feast of fish and vegetables, all doused in some kind of delectable sauce sat in front of the two seats in the middle, untouched by those seated in their immediate neighbours; nothing had been set out at all in front of the third chair.

The Chief brought me with him to his seat, the enormous purple one, and peeled me off his shoulder as he poured himself into it to sit me down on his lap. I was immediately made aware of the bulge stirring in his pants--but try as I might to inch away, I was still very much paralysed.

"Stand here," the snake-woman hissed to April. The two of them had remained on the other side of the table, and from my new place on the Chief's lap, I could only watch as the snake-woman produced a selection of manacles and chains from a pile to the side and began to affix them to April's body. Her wrists, her ankles, her throat… with practised efficiency, soon she was all bound up, though the snake-woman had taken care to leave her naked breasts and everything from her waist down to her upper thighs fully exposed. The final touch was a strip of blood red cloth, pulled out from a pouch at the snake-woman's waist and wrapped around April's obliging mouth, gagging her. A weak whine escaped me, even as my clitty throbbed furiously in its cage. There was no mistaking what she intended with this arrangement.

"Cure," the snake-woman said, to my surprise, gesturing with my wand at her. Over her head, April's healthbar climbed a tiny bit of the way back to full… though it was nowhere near as much as my Cures healed. The snake-woman frowned at the wand and switched to her staff. "Cure."

This spell had much more effect; her health shot up to comfortably more than halfway, and the snake-woman lowered her staff, satisfied. Then, her neck twisting easily through the air, her fanged mouth fell open and--for the second time in a matter of minutes--closed around April's throat.

"APRIL!!" I squealed. The green light in her eyes died, and a sizeable chunk of her healthbar fell away--though not enough to drop her below half. A purple face, halfway between a skull and a stylized ghost, appeared over her head. Paralysis.

Silence fell over the tent. Every eye had been turned to the four of us, in the middle of the big table. Me, the Chief, April, and the snake-lady. Even the slaves, and the men and women holding onto them, had paused in their gasps and moans of pleasure to stare our way. I desperately wished I could shrink away from their stares--a feeling that redoubled as the Chief placed two meaty fingers in my mouth, squashing my tongue flat, and shoved them all the way to the top of my throat. Gagging me with his fingers alone… r-right in front of the whole tent. Right in front of April.

"Mfhh!!" April growled through her own gag. She strained forwards, clearly either to scoop me out of his clutches or to maul him--but between them, the paralysis and the manacles held her tightly in place. She couldn't even topple herself over.

"Sau," boomed the Chief. His voice swept over me from behind like a tidal wave, carrying with it a force and a majesty that made my heart flutter under my tiny breasts.

The toad-man we'd met before rose gingerly from his place on the outskirts of the tent. "Uh, yes, m'lord?"

"Are you the buffoon who brought this allogene woman into my camp?" The Chief's words were measured, and his tone was even; there was no hint of the feral beast that had snarled at us when April had caught him off-guard with her shield. Even so, a tremor ran through the sea of bandits around us, and none trembled more than Sau himself.

"I-I, ah, um, y-y'see, I-I did figure--I-I mean, I 'ad a p-plan--"

"Spit it out."

"Y-yes, m'lord."

The Chief leaned back in his chair. Idly, with the hand he wasn't using to plug up my mouth, he began to stroke my hair. I fought to stop a muffled purr from escaping me--why did that feel so good??

"Ordinarily, I would execute you for such a flagrant act of idiocy," he said, with all the casualness of voicing a vague desire to visit the market at some point in the evening. "But, as you're all aware, I have been in search of test subjects lately, and these two should fit the bill nicely." He paused in my stroking to inspect his own claws. "So, on this occasion, I afford you my mercy. The slave tent was damaged by the allogenes during our confrontation--go and repair it. You are to accept no assistance from the slaves in this matter. When you are done, you will lock yourself in this one's cage--" he curled a clawed finger under my chin and gave me a humiliatingly pleasing scritch-- "and remain there until I order your release."

As he spoke, Sau nodded his head wildly, his toady jowls flopping up and down; and when at last the Chief had finished, he bowed his head and stumbled his way toward the exit, never taking his eyes off the Chief for a moment. "Y-yes, sir! At once, m'lord, thank y'kindly, I'll get right on it, sir, yer mercy be repaid a hundredfold, sir, me Chief--"

His blabbering continued on indistinctly as he ducked out of the tent.

"With that unpleasantness out of the way," the Chief went on, "I would like to introduce you gentlemen to our newest slaves. As you may have gathered, they are both allogenes." A smile had crept into his voice. "There is therefore no need to be gentle with them. Kajagar?"

As the motley crowd of beastkin below cheered in response, claws and talons and paws coming together in eager applause and the matter of Sau's punishment all too easily forgotten, the snake-woman--Kajagar--dipped her head respectfully in his direction. Amid the interaction between Sau and the Chief, she'd apparently stowed my wand somewhere out of sight, and now pointed an entirely different implement in April's direction. Silver and studded with several bent prongs, all curved in the direction that she was pointing it, it immediately reminded me of the silver cage that still loomed over the room. Foreboding rose up within me--and it only intensified as a white aura began to radiate from it, and a matching white aura enveloped both the cage and April's entire body.

"MfhH!" April's muffled cry was one of alarm rather than pain, but I still tried my hardest to squeal for her sake through the salty, furry fingers in my mouth.

The strangely calming chime of a bell echoed out across the tent, and the white glow vanished from April and the cage and the implement alike. None of them seemed any worse for the wear… but a queasy light had entered April's eyes. Another status effect? The paralysis icon was still there…

"Did it take?" The Chief's heft leaned forward over me, animated by what, for a second, felt like almost boyish curiosity.

"Indeed it did," hissed Kajagar. With what I could only suspect was a triumphant leer, she turned the strange silver wand on me--only for nothing to happen at all.

The Chief waved her off, and she lowered it, one scaly brow raised interrogatively his way.

"She's a sissy. Binding her won't be necessary," he grunted.

"Oh?" murmured Kajagar.

"They call it Resilience."

Without warning, a clawed finger shot up my aching, leaking, still-creampied pussy. I gave a pathetic scream, and April gave another muffled shout. He knew about that??

"The normal rules of resurrection don't apply to her brand of allogene. Rather than returning from the grave, she simply won't pass into it--though she will be quite helpless until we heal her."

Kajagar twisted and bobbed her snake-head around me on her freakish neck, inspecting me from every angle possible. Her lurid gaze was every bit as piercing and arresting as her Chief's--and her pupils were similarly slitted. Against the emerald of the eyes around them, they reminded me uncomfortably of April. Did NPCs get Milestones the same way as players did? April's eyes had been recognised as the sign of a killer twice now…

"How lovely," she hissed.

"And now, the brands." The Chief turned to the very end of the table, and nodded to the figure that lurked there--a hulking brute of a woman with rubbery grey skin and a broad triangle of a snout. A shark-kin? The woman hastened to the edge of the platform, where for the first time I noticed a chipped clay pot with three long, metal shafts jutting out of it. The shafts were the same silver as the strange wand that Kajagar had used to anchor April's soul, and the towering cage that it had been anchored to… and an orange glow emanated ominously from within the pot, staining the silver around it with red heat.

The shark-woman took two of these brands, and hurried up to the Chief's side. He selected one--the other one went to Kajagar--and I blanched when he brought the red hot end of his brand up close to my face. Proximity to it alone brought tears to my eyes, the dry and crackling heat stinging my skin. It was flat and round and otherwise featureless; if he touched it to my flesh, the only thing that it would leave behind would be a burn in the shape of a red-hot circle.

Except that, right in front of my terrified eyes, it began to flicker. Like tongues of flame leaping from the torches around us, the hot metal leapt between shapes--a paw print, a sword, a fish-hook, a tower, a ribbon… though it went against every instinct in my body to look away from such a near and salient threat, I stole a glance out of the corner of my eye at Kajagar and April, and found that her brand was doing much the same.

"Ordinarily, a brand such as this would leave no mark on the skin of an allogene." The Chief's voice had taken on the tone of a university lecturer, as his voice rose to address the tent at large. "They fall outside the purview of this world's fundamental laws. That is why we call them outsiders. Alaj. Allogenes."

He unfurled his way to his feet, removing his fingers from my mouth, and from the way he shifted us, it seemed that the brand and my body had the same, negligible weight to him. I ended up held by my throat again, paralysed body dangling uselessly over the Chief's untouched meal. "They do not bleed when they are scratched, their bones do not break when they are bludgeoned, and they do not have the decency to die when they are killed."

"To the credulous imbeciles that fill this great nation, this unnatural existence is evidence of the heavens' favour. Like the unchanging stars in the sky, or the eternal dance of the moons, or the unshaking glare of the sun upon our skins." His volume slowly climbed as he spoke, and the crowd of beastkin below us responded in kind, hanging on to every word. It wasn't just fear that he ruled them with. The rainbow of beastly eyes that littered the tent shone with naked adoration. "But not even the unmoving heavens are above reproach! They think they can banish us from their cities! Raze our homeland to ash and dust! Hurl our rightful past from the annals of history!"

Energy flowed through the crowd like a physical force; they weren't cheering yet, but they were precipitously close. It would just take his word. Not one bandit remained seated--and it struck me that 'bandit' might not even be the right word. Under their Chief's sermon, they seemed almost a religious congregation. Or an army.

"They want us weak! They want us frightened! They want us to believe, as their pathetic followers believe! To see their outsiders, their precious agents upon this earth, as immortal and unchanging as the realms beyond!"

He raised the brand up high, brandishing it like a weapon for all his men and women to see. "But that ends today, my tribe. This device is nothing less than a gift from the beyond: a weapon created by allogene, to use against allogene. With one touch--" He brought the end of the brand up close to my cheek, and the heat poured over me-- "they will be marked indelibly, altering them in body and in mind. In just five nights, their branding will be complete, and they will be ours to command as we wish."

He brought the brand back down. I breathed a silent sigh of relief. The air hung heavy with the bated breath of a hundred beastkin, who had caught the scent of the last few words of his speech as he mulled them over, one last time.

"Our people have long held that even the gods can be made to bleed," he said, finally. "On this day, we shall prove it."

He plunged the searing, flickering tip of the brand into my stomach, and a deafening roar of approval rushed over us.

Chapter 28: Cat vs. Dog (Pt. 2)

Chapter Text

"As you seem so inordinately fond of squealing," the Chief murmured grimly into my ear, "perhaps we shall start by having you mind your manners better when you do."

The screaming pain in my gut all but drowned him out--and as the burning bored through me, searing me into a fiery wound and reducing my world to the tattered, charred scraps of flesh that hung from it, tongues of flame leapt out at my mind itself, rattling its bars and sizzling away any semblance of thought until each individual word faded into a meaningless low growl. It was pain that dwarfed the pain of a hundred cocks being thrust down my unwilling cunt.

The tooltips blurred and swam in the tears streaming from my eyes--not that I had a single scrap of thinking power to spare on anything that wasn't the impossible heat eating its way through me. Not the musclebound paw wrapped around my throat, holding me a vertiginous distance over the Chief's table… not even the heart-wrenching wail from in front of me as the snake-woman Kajagar drove her own brand into April's stomach…!

And then, one scorching infinity later, the Chief pulled the brand away. A delirious pang of gratitude welled up over me--even though he was the one who'd put the agonising thing to my skin in the first place--and, rather than trying to absorb the contents of the tooltips in front of my face, I opened my mouth and said, "Th-thank you, Daddy!"

The Chief made a bemused noise. He set the brand aside and turned me so that I was facing him. "What did you just call me?"

My face burned. "N-nothing--Daddy."

A wave of laughter rang out across the tent, and my blush grew deeper. I hadn't--the word had just slipped out!

"Your new manners do not disappoint," the Chief rumbled. Another random wave of gratitude came over me--but this time, I managed to squeeze my lips tight, and kept another humiliating adulation from slipping past them. Was this what he meant by 'new manners?' Was I going to be dealing with this all night?

He snatched up a handful of the front of my dress. "Now… let's see how well your new branding suits you."

Part of me expected, or maybe hoped, that he'd be stymied by my enchanted Lustregown, the same way as the last bandit who'd tried--

RRRRRIP.

--but under his claws, the midnight fabric of the dress tore like wet paper, exposing my body. Only a few frills of pink lingerie stood between me and total nudity; the new mark that had been left behind on my belly was thrust front and centre, plain for every bandit in the tent to see. I was the only one who couldn't see it, the paralysis of my Resilience rendering me incapable of even looking down--but Kajagar kindly twisted April around, so that we could see each other's.

The black petals of a rose glared angrily up at me from April's navel, the sole blemish that marred her otherwise perfect skin. I could all too easily imagine the same design scorched on my own stomach. In another universe, there might have been something romantic about sharing a permanent mark like this with her… but at that moment, still reeling from the branding itself and getting borderline strangled by the Chief, the only thing I could summon up was terrified revulsion.

"Alright, men!" The Chief raised me high into the air; high enough that, if I could only move, I could have kicked him in the face. "It seems that this one is about ready to serve a wider audience!"

April's eyes widened over her gag. The world lurched away from underneath me as his meaty arm took me over his head, and for a moment the brown roof of the tent was the only thing I could see--and then I was hurtling through the air, spinning madly, a combination of wind and bandits roaring in my ears.

I landed heavily in a tangle of scales and fur and feathers, and tough leather hides, and groping hands and fingers. The dainty fabric of my bralette and panties was torn aside in an instant--and a clawed finger, covered in thick, prickly fur, dove into the cleft of my ass. More soon followed it, some just like it, and others smooth or scaled or silky. Other hands fell upon the rest of my body, grabbing at my slender arms, and at my petite breasts, and at my ridiculously long mane of black hair. The urge to kick and punch and push out in all directions came over me--but I was still at zero hit points. Still helpless.

Excitement flowed through the crowd in a heated tide, coalescing in those that had their hands on me, and my treacherous body couldn't help but match it, trickling what might have been gallons of my juices free of my aching pussy. The bandits spoke over and through each other, their voices joining together in a confused morass that I had no hope of piecing together--but just as I was beginning to entertain the faint hope that they'd spend the whole night arguing over who was going to get to fuck me first, a pair of firm hands wrapped themselves around my delicate waist. The fur on them was short, and the fingers stubby; they were more than up to the task of yanking me free of all the disjointed fingers looking for my pussy, buried deep between my ass-cheeks.

Any celebration I might have had was short-lived. With an overwhelmingly sexual clap, my ass met his unclothed groin, and the steaming hot pole that pressed down along the length of my crack immediately made me wish the fingers were still there instead. Slipping and sliding in the juices of my body, and helped along by the hands still clamped on my waist, it swiftly found purchase inside my pussy, accompanied by a spike of unwanted pleasure.

"Ah~!! SIR!!"

"Haha!" The triumphant cry matched the jerky movements of the cock inside me--and with it, the sea of hands tugging and prying at me lightened a touch. That wasn't to say that they were all gone, and as one enterprising beastkin clambered up on a table, his stubby, spiked cock swinging jauntily in the air, and grabbed two fat bunches of my hair, it was obvious why.

"MfhhHHH!"

I-I had a second hole, after all. He rammed my mouth down on his shaft, even as his compatriot in my asshole began to grind himself up into me, groaning and shivering in delight--and the other beastkin, still grappling me between them, made for the next-best parts of me.

A pair of wet cocks were slapped into my hands--and their owners helpfully curled my fingers around them. Though I couldn't use my muscles of my own accord in this state, they were apparently more than happy to tighten up for my rapists, and swiftly the bandits with their members in my unwilling, tight grip were jerking their hips back and forth too, happy enough with their lot.

"Fuck she's tight," hissed the bandit in my pussy. He'd shifted his clawed, furry paws to my thighs--and they jiggled embarrassingly as he used them to bounce me on his lap. Lewd gagging and coughing noises bubbled up from my throat as the cock of the bandit in my mouth found my gag reflex. He let out a whoop of ecstasy. I made a pained whimper of my own--despite everything, despite the shame, and the humiliation, and the horrible reeking musk that swallowed me up and threatened to choke me completely, even without the mushroomy cock I was being forced to gag on at that moment… my sissy spot ached for contact, for the cock barrelling up and down in the shallower reaches of my cunt to hurry up and smack it already.

"MFHHH!!" Smack it did--and I could feel my eyes crossing in my skull, the burbling tension that had been building up in me since April had interrupted my session with the tiger-kin Chief spiking in a mindless flood of heat and joy… only to slam against an invisible wall. My clitty shuddered, and my sweet spot throbbed, but there was no release.

"She liked that!" howled a boorish voice, and a chorus of jeers followed it. My face burned--but only until the furry man I rode slammed me down on his length again, so that my balls kissed up against what I immediately realised were his much larger pair. Another orgasm welled up in me, only to stop maddeningly short of actually escaping me once again.

The new sensation stole away my attention. Amid the dim haze of all their scents; and the vile, sweaty, mouldy taste of the cock grinding up against the top of my throat; and even the sensation of the fat cock mashing every part of my pussy it could reach; the only thing I could see was the crackling, electric mass of unreachable pleasure burning away in my clitty. It grew greater with each second, each thrust, each ridge and spine that dug into my sopping wet cunt.

What was happening? Was this the Sigil's effect on me?? Th-their twisted way of training me, turning the ecstatic release of orgasm into a skipped heartbeat, a held breath, a balled-up fist I just couldn't let go, no matter how hard I tried--

"Fuck!! Can't hold--fuuuucK!!" The beastkin came, explosively and loudly, and as his warmth flooded my guts the desperate, jealous urge to cum alongside him flooded my brain. It was filthy, it was sticky, it was gross, he was using me like a cheap condom--but I wanted to cum. I had to cum.

"MfhHHHmfhhMffhH!" I squealed helplessly into the cock in my mouth, utterly unintelligible but lost in the roiling, locked-up tension that was still holding back my orgasm. The body beneath me shifted, giving way to a new, scaly lap and a penis covered in thorny protrusions--but my desire to cum was still growing, and no enormous, throbbing rape-pole could take my mind away from it.

"MFhH~!! MfhfhMHFFFmFHFHH!!"

The sweaty mass of beastkin around me jeered in response to my muffled cries for release, not a thought spared for what I could be trying to say. Not even I knew what it was exactly--the words please and cum and pleasepleasepleaseplease and cumcumcumcumcum and occasionally a polite sir flared across my mind over and over again, but there was no rhyme or order to them.

The beastkin with the thorny cock rammed himself in me without an inch of mercy or patience; his length dove through the sticky mess the first beastkin had left inside me, and all too soon my weak spot was being mashed again. The thorns, meatier and far longer than the spines of the feline cocks I'd experience so far, sunk far deeper into it than they had any right to--and each one made my vision flash with colourless spots, not that I had any brains left to concentrate on what I was seeing anyway.

"What'sa matter, cutie?" rumbled the scaley chest my back was up against. His voice rolled out under the shouts and mockery of the crowd around us in a blanket of almost soothing fog--not that what he had to say was soothing at all. "Chief wrung that wee cage dry?"

A great grey claw of a hand came down on my clitty… and gave it an almost gentle squeeze, adding to the still-mounting pressure inside me. I squealed into the bandit still fucking my throat, and the deep voice chuckled.

Whatever he said next was drowned out entirely by a triumphant roar from above me--and a potent, hot slurry of goo surging its way down my aching throat. My staggering mind registered disgust, and shame, and a tightness in my chest as I began to gag… but it felt slower, paler, less urgent than the screaming need of my clitty.

There was a round of grunting, and then the cock in my throat was ejected, spurting out one last rope that fell over my face. I lay under it, dazed and coughing, as the grunts over me rose into shouts and the thudding impacts of fists and legs against flesh--until a frantic energy overtook me.

Talk! I could speak!!

A frantic series of sludgy, useless coughs escaped my mouth, and went ignored by the beastkin fighting over the right to fill my mouth next. "--cum--sir!"

"You heard the slut!" The fight died down under a voice that rose up over the others, and another pair of hands roughly seized me by the roots of my hair. "She needs more cum!"

Once again, my gags and muffled cries filled the air, my mouth unable to snap shut before another thick, burly beastkin cock thrust itself on top of my tongue.

Two more tooltips appeared as the stout cock nestled itself against the back of my throat, but through the frustrated tears I hadn't even realised I'd been crying, they were just blurry white walls with green heads. Before long, they vanished, leaving me alone with the bandits.

Time swam on in a senseless ocean of heat and cum and cocks. Pods of eager beastkin snatched me up, used me to completion, and then passed me on to the next group--and not once did the spasming knot of denial inside me meet sweet release.

Another blurry tooltip had appeared and then gone, not that I'd been able to read it. Even the dirty jabs and jokes of the bandits were incoherent to my frazzled brain. Again and again it shot back to the thought of cumming, looping in the tiniest, tightest circles a thought could trace.

"Anne!!"

And so, when I was finally slapped face-down on one last table, a pair of unfamiliar but strong hands brazenly manhandling my sticky ass-cheeks from somewhere behind me, it took me a few seconds to process April's beautiful voice.

"Get--away--from her--miss!!" It was unmistakably hoarse, and strained, and stuttered in a steady but forceful staccato--and when I finally blinked away enough of my tears to see, it was obvious why.

April was bent over the other side of the table, a whole host of food-laden plates and bowls swept to either side to accommodate her chained-up upper body. Neither the mix of tears and cum that streaked her face nor the fearsome scowl she wore did a single thing to diminish her beauty, but her dignity was another story entirely. Out of her chains and over the rough wood beneath her spilled her generous breasts, a sight that I couldn't help but let my clitty stir for…. and behind her towered the tiger-kin Chief. In one mighty claw he held a great fistful of April's silky black hair, right between the lifeless trough of her white ears as they lay flat against her skull, flatter than I'd ever seen them before. In the other he squeezed the base of April's tail, almost totally obscuring the shuddering heft of her ass… and the way his thick, meaty rod was buried almost to its hilt inside her. Back and forth he bucked into her, jiggling her whole body with each thrust forward, and each pull back.

Even though the thought of it was enough to make my skin crawl, the sight of April impaled on the end of another m--a man's cock was impossibly erotic. The knot of pent-up, desperate arousal in my groin grew even tighter.

"A… April…!" I managed a weak moan in her direction, only for the muscles in my throat to seize up and a coughing fit to overtake me. Each hacking lungful came with a bitter load of half-swallowed cum, spat back out onto my tongue.

"Ah--the return of the prodigal slut." The Chief glanced dismissively down at me, not even pausing in his thrusting, forceful conquest of April's unwilling rear. I fought not to be insulted, o-or jealous. "How did you enjoy meeting my men?" The compulsion to answer him had my mouth open before I could stop myself, but April cut in before I could say anything else.

"You--monsters--miss!!"

"Monsters?" The lilting voice of Kajagar drifted over my shoulders, as a sudden weight fell on my cumstained back. "Ye wound me."

One hand left my ass, and returned a moment later, guiding something hot and slender and pointed into the tender, gaping, overwhelmingly sticky entrance to my pussy.

"Hnghh~!! It's sooo big!!"

"Ahh." Kajagar's pleased sigh mingled with mine as she eased herself forward. Her cock might have been slender at its tip, but it was monstrously long and surprisingly springy and widened towards its base, so that as it folded in on itself inside me, I was well and truly filled. To top it off, something just as hot and slender slapped itself wetly between my ass-cheeks. Th… th-there was no way she had two of those things, right? "Monsters," she scoffed. "She's enjoying herself."

"No--she--isn't!! miss!!"

"Oh?" Kajagar leaned even further forward, pressing down on me so that her forked tongue flicked at my ears as she spoke. "Ye'd like to cum, wouldn't ye?"

It wasn't just my heart that lit up at the sound of that. I felt the excitement scrawl itself on my face, right in front of April--and I could see her anger falter, replaced by something that was almost hurt.

"U-umm… hnghh… miss…" Like the last few times I'd managed to get any words out, the last one slipped free without any prompting. The magic of the rose branding, forcing me--forcing us--to be more… civil wasn't even the right word… submissive towards our captors?

"Ye don't have to say a word, girl," Kajagun said gently. "Show me. Cure."

At the top of my vision, my healthbar reappeared, a fat block of green almost completely filling it. My muscles unfroze… but suddenly I was frozen for another reason entirely. April and I stared into each others' eyes. She still had that hurt look, and somehow that was more painful than the hammering thrusts of the Chief that still rocked her body, or the squishy, throbbing thing buried in my own guts, or the burning desire to squirt every last fraction of seed still in my balls right then and there.

My thoughts flicked to my spells. Kajagar's hands were still on her own cock and my ass… leaving my hands free. I could cast something, thanks to Starkissed. Antidote, t-to fix up April…? But she was still in chains… and if I used Star Passage, wh-where would I even Catwalk to? The place was crawling with bandits, and they knew they could 'kill' me without losing me a-as a plaything.

And… I… I-I was so close. Kajagar w-was buried to the hilt inside me, her muscular, springy thing folded up so that it squashed my little bitch-button several times at once. Every tiny, panting breath I took seemed to tighten me around her, wrapping her ludicrous member in a desperate, sloppy embrace. All I had to do was… sh-show her I wanted it.

Her… and the Chief… and… and April.

"S… sorry," I whispered.

And weakly, pathetically, I jerked my own hips the slightest bit forward… peeling Kajagar the tiniest inch back out of my slavering, squealing, slobbery little hole… and then jerked myself back.

"That's a good girl." Kajagar's amusement gleamed sinisterly in her voice. "Go ahead an' let it all out."

"HohhHH~!!" There was no chance to hold back my orgasmic scream of delight; it slammed its way past my brain in an instant. The pressure that had built up between my thighs, and behind my eyeballs, and in the depths of my chest rocketed free, converted into euphoria like nothing I'd ever experienced before. Cumming was fantastic. Squirting from anal like a sissy was better--loathe as I was to admit it--but this was ecstasy. "FUCK!! HoohHHH!! HOhhmygoHHDD~~"

This was what it had to be like for the Chief, or Layla, or one of those wolves, I realised deliriously, as my pussy convulsed around Kajagar and my clitty wrung my aching, trembling balls dry. Pumping out string after string of steamy, sticky, thick, nasty cum in a single round--it wasn't just a single explosion of pleasure, but an orgasmic firework show that went on and on and on, and refused to flag or falter until its panting, brainless conclusion.

"What an obedient wee slut," hissed Kajagar, as I sunk into the table, mind and body shattered. She gave me a stroke, running her clawed, spindly fingers through my enormous mane of black, cum-streaked hair. Once again, a wave of gratitude crashed over me.

"Th-thank you… Mummy." The words slipped out as easily as breathing. I clapped my hands over my mouth, every inch of skin flaring scarlet--but they couldn't be unsaid. April stared down at me, her mouth agape in a perfect, heartbreaking circle.

Humiliation coursed through me, and brought with it an onslaught of clarity I hadn't had since the Chief had found me in the slave tent. Thank you?! Mummy?! If pushing back into a snake-lady's giant, freaky monster cock, and then having the loudest and longest orgasm of my life over it hadn't been enough, I'd absolutely ruined myself by saying that. And… to have done it all right in front of April… not even five inches from her face… tears, hot and salty, streamed freely down my cheeks.

…at least I-I didn't have to agonise over that anymore.

"Hngahh!" In all my shame and guilt, I'd almost forgotten the enormous thing wedged up my pussy, but that changed the moment Kajagar drew back behind me, tugging her scrunched-up length free of my tight confines. Without a tower of pent-up orgams clouding over my mind, there was no ignoring the way each twist and kink in her cock jabbed at my roiling hole, stretching me in a hundred different ways just in the course of leaving my little pussy.

She pushed her hips back forwards.

"Fhuuuck!! Mummy!!" I clapped my hands over my mouth again--only to let out another involuntary moan as her pointed tip scraped against my bitch button. My clitty eagerly made as if to spurt again… only to stop short. My eyes went wide. "No… p-please… Mu--Mistress…"

"Just--stop--miss!" April's eyes were teary, and she'd taken on an almost plaintive tone. "Stop--hurting--her…!!"

"Ha!" roared the Chief, still looming over us both. "Even chained up and raped, are you truly more worried about what happens to her?"

Using his fistful of her hair as reins, he yanked her back, eliciting a shrill scream from her and forcing her almost upright, so that her breasts quaked and wobbled with the suddenness of her movement. Just peeking out over the top of the table, at the perfect height to meet my streaming eyes, was April's lightly furred pussy. The olive skin that ringed it was streaked with clear juices and globs of thick, off-white beastkin cum… and lancing it from below, prying her gorgeous, pink, dewy lips farther apart than should have been possible, was the lurid pink base of the Chief's enormous cock.

"Shut--up--sir!"

"That's not very polite," the Chief said, though the way he shifted his grip on her body to paw at her exposed breasts, supporting her full weight with the crooks of his elbows and his cock alone, sooner gave off the impression of supreme contentment than any kind of disappointment in her.

"Stop… touching me, sirrr!!"

"Ahh!" I interrupted her with a high-pitched yelp, as Kajagar chose that moment to slam her hips even further forward, burying her full, twisted-up length inside me once more.

"Anne! Rghh!!"

"Look at you little whores," sneered the Chief. "Forget adventuring--you make a far superior team in this state. Wouldn't you prefer to live like this?"

He jerked his hips in emphasis, jabbing April's pussy from within--she let out a miserable moan, one that Kajagar soon made me match with another thrust of her own.

"No--! Never--sir--!!"

"Hm." The Chief peered down over her shoulder. His amber eyes found mine, and I shrank back, the sensations and scents and images of how he'd used me flashing across the forefront of my mind. "Perhaps we can change your mind. Kajagar?"

His eyes shifted up, to where I imagined Kajagar's line of sight would be, and even without turning my head I knew that a look had passed between them.

"I've got just the thing."

A spidery hand clamped itself to the back of my head and thrust my face straight into the tabletop. April cried out in alarm--and then cried out again as a sizzling hot pinprick of something strangely familiar joined the fat mass of cock already gaping my pussy-hole. I fought to turn my head, o-or get my hand to my lips, but spindly though she was, Kajagar's strength was just as impossible to fight as her Chief's. At least, for me.

"Thank yer man fer using you," hissed Kajagar. "Or…"

The hot pinprick squeezed its way past my straining sphincter… and my stomach fell straight through the soles of my feet as I realised where I'd recognised the sensation from. It was like she was forcing her monstrosity of a cock inside me all over again. She really did have a second one… and she wasn't going to take the first one out to use it on me.

"N-no, Mistress!!" I squealed into the table. I wriggled frantically beneath her, but with her first cock already skewering me in place, all I managed was massaging her twin members with my quivering pussy. "Y-you're too b-biggg, Mistress!!"

"S-stop, miss!" A worried tremor had entered April's voice. "Y-you can't--"

"She'll be fine," Kajagar reassured her sweetly. "But if ye don't wanna risk it…"

She fed more of her second cock inside me, stretching me even wider. I squirmed and whimpered, but it wasn't just the physical discomfort--each inch of her second cock shoved more and more of her first cock aside, pressing it deep into my sweet spot and driving up my mounting, stifled arousal. "If ye don't wanna watch me turn her into a mewling, gasping kitten… gape her 'til she's naught but a mindless bed toy--"

"Fine!"

"N-no!! April, y-you don't have to--"

"Thank you, sir." Forced calm reined in her voice as she spoke over my protests, but it wasn't exactly steady. Anger and sorrow made even those three short syllables tremble, and as the Chief bucked his hips into her afterwards, there was something admonishing about his pace.

"You're not particularly convincing," he mused.

Kajagar hissed in agreement.

"What are you thanking me for, girl?"

Face-down in a puddle of my own hot tears--and no small amount of the cum that had been spurted over me on my path back to this table--there was nothing I could do but listen and sob as the two ruling bandits bullied and cajoled every last expression of gratitude they could imagine from April's perfect lips.

"Thank you for raping me, sir."

"Too angry."

"Thank you for… raping me, sir."

"An' yer little girlfriend?"

"P-please--sir--"

"Do it."

"Thank you for… raping Anne, too, sir."

"Don't ferget me."

"And… th-thank you, too, miss."

I hadn't been fast enough to escape the Chief. Hadn't been strong enough, or smart enough, to stay up and support April in our fight against him. Despite my misgivings, I hadn't talked her out of this whole quest in the first place… and now April was getting… sh-she was getting raped by a towering bastard of a tiger-kin right in front of me!!

"AHhHH~!!"

"What do we say, slut?"

"...th-thank you for… cumming inside me--s-sir."

My fault. Every salty drop of that tiger-man's cum that seethed inside her, and stained the outside of her pussy, and soaked her beautiful face… I'd been the weak link. The… the… the pathetic sissy who'd failed her.

"It's been some time since we had such a perfect little hero to breed."

"Aye. She'll be fun to break in."

"Th-thank you, miss."

And now they were using me to humiliate her even further. Threatening me as a way to force her to play nice for them--because, loving and caring and supremely heroic woman that she was, she couldn't stand to see me suffering if there was a single way she could stop it.

"Now, would ye like to clean yer master off?"

There was a pregnant pause.

"Y-yes, miss. Th… thank you, sir."

So why

why why why why why why WHY

WHY did every last defeated word

threatened out of her mouth

have to make the arousal brewing behind my clitty

burn that much brighter??

Chapter 29: Live Like a Bandit

Chapter Text

The rest of the night wore on in a hazy, tearstained blur. April and I were picked up and passed around and used, over and over again, by Kajagar and the Chief and all their beastly lackeys, until--at some interminable point--I mercifully slipped into unconsciousness.

When I awoke, I found myself in the bare interior of the slave tent, back in one of its cages. Its floor wasn't wide enough for me to lie down on; whoever had brought me here had sat me down with my knees up against my chest, and left me to sleep off the horrors of the night like that. I was still completely naked, not even the scraps of my Lustregown hanging from my feeble frame. Besides my chastity cage, and the tight grip of a collar around my throat, the only thing that covered my skin was the grotty, filthy crust of dried-up cum and spit that the bandits had left on me.

I took an unsteady breath, and instantly regretted it. The pungent stench of my coat of filth didn't just make my eyes water--bile surged halfway up my throat, and only a desperate effort to keep it down kept me from retching all over myself.

"A-April?" I croaked weakly.

"Saldar almighty," grunted a deep voice from right next to me.

I yelped and hurled myself against the back of my cage. To my right, in a cage of his own and grumbling to himself as he raised a head like a lichenous, craggy boulder, was the squat toad beastkin who'd led us to this camp. Sau.

"Can y'keep it down?"

"Wh-what are you doing here?" I asked stupidly.

"Did gettin' bred like a two-bit whore break yer damn brain, woman?" Sau groaned. "It's me bloody punishment. Fer letting you and yer damn wolf in 'ere."

I cast my mind back to… last night. The… the part before I was branded, and hurled into the crowd of slavering beastkin below. "R… r-right."

"Jest shut yer damn trap."

He lowered his head again, leaving me to take stock of the rest of the tent. All the other cages were still empty, but there were a few dirty white splotches on some of their floors that I felt reasonably sure hadn't been there the last time I'd been imprisoned in the tent.

No sign of April.

I looked down at my hand, and then up at my HUD. Thanks to the… events of last night, I'd swallowed enough cum that Cum Guzzler had refilled my mana bar several times over… and even after some of the more… enthusiastic abuse the bandits had put me through, I still had just over half of my health bar left. I could Star Passage and try to escape again.

But…

I glanced at Sau. He was still hunkered down on the floor of his cage, unaware that I could teleport on a whim… but the moment I cast my spell and left, he'd be able to sound the alarm. And… even if I did manage to escape despite that… where was April?

Before I could work up the nerve to speak to Sau again, or even work out a subtle way of tricking the information out of him, he broke the silence between us, unprompted.

"I had y'both figured out, y'know." His tone was sullen. "Figured you were 'ere t'spring some slave or another."

I stared at him. "R-really? How?"

He snorted. "You really that stupid? That wolf of yers ain't much of an actor. 'er accent weren't the worst, e'en if she did break it a coupla times, but she did a piss poor job of treatin' you like 'er slave."

It was silly, but my heart warmed at that comment. E-even if our plan had hinged on her convincing everyone that she'd genuinely enslaved me… there was something nice about knowing that she just couldn't treat me that way.

"But… then… why didn't you attack us?"

Sau rolled his slitted eyes. "Go knives out on two unknown bloody alaj, wiv naught but Rastley to back me up. Right."

"O-oh. S-so you wanted… the whole tribe to help?"

"Mm. Well. Kaj an' 'er lot woulda been enough, I reckon. E'en after all the wines." He groaned. "But that bloody Cata… no, I s'pose that ain't her real name. What was it you said?"

I bit my lip. Telling a stranger, even a virtual one, April's first name suddenly felt like a breach of confidentiality…but I'd blurted it out enough by this point.

"Her name's April," I said quietly.

"April." He sounded it out. "One o' them human names, ain't it?"

"Well, she is human."

Sau raised an eyebrow like the chipped mouth of an ancient urn, and I immediately wished I'd stayed silent. "Human? 'Er?"

"So am I," I said, almost defensively. "We all are."

"Well," rasped a painfully familiar voice. "Ain't that the stunnin' revelation."

Sau and I turned to find the slender figure of Kajagar standing in the entrance to the slave tent. Silhouetted by the firelight fanning out behind her, her elongated limbs gave her the impression of a shadow that had peeled itself free of the ground--an impression that only deepened as she stalked her way over to us.

"'ere." In her hands, she held a wooden tankard and a plate; the plate was laden with some kind of mushy grey food, faint wisps of steam rising up off it. Though it looked singularly unappetizing, its smell was mouthwateringly good. She thrust it towards Sau, and he leapt to his feet and snatched it through a horizontal slat in his cage's door seemingly designed for this exact purpose. "And fer the lady…"

She held the tankard out for me. Loathe though I was to accept it, I had a feeling I'd regret refusing it even more… so I reached out nervously.

"Th-thank you, mistress," I said. To my complete lack of surprise, the tankard was full of a filthy, off-white sludge that reeked of beastkin musk. Strange, faint pink swirls dotted its surface.

"Drink it quick," Kajagar leered, holding my gaze with her emerald eyes. "You wouldn't want it t'get cold now, wouldya?"

"Cheers, Kaj," grunted Sau. He'd already polished off his grey mush, and was now picking at his teeth… and watching me. Before his enormous, flabby jowls, I felt like a submarine in the sights of a whale a hundred times its size.

Holding in a whimper, I tipped the tankard to my lips. A potent whiff of the scent rolled over my face, clogging up my nostrils and momentarily making my brain stutter. Still battered and bruised in its cage, my clitty stirred in response. Yep. Definitely beastkin cum.

"Hurry up," Kajagar said sweetly. Even though her snakelike features were still hard to read, it was pretty clear that there wasn't a hint of urgency on her face.

I tipped my head back. Slowly, agonisingly, the seed of who knew how many beastkin trickled past my lips, and over my tongue, and into my throat. It was still warm, like Kajagar had suggested--not that that kept me from having to gag and retch, e-especially as my throat found thick, congealed lumps of their cum that I had to fight to swallow.

"Ye'd best get used to this," Kajagar said, apparently unbothered by my coughing and whimpering as I slogged through the tankard in front of her. "That's the mornin' blend we treat all our girls to. No doubt yer wolf is enjoyin' a drink of her own right about now."

I lowered the tankard--not that I needed much of an excuse to. "A-April? Where is she? Mistress?"

"Finish up," Kajagar said, "and maybe I'll tell ye."

"What a bloody slut," Sau said, shaking his head in disbelief, as I tipped the tankard back as far as possible and gobbled down the rest of the tankard as quickly as my mouth would allow--chewing the semi-solid lumps, slurping down the runniest parts straight into my throat, and choking down any attempts to cough the putrid mixture out of my body.

"She's just concerned fer her little friend," Kajagar chastised him, though her lip curled upwards as she said it.

"Th--ahh--th-there, mistress!" I said. The rush of cum straight into my belly had left me woozy, and bloated, and needing to lean against the bars of my cage just to stay standing… but I'd managed it. Not even the sudden warmth that had filled me, turning my clitty's twitching into outright quivering, could distract me from the answers I wanted. "Wh… where is she? Mistress."

"What a good girl," Kajagar said. She held out a hand for my tankard, and she examined it. "Hm. A good bit left… but ye'll be lickin' these things clean before long."

"P-please, mistress…"

Kajagar lowered the mug. "Patience, ye sweet thing. Yer girl's with the Chief."

A knot of tension appeared in my throat, even as the knot of arousal behind my clitty tightened. "Th-the Chief, mistress?!"

"Bein' as she wanted to join our tribe so badly," she went on, ignoring my interruption, "he made her Hunt Bitch fer the week. Set off wiv 'er this mornin'. Ye can prob'ly guess what that… entails."

"Wh-what, mistress?!"

"It's a real honour, y'know." Kajagar inspected her own spindly fingers, and the brittle black claws that tipped them. "Means he's already thinkin' of keepin' her as one of ours."

Several images of April--memories of last night, and fantasies of the future--flashed across my head. April on the end of the Chief's enormous, spiny cock… April pinned down under a horde of beastkin… A-April naked and--and smiling in a collar, her belly round with purebred beastkin babies…!! "N-nO, mistress!!"

"Y'really think so?" Sau said. His mood seemed strangely subdued.

"Ah, the moon's're still young," Kajagar said with a shrug. "Any case, I've got business with this one." She withdrew a key from a pouch at the waistline of her black dress, and opened the door to my cage with it. "I'll send some'un over fer yer lunch later, Sau."

"Right. Thanks, Kaj."

"Come along, girly." Without even twisting her head on her serpentine neck to see if I was following, Kajagar strode back out of the tent.

"You'd best follow her," grunted Sau. "Some ways, pissin' off Kaj is worse'n pissin' off the Chief."

Kajagar led me on a winding path between the tents of the camp. Compared to the first time I'd passed through it, the place was positively deserted--and between the scant few bandits that remained, most sat heavily on stools and squinted their eyes as if even the dim firelight was too bright for them. Hangovers from the raucous night before, I surmised. I could hardly tell what time it really was, being stuck in a cave, but assuming that most of the absent bandits were out on the field, I had the impression that it was… late morning. Maybe noon.

Before too long, we stopped in front of a tent that would have been nondescript--except for the clapping sounds and moaning of several girls that wafted out from its slightly ajar entrance. Kajagar tugged it wide open and, leering at me as if daring me to turn tail and flee, gestured for me to go in first.

"Ahh~!!"

"You little fuckin--"

"HahhhH~!!"

A row of squealing beastkin girls, adorned in spiked collars and precious little else, greeted me as I gingerly tiptoed in. Each one lay on her own simple wooden bench, with a bandit partner stationed between her legs, though no two were held in quite the same position. I couldn't help but let the heat rise to my face as, without even turning to glance at me and Kajagar, the bandits continued in their frenzied thrusting, driving out still more squeals and cries out of their hapless slaves. I-I'd passed by them all the night before, in the main tent, having just as much sex… but here, I was closer… and there weren't as many sweaty, gross beastkin packed between us… a-and there was something almost more intimate a-about watching them have sex with one man, a-as opposed to a whole group at once.

In one corner, gazing over at the breeding beastkin almost jealously, knelt two more slaves; these two did glance our way as Kajagar strode past them, on a beeline towards a loose clump of empty benches, with me trailing along reluctantly behind her. One was the cow-girl I'd seen April bringing to the slave tent the day before--she bit her lip and averted her gaze when she noticed me staring at her, and when my eyes fell to her crotch (and the telltale metal cage affixed to her penis), she put a bashful hand over that, too. Up close, there was almost something familiar about her… but then, the same was true of all the slaves in this tent.

Kajagar sat herself down with a raspy sigh. The bench she'd selected was all the way in the back of the tent, as far away from any frantic pair of breeding beastkin as we could get, as well as the bashful cow-sissy and the other unoccupied slave next to her. To my surprise--I'd expected her to gesture imperiously at the ground beneath her feet--she patted the space on the bench by her side. Right by her side.

I took the offered seat, and tried not to inhale too sharply when she curled a serpentine arm around my waist and scooped me close enough to her that our thighs were touching. Her scent was… subtle, compared to the other beastkin like the Chief and April, but… I sneaked another breath. As much heart-pounding terror as she filled me with, there was the strangest hint of floral perfume lurking in her smell. It was… nice.

"Y'ever milked a snake before?" Kajagar breathed. Her tongue flitted distractingly past my eyes as she spoke, and she produced a collection of glass jars, joined together on a rope about as thick of one of her fingers. They clinked together musically as she passed them to me. Nervously, I closed one hand around one of them; my dainty fingers were just barely able to reach all the way around its circumference. Each one was sealed, though not with a cork or a lid--some sort of fabric had been stretched across their openings, and secured in place with lengths of twine.

"N-no, mistress," I said weakly. A-although, for a certain definition of milked…

My pussy twinged, and I couldn't stop myself from worrying at my bottom lip with a single tooth. E-every time I was reminded of what had… happened t-to me in that tent last night…

April, bouncing in the middle of a forest of knotted red cocks

Kajagar placed a firm hand on mine, so that the cool glass of the tiny jar and the cool scales of her own palm sandwiched my burning skin. "'ere. It ain't hard."

She brought my hand up to her face. I swallowed down the urge to resist. There was almost nothing human about her long, prehensile neck, or her stubby, scaley diamond of a snout, or her hissing, forked tongue… but behind those emerald, snakelike eyes, there glittered a dark intelligence. A dark intelligence that, for the time being, didn't seem to want to plunge two throbbing cocks in and out of my slobbering fuckhole until--

Her head snapped in mid-air so that she was facing the bandits and slaves still having all their sloppy, rough sex behind us. "I see. Yer in need of a fuck again, aye?"

My breath caught in my throat. "Y--no, mistress!! I-I'm fine, mistress!!" Belatedly, I realised I'd been panting--so I took a deep breath. Steadied myself. Before too long, the thoughts of bandits driving themselves into me and April had… w-well… had grown faint enough th-that I could focus on other things. "I-I don't need… a-a fuck, mistress."

Kajagar gave me a strangely searching look. "Hmm. Suit yerself. We'll have ye begging fer it sooner 'r later."

With that crass remark, she inclined her head and brought my hand up to her mouth again. It fell wide open--was she one of those snakes that could unhinge their jaws?--revealing, in disturbing detail, the inside of her mouth. Each one of her yellow teeth was needle-thin, curved, and wickedly sharp, and none were so curved and wicked as the enormous fangs that jutted out from the angry pink flesh at the very top. Ignoring my automatic attempt to jerk my hand back from such a nakedly dangerous place, she angled my hand--still clinging to the jar like it was a shield--so that she could thrust a single, monstrous fang through the jar's fabric crown. A low, satisfied hiss filled my ears.

"See?" she murmured, her voice partially muffled by the glass jar halfway in her mouth. She snatched up my other hand and guided it up to the roof of her mouth as well, to a strange, bulbous growth a touch paler than the pink around it. She pressed my hand to it for a few seconds, scrubbing my palm and fingers against the ball of flesh in what could only be described as a bizarrely intimate inner-mouth massage. I shuddered--it quivered and thrilled in response to my touch, and I could swear there was something moving inside it--but when she eventually let go, I took the hint and continued rubbing my palm against that spot.

Soon, we were rewarded with the trickling sound of liquid filling up the glass jar over her fang. It was a horrible, brackish brown, and even if I hadn't just watched it slither out of a snake-woman's poisonous fangs, it would've been obvious that this stuff was not healthy in the slightest. Venom. She was making me milk her venom glands.

The first jar was soon filled up almost to its brim, and Kajagar indicated the next jar. We continued on like this for another few minutes, and soon the gentle rhythm of the task--jar to fang, massage gland, remove jar, repeat--lulled me into an almost peaceful stupor. The only interruption was when her first fang ran dry, and she turned her head so that I could switch to the other one. I could almost--almost--ignore the squealing and clapping of the bandits that was still going.

"Ahh," Kajagar sighed, finally. She peeled my hand aside, and took back the string of tied-together glass jars--now laden quite heavily with her venom. "Lovely. Not 'alf bad fer yer first time, missy."

The urge to thank her again bubbled up in my throat. Thoughts of April, giving in a-and doing the same just to spare me--"Th-thank you, mistress."

Kajagar lowered a scaley brow. "That brand sure worked quick. Yer sweet as silver now."

"D-don't you mean sugar, mistress?" I asked.

Her brow drooped again. This was surprise, not exasperation. "I s'pose sugar's sweet too, if that's what ye'd like. Ah!"

I gave a jolt at the sudden shout, but she was quick to run her hands over my naked side, i-in a way that might have been reassuring if it weren't being done by a towering half-naked snake woman who'd raped me for large portions of the night before--

"Mayhaps that's what we'll call you," she hissed, in a register so low that it sent a thrill running up my spine. "Sugar; th'perfect name for a girl as sweet as ye."

My heart trembled, and a sudden, overriding desire to agree with everything she'd just said managed to tug a single nod out of me. I swivelled it into a shake of my head, but too late--she cackled and gave me a squeeze with the arm still wrapped around my waist that bordered on a hug.

"So we're agreed, then." She twisted her head around to peer at the bandits behind us, and I was taken by how natural the movement looked for her, even as unnatural as it felt from my very much human perspective. How would doing that even work for a beastkin player who'd chosen to be part snake? "Alright, Sugar."

My knees went embarrassingly weak at the use of my new nickname, making me glad that I was sitting down. Was it even a nickname, at this point? Pet name? Slave name? I bit my lip and silently tried to stop thinking about having my name changed for me… again.

"Ye might be immune to the fuck fest goin' on behind us," Kajagar murmured, her voice dropping back to that thrilling, low hiss, "but I ain't. On yer knees, if ye please.'

My eyes shot wide open. In spite of her mild tone, the look that she returned to me brooked no argument… and a few scrambling seconds later, I was on my knees in front of the bench, positioned squarely between her parted calves. Without the Chief there to dwarf her in both height and heft, the way Kajagar's long, bony frame stretched over me had nothing to diminish it. From my place beneath her, her body seemed to climb like emerald smoke, without any of the wispiness and all the choking presence. Her ragged black dress fell seductively to one side… and I inhaled sharply.

"What's the matter, Sugar? Not impressed by what ye see?"

"Y-you don't--wh-where's your--m-mistress!!"

Kajagar cackled to the ceiling again, and beckoned me closer. The pair of fat, pale, long and wriggling cocks that she'd had last night--that she'd buried deep inside my pussy long before I'd even had a chance to see them, that she'd rubbed deep into my crack and teased me with and threatened to stretch me beyond belief with--had vanished. Not even a trace of them remained. In their place, at the very end of the long channel created by her bony thighs… there was a pussy, lined with scales the slightest touch paler and pinker than the ones that covered the rest of her body. Faint pearls of dew beaded it, and in the still-gathering heat of my caged clitty, the sight was just as lewd as the thought of her pouring with arousal.

"I didn't think ye'd look so disappointed," Kajagar teased me. "Ain't there any man left in ye?"

"I-I'm not disappointed! Mistress!" I said hotly. Even in my indignation, the black rose branded on me compelled me to finish my sentences with the deference she was due. "I-I… I'm just surprised, mistress. I-I thought you were… mistress…"

Another wheezing laugh. "Ye meant me old spit-knobs? Ha, no, I don't usually cart those heavy bobs around. This is me au naturel."

Mangled as it was by her accent, I wasn't too far gone to recognise the phrase as French… but a single, black-tipped finger, dipping down between her lips and cleaving them apart to reveal the far pinker flesh between them, was all it took to keep me from interrogating that observation any further. I followed it up to her mouth, where her fluttering tongue darted out and wicked away the single, tantalising drop of her essence that she'd gathered on it. She eyed me, teasing digit still planted on her lips, forked tongue still wheeling around it, and glanced meaningfully down at her sex.

My mouth was dry. She… she wanted me to…

"I c'n always bring back the other ones," she murmured around her finger. With her other hand, she withdrew a strange brown fruit of some kind from one of the pouches at her waist. "If that's what yer wee mouth prefers."

As her words settled into my paralysed mind, the thought of accepting her offer--practically asking her to sprout her monstrous twin members again, for the sole purpose of having me blow them for her--scrawled itself fiendishly over them. I-it wasn't the straight thing to do, b-but… s-so far, between my sexless real life and this game, the only pussy I'd ever eaten had been, well… April's. Wasn't… eating another woman's pussy… k-kind of like cheating on her…?

This close to one of last night's driving figures, it was impossible to stop the memories from welling up in my head. April… r-riding Kajagar, c-cowgirl style, one of the snake-woman's bloated pink things buried in her gaping asshole, and the other visible in the way it stretched out her womb from within… a-and the way I hadn't been able to tear my eyes away from the sight… e-even as I feverishly wished that she'd been riding me. Even as a knotted bandit cock held me tightly on the edge of a mind-numbing orgasm, each thrust shoving me closer to but never quite reaching that white-hot point of--

"Well, Sugar?" Kajagar's voice snapped me back out of my fugue, and I bit my lip. April… w-wasn't quite my girlfriend yet… a-and even if she did find out about this part of our time apart some day… I was pretty sure she'd be even less impressed i-if I'd chosen to give head to two cocks instead of a pussy.

"I-I'll do your pussy, mistress!"

"Exquisite."

As it transpired, Kajagar was far more receptive to my mouth than April had been. Perhaps it was the time she'd spent listening to the other bandits and slaves having sex beforehand, or perhaps I'd already improved after an hour of experience, but my jaws and cheeks hadn't even grown tired by the time she let out a surprisingly sensual moan, lifted her legs into the air, and sprayed me in a syrupy tide of her juices. Clear and thick, it had a distinct sweetness to its scent, though that wasn't reflected in its tart taste.

"Thank ye, Sugar. C'mere."

Answering her summons to get back on the bench next to her, I was surprised once again when Kajagar peeled a dark cloth from what seemed to be thin air and towelled most of herself off me, leaving just a hint of her cloying sweetness. The bandits had been all too happy to leave me buried in their filth last night!

"Wh…" The question died on my lips, too little of it spoken to even trigger my magically-binding politeness. Kajagar tilted her head with a twist of her serpentine neck, what should have been an ordinary use of body language made bizarre by her biology, and I had the sense that she was going to get my question out of me one way or another. "Wh-why are you being so… so… nice, mistress? A-after last night… mistress…"

Nice… wasn't exactly the word for it. She'd… teased me, fed me a breakfast of semen, cajoled me into choosing between giving her either cunnilingus or a blowjob… but that had been a far cry from burying herself in my guts and forcing me to show her how badly I needed to cum, r-right in front of the girl I loved the most in the world. And between the humiliations, there'd been a strange string of tenderness in the ways she'd spoken to me, and guided me, and… touched me…

Kajagar didn't throw her head back and cackle again. Instead, for the first time, something almost pensive settled over her.

"There's all sorts've things I could tell ye t'explain that, girl. Maybe I ain't all that enthusiastic about banditry 'n slavin', and what ye saw last night was jest me way of keepin' up appearances fer the Chief. Or maybe I see a bit more of me in ye than I'd first thought, bein' as yer a fellow lady of the gods, and their many spirits." Her head danced through the air as she spoke, like she was chasing each independent train of thought. "Maybe I could spin ye a sob story about a man whose whole world hurled him aside when he'd just started comin' into his own, and whose blindin' sea of anger over it grew and grew, until it reached up to the clouds themselves… or about a young mum who went an' lost ev'ry last one of her little whelps on the ends of a host of adventurers' blades, and who went on t'grow old and see a little of her daughters in ye. Or… maybe… just maybe…"

She leaned in conspiratorially, volume falling to something a hair over a whisper. Her unblinking eyes were clouded over, beading with something solemn, long-buried. Despite myself, I mirrored her, clinging on to every word.

"Yer a gullible little sap who'd buy a bridge without a river."

"K-Mistress Kajagar!!" Unable to shout her name without a suitably obsequious preface, I made my outrage known by stomping angrily on the ground and blinking back tears of what had been sympathy. That--that horrible old-- "You--you awful--mistress!!"

Now Kajagar threw her head back, her raspy laugh filling the whole tent, wiping away tears from the corners of her own eyes. "Yer a laugh riot, Sugar."

"D-don't call me that, mistress!" I growled. "I'm--m-my name's Anne, mistress!!"

"I know, Sugar. Yer little wolf squealed it enough last night." She unfurled herself to her feet and stretched, extending each limb and her neck at once in a towering, five-pointed star. For some reason, the brand on my stomach compelled me to rise alongside her. Was it impolite to stay seated when my 'better' stood up? "Ah, ye'll get used to the new name soon enough. It's prettier than what some girls 'round here get."

Sullenly, I trudged after her to our next destination. The other bandits and slaves hadn't paid us any mind as we left the tent, either--even the cow sissy I'd inadvertently locked eyes with on the way in had become occupied at some point, bent and whimpering over a bench of her own, a man with the head and horns and furry hindquarters of a bull holding her by her wrists as he pistoned himself against her bubbly buttocks. Did he count as a minotaur, or was that term reserved for something else in the world of VALKYRIE?

"Agh, what's this?"

This tent was an insidious black, besides a blood red symbol painted over its entrance flap; six unevenly sized triangles, pointed inwards so that the negative space between them almost resembled a black, six-pointed star. In front of the tent stood a collection of wooden posts, each one teeming with horrible little trinkets that reminded me of the staff that Kajagar had carried last night--carved teeth, the skulls of tiny animals, desiccated shells of beetles--and then it dawned on me that the one closest to us was that staff. So… she had spares, if we ever managed to break or steal away the one she was holding. That was great.

"We 'ad a mishap at the river, Kaj," grunted a bearlike bandit nursing an injured arm. He was seated on the ground outside the tent, with a motley collection of three other bandits all nursing similar injuries. The cloth they'd bundled their extremities in and each of their uniquely bizarre biologies made it hard to say what, exactly, was wrong with them… but the deep red stains that dyed their makeshift bandages were warning enough.

"Some mishap," grunted Kajagar. She seized hold of the nearest staff and pointed it at him. "Heal."

The bearlike bandit let out a deep sigh, rattling his barrel chest, and raised his wounded arm. The bloodstained cloth he'd wrapped it in fell away, leaving behind a rippling wall of undamaged fur and flesh. "Cheers, Kaj."

"You're a 'ealer too, ain't you, Sugar?" Kajagar nodded at one of the seated bandits. "Fix 'im up."

Automatically, I pulled open my inventory, only to see that it was far shorter than I remembered it being… and then realise that Kajagar herself had taken my wand the day before. "I-I don't have my wand, mistress…"

Kajagar straightened herself up to her full height, so that I had to crane my neck just to match her, and glowered down at me. "Cal said you c'n cast astavic. Y'know--without yer symbol."

"R-right. Mistress." My… newest Milestone. A-at least, the newest one I'd had the opportunity to read. Starkissed. "Cure!" I touched a hand to my lips, and blew a kiss towards the bandit Kajagar had pointed out for me.

Though he didn't have a health bar to show me exactly how much my spell had healed him, the bandit shot to his feet soon enough, discarding the ratty, clotted-over towel that had been wrapped around his knee.

"Heal. Heal. D'you have to do that every time?" Kajagar's tone softened as she fixed up the remaining two bandits; now she just sounded quizzical.

"U-um… y-yeah, to cast… astavic, I-I do, mistress."

"Huh." If my answer had provoked any more thought from her, she didn't show it; instead, she turned to the bear bandit, who had apparently taken on the role of this small group's liaison with her. "What did this to ye lot?"

"Some kinda sea-beast, Kaj. Or… river-beast. A great big fish."

"Orange, it was!" chirped one of the others.

"A great big fish?" Kajagar echoed. "Did ye kill it?"

"I, uh, not as such, no."

Kajagar sighed. "Ain't got the time to deal wit' this shit now. I'll see about it when the Chief gets back. Fer now, go tell the other fishermen t'stay off the river for today."

"Yes, Kaj!"

The bandits hurried off, not a limp between them, and Kajagar swept aside the entrance to the black tent, her eyes back on me. "Come on in, Sugar."

The tent hadn't exactly looked big from the outside, but its interior had been crammed so hideously full of her possessions that there was scarcely anywhere to stand. There were shelves squeezed into every corner, laden with jars and bottles and pots, all filled with strange liquids that looked about as undrinkable and poisonous as her brackish brown venom; a desk piled high with bowls and thick leather-bound books and a strange black statue that resembled Kajagar herself, only with two additional pairs of arms; racks from which dangled even more of her signature bits of dead animals and strange gems and rusty trinkets; and, squished away in one snug nook, a cast iron cauldron mounted on a tiny flame. Inside it burbled a strangely pleasant-smelling pink fluid, from which a faint cloud of rosy steam rose to swirl peacefully around the very ceiling of the tent. Like the fires that burned elsewhere in the cave, the flame beneath it gave off no smoke.

After some consideration, I finally put myself on top of a pile of thick brown furs that took up most of the remaining available floor space in the tent--and Kajagar bundled herself in after me, pushing me all the way to the very end of it, and seated herself on the softest, thickest part of the fur pile. Was this where she slept?

"'ome sweet 'ome," she said, already fiddling with the pouches at her waist. From them she extracted the string of jars I'd milked her venom into, as well as a tiny copper rod and a handful of what might have been colourful rocks… or colourful beetles. "Feel free to take a seat."

With her gangly legs curled over most of the furs, and pinning me up against the back of the tent, any attempt to 'take a seat' would have put me at least halfway on her bony lap. After a few seconds of me staying stubbornly on my feet, she shrugged. "Suit yerself."

I watched as she unlidded each tiny vial of her venom and poured it into the pink contents of the cauldron in turn; the substances mixed with a chorus of satisfying hisses. Soon the pink had darkened to a murky, swampy green, and it was into this Kajagar plunged the tiny copper rod, stirring it about with some vigour.

"Ye brewed potions before?" she asked conversationally, withdrawing the rod. I blinked weakly--the green sludge had eaten away at most of the copper, leaving every bit of it south of her fingers a smoking, chewed-up black twig--but then, before my eyes, the uneaten segment extended downwards, until the rod was just as pristine and intact as it had been before she'd dipped it into the cauldron.

"Uh… y-yeah, mistress. Once." I decided to omit the part where it had made me grow my tiny breasts.

"Just the once?" Kajagar sounded surprised. "It's star-work, y'know. Same as dress-making… 'n whoring."

"St-star-work, mistress?" It was hard to see what brewing potions, making dresses, and… whoring all had in common with each other, let alone… stars.

"The resplendent gifts of 'er infinite 'ighness, Sugar." Kajagar tucked the regenerating copper rod back into her pouches and withdrew a familiar star-tipped wand. "Cassiopeia the Radiant."

"H-hey, mistress, that's mine--!"

"And now it's mine." Kajagar twirled it absently in one sprawling hand, evidently unworried about the prospect of dropping it into the acidic mixture she was cradling in her cauldron. "Funny 'ow banditry works, eh?"

I crossed my arms. A feeble act of defiance, but the only one I had left available to me. "F-fine. Mistress."

Kajagar stashed the wand safely away--how was she managing to squeeze that gaudy, oversized star through the mouths of her pouches?--and started feeding the multicoloured pebbles-slash-insects into her green muck.

"Well?"

"W-well what, mistress?"

"Ain't ye got the slightest bit of interest in yer goddess, Sugar? Do ye even know anything more'n 'er name?"

"I… well…" I tried to line up everything I knew about her in my head. When I'd mentioned her to Ariana--a shiver ran through my body--she'd called her the Goddess of Beauty. And… her name was in the tooltip for my wand, I was pretty sure, not that I could check at that exact moment. Which presumably meant she had something to do with Starlight, the word that kept cropping up around me and my spells. "Sh-she's… the goddess of beauty, right, mistress? And… the stars, mistress?"

"By the bleedin' queen of the badlands," Kajagar said. "Ye alaj really do know nothin'."

"I-I've only been here for two weeks, mistress!" I said defensively.

"And where were ye before that?" Kajagar twisted her head inquisitively.

"The--" My breath caught. The real world was the obvious answer, of course, but… was I supposed to say that to an NPC? It wasn't like they could… do anything with that knowledge, right? "Not… not here, mistress."

Kajagar raised a brow, but didn't press the matter any further. "Well. If yer so green, I s'pose ye've no clue what I'm doing here, then."

"Making poison, mistress?" I guessed. She had just poured every single vial of the venom we'd collected from her fangs into the brew.

"Not quite," she said. "Me venom's plenty poisonous on its own. Ye saw how this stuff was pink before I added it in, aye?"

"Yes, mistress."

"That was what we witches call a mirroring brew. Fiendish stuff fer a beginner, but ye'll be well served knowing 'em all." The last of the colourful pebbles/insects tumbled into the murky mass, which had gone a horrible brown close to the original shade of her venom… and taken on an unpleasantly thick consistency. "What d'ye suppose pink does?"

"H-huh, mistress? Pink?"

"Mirrorin' ain't just mirrorin', Sugar. There's magnifying, matching, reversal, multiplyin'... what d'ye suppose pink mirroring is?"

"I-I, uhh…" Pink. That was… girly, and all about love, so a pink mirror… "Matching, mistress?"

"Nah. Pink's microscoping."

"Micro--you didn't even say that one, mistress!!" And microscoping? Was this a witch's brew or a school science fair? "Wh-what does that even mean, anyway? Mistress."

"'Mirrors take on the character of what ye set before 'em,'" she recited cryptically. "But an imperfect one distorts what it sees, aye? So yer microscopin' mirror'll make what ye add to it weaker. The more mirror, the weaker it gets."

It… made a strange sort of sense. Like a set of carnival funhouse mirrors, except that instead of literally modifying the shape of reflections, they applied those modifications to potions in a more metaphorical sense. "So… magnifying makes them stronger, and reversal makes them have the opposite effect… mistress?"

"That's the one, Sugar," Kajagar said. She cackled again, but for once it wasn't at me. "Keep this up, and we might keep ye around too. As me personal brewin' assistant."

I bit my lip. If they were already going to keep April, there was nothing I wouldn't do to stay here and stay by her side--but somehow, I had a feeling that the position of Kajagar's 'brewing' assistant was going to come with… other responsibilities.

"I-is that why you're… telling me this stuff, mistress?"

"Heh!"

As Kajagar tended to her cauldron of microscoped venom, she fed me a steady trickle of additional tips for brewing, both about her venom and not. The multicoloured pebbles were, in fact, pebbles, and had been added as a thickening agent: the cauldron was going to be set up in the camp's armoury later, where bandits arming themselves would be free to dip their blades and darts and arrowheads into the noxious mixture, giving them a weaker form of the paralysing properties of Kajagar's bite. My hand unconsciously went to my throat when she described how her recipe would make the poison congeal on whatever metal it touched, and then liquify the moment it touched blood.

Despite her cruelty and her sardonic attitude, I had to admit that she made a good teacher, at least when it came to potions and poisons. Most of what she said about processing the ingredients--crushing them with a silver dagger, stirring with a copper rod, simmering at low heat--didn't seem to translate especially well to the alchemy UI I'd encountered back in Lumberg, but the ingredients she named were all easy enough to note down in the back of my head. Flekrocks for manipulating a brew's physical state, nemesis pearls for reversal mirrors and making people aggressive, lycenium for the pink 'microscoping' mirrors and lust potions… and of course her own krait venom, which in small amounts stabilised the effects of certain potions without giving them paralytic effects. If--no, when--we escaped this camp, I had some decent starting points to pursue if I ever went back to experimenting with alchemy. I had to admit that the thought of applying some kind of paralysing poison to my crappy rusty dagger at some point was pretty tempting.

"Right," she said at last, waving her hand over the base of the cauldron. The tiny fire that burned beneath it sputtered out, extinguished by the gesture. "We'll let it sit overnight, an' it'll be ready fer the armoury in the mornin'."

Once again, she unfolded herself to her feet and set off for yet another tent, and I hesitated only a little before following her.

"Wh-where are we going, mistress?"

"Main tent, Sugar," Kajagar said easily. "It's lunch time."

Chapter 30: Lunch Time

Chapter Text

Lunch time. There was something ominous about the phrase, I decided as Kajagar once again led me through a mostly-empty camp. It was hard to say exactly what. Maybe it was the crooked grin she'd worn as she'd said it. Maybe it was the memory of what I'd been fed for 'breakfast'--a concoction of beastkin cum mixed with what I was quickly realising could only have been some kind of twisted pink potion. Or maybe it was the fact that we were heading towards the enormous main tent.

"Ach, there ain't no need to look so tense, Sugar," Kajagar chuckled as she caught the expression on my face. "I had the boys take an early lunch today. It'll just be me'n you in there."

My face must have betrayed just how little that prospect reassured me, because she cackled again and continued on without belabouring the point.

As we drew towards the tent, my thoughts turned towards escape again. My arousal had died down during Kajagar's lecture on potion-making, leaving my mind mercifully clearer than it had been all morning, and--tentatively, slowly, taking special care not to do anything erratic that might give away what I was brewing--I was starting to take in details that I'd missed in my more pent-up state from earlier.

Like Kajagar's staff: she wasn't carrying it at all. She did have my wand on her, and I knew from last night that she could cast spells with it… but the Cure she'd tried with my wand had barely budged April's healthbar, compared to my Cures and the Cures she could cast with her staff. Was it because she worshipped a different god, making my holy symbol basically useless in her hands? If I could get into her pouches, I could disarm her and arm myself in a single move… and if the only spells she could cast with the wand were as weak as that Cure had been, getting into it didn't even seem that unlikely.

The problem, of course, was that she was still stronger than me. She wasn't quite the lightning-quick Chief, capable of outrunning a teleport and pinning down April, but I'd felt her strength firsthand, as she'd slammed herself into my aching hole over and over and over--I inhaled sharply. She was strong, or at least strong enough to overpower me. And even without spells, she still had that paralysing venom to subdue me with.

"Right."

She lulled me from my thoughts, and I realised that we were at the main tent--but not its front entrance, where the Chief had carried me last night. We were behind it, where a long trough of something slimy and steamy and white sat next to an enormous wooden cask mounted precariously on a stool. A spigot in the side of the cask opened out over the trough, presumably to let its contents drool out over the trough of cum.

"Ye can have yer chow first," Kajagar nodded, striding over to the spigot and putting a spidery hand over it. I bit my lip. There weren't any tankards or bowls or even plates to be seen… clearly, the slaves were expected to get down on their knees and… "C'mon, Sugar."

I-it was just cum. I'd… I'd had a lot of it, already. Another bellyful wasn't going to be any worse than the last few, a-and in any case I still had to look for an opportunity to jump her. I sank down to my knees, taking a heady faceful of beastkin musk for my trouble. My clitty stirred in its cage, n-no doubt reminded of the events of last night by the scent alone, even as my breath caught and I fought down the urge to cough and retch. Why did my brain and my clit have to disagree so much? E-eating the sperm of my captors wasn't h-hot in the slightest, n-no matter how much my sissy parts buzzed at the thought.

I glanced up at Kajagar. She was still next to the cask, fingers playing thoughtfully at the tap on the spigot. That was probably where the pink stuff that had been swirled into my 'breakfast' was going to come from.

"Hang on, Sugar," she said, finally. "Let's test yer knowledge, right? If ye can guess the three ingredients that go into me special slavin' brew, I won't make ye put it on yer cum."

I frowned. Part of me wanted to tell her that I'd much rather not have the cum at all… but my stomach rumbled rebelliously up at me. 'Breakfast' hadn't exactly been filling, and before that my last 'meal' had been all the cum that I'd had pumped down my throat by the bandits… the last time I'd had any real food had been more than twenty-four hours ago. The trough oozed up at me, disturbingly tantalising in this light. It was hardly food, and by this point it was sheer experience that told me I'd be hungry again sooner rather than later, even if I did eat my fill… but I needed something in my belly…

"Th… that's the pink swirly s-stuff that was on my… b-breakfast, right, mistress?"

"Aye."

I stared at the cask by her, more to take my eyes off the embarrassingly distracting mass of cum in front of me than anything else. Pink.

"A-and I actually know them th-this time, mistress?"

Kajagar paused, then belted out a cackling laugh that made me jump on my haunches. "Ye learn quick, Sugar." She mimed wiping away a tear of pride from her eye. Did she even have tear ducts? "Aye, this time ye do. Only stuff I've told ye about in there."

Well. The only two pink ingredients she'd told me about had been lycenium, a pink flower that grew in mountain glades, and… the pink mirror potion. The 'microscoping' one. Potion ingredients could change colour in the brewing process, but lycenium, at the very least, was meant to be used in lust potions. That was something she'd put in her special 'slaving' brew, right?

"Lycenium, mistress…?"

Kajagar gave me a nod. "That was the easy one, aye. What else?"

I bit my lip. Hearing that I was right was… nice, but now I knew that she was mixing in literal aphrodisiacs with the beastkin cum I was expected to have for every meal. If I had to have what was in this trough, I didn't exactly want to get horny doing it.

Silently, I thought through the other ingredients she'd gone through. A lot of them had been stabilising agents, which she'd likened to yeast in dough. They didn't add much to the final flavour, but they were crucial for establishing the structure of the final product--making bread light and fluffy in the case of yeast, and making sure all the ingredients' effects didn't interfere with each other in the case of a potion. If there were just three ingredients… then the only stabiliser they'd need would be one that made the other two ingredients not interact with each other at all, right?

I swallowed. If I got this wrong, I was going to have to drink that stuff again. But… well, that wasn't really very different from just being made to drink it without the chance to play this guessing game with her. "Your venom, mistress."

"Oh?" Kajagar reared back, but only slightly--there was nothing overacted or sardonic about it. She seemed genuinely impressed. A little twinge of pride played at my heart. "Aye. I s'pose this means ye've figured out the last one, then."

Right. If she'd added a touch of krait venom to stop the lycenium from interacting with the mystery third ingredient, then that meant the third ingredient had to be something that ordinarily did interact with it. But… what? Despite her confidence in me, I had no idea what that third ingredient was.

My face grew warm under her shrewd gaze as I silently ran down the list of everything she'd mentioned. For once, it wasn't brought on by any kind of sexual humiliation--it was just the surprisingly refreshing embarrassment of not knowing something that should have been obvious.

Over the next few minutes, her expression grew impatient, my hesitation evidence enough that I hadn't found the thread that she'd seen after all. "C'mon, Sugar. We're on a bit of a schedule here, aye? Spit it out if ye know it, and yer best guess if ye don't."

But what was my best guess? As far as I knew, every possible ingredient out there could either interact or not interact with this lycenium paste, and I had no earthly way of figuring out which ones were on which list. If I looked at the potion itself, ignoring the lust-intensifying effects of the lycenium, the stuff didn't turn the cum it was added to runny or solid, or make me lactate, or make want to fight anyone, or paralyse me, or… do much more than add pink swirls.

"Time's--"

"Pink mirror, mistress!" I babbled.

Kajagar eyed me intently. "And what leads ye t'say that?"

"The… the colour, mistress. Lycenium's already pink, so if it's not mixing with the other ingredient because of the krait venom, then that ingredient has to, um, not be a different colour, mistress. S-so it had to be pink, mistress. And the only other pink thing you talked about--"

"Pink mirrorin'. Right. Huh. Innerestin'." Kajagar peered at the keg of her slaving brew. "Wouldn't've thought of that one meself. Ye might not be such an idiot after all, Sugar."

Even the brand didn't particularly want me to thank her for that remark.

"... Thanks, mistress," I said eventually. "But, um, what's the point of pink mirroring i-if you're not mixing it with anything, mistress?"

Kajagar grinned wickedly. "What is it that mirrors do, Sugar?"

"They, um, take on the character of… whatever's in front of them, mistress?"

"So what d'ye suppose would happen if ye gave a pretty lil thing like ye a heap of mirrorin' and stuck 'er in the middle of all these beastkin?"

I stared. "W-wait, so the slaves aren't… I mean, th-they're not normally…"

Her grin grew ever more wicked. "Aye. Ev'ry last one of 'em wuz an 'uman b'fore me potion worked its magic on 'em. One o' me finer noodlin's, if I do say so meself."

"It works like that?! Mistress?!"

My head spun. Clearly, one dose hadn't been enough to do anything on its own, but if I started having this stuff for every mealtime… the slight figures of the slaves I'd seen so far entered my thoughts. Cow-girls, bunny-girls, deer-girls… was I seriously going to end up like one of them if we took too long to escape?

Kajagar slapped the side of the trough of cum. It made a nauseatingly thick whump, and I had to repress a shudder as the impact sloshed its way slowly through the off-white sludge. The ripples took a good minute to reach the far side of the trough and peter out. "In any case, I'm a crone of me word, and ye passed me wee challenge, so here ye are. Ye can have yer fill without any of me brew at all."

Half-longing, half-revolted, I stared at the cum. My belly growled up at me, but… "D-do I have to, mistress…?"

Kajagar shrugged. "I s'pose not. Ain't like yer gonna starve to death, aye? Just don't gimme moonin' eyes over my lunch."

I nodded and, with far more reluctance than I ever wanted to admit, trotted after her as she ambled into the main tent itself.

Without a horde of beastkin crammed inside it, the main tent was a world apart from the tent I'd been carried into the night before. Silence and emptiness gave it an almost sombre air, which was only amplified by its cathedral-high ceiling and the rows of tables and benches lined up like church pews on either side of the towering silver cage. April's new soul anchor. My skin crawled at the reminder of our enslavement, and for once there wasn't any undercurrent of arousal roiling beneath it.

Like everything else, the stage with the Chief's table was exactly where it had been last night, unchanged except that someone had tucked the chairs on it in. A familiar face stood by Kajagar's unoccupied seat; white fur, long, floppy ears, and a pair of owlish, gold-rimmed spectacles. The bunny-girl who'd accompanied the Chief to the slave tent. I thought I caught a hint of pique on her face before she smoothed herself over and gave Kajagar a deep curtsy.

"Your lunch, Mistress Kajagar!"

Unlike the weird grey gruel that Kajagar had given Sau in the morning--which had admittedly smelled a lot better than it looked--what awaited Kajagar here was nothing less than a one-woman banquet. At the very centre of the spread, golden-brown and shining with sheer juicy extravagance, squatted something that could have been a roast turkey, if roast turkeys were twice as large as I remembered them being. Around it were strewn delectable morsels of potatoes and various greens, each one wrapped in a wad of streaky bacon that glistened in the torchlight. Underneath them lay a carpet of forest-green leaves, doused in some kind of speckled orange dressing.

"Cheers, Cotton." Kajagar jabbed me in the side with a bony elbow. "She's our best cook. If we keep ye, we'll 'ave her teach ye all her recipes."

As Kajagar deposited herself in her seat and dug into her feast, leaving me to float awkwardly at her side opposite Cotton--I definitely wasn't about to try sitting down in the Chief's towering throne--another flash of that pique crossed Cotton's face.

"Ye had yer lunch yet, Cotton?" Kajagar said conversationally. She tore off one of the giant turkey's legs and, horrifyingly, her jaw dropped almost half of the way to her chest--and then she thrust the whole thing, bone and all, straight down her serpentine throat. Her jaws snapped back shut, and the drumstick began its undulating journey to her stomach, now visible now as only an enormous bulge in her throat.

"Yes, Mistress," Cotton said primly. Without the Chief around, she seemed far more composed than I remembered. Out of the corner of my eye, and ignoring the way my clitty trembled in its cage at the idea of eyeing up a naked woman like this, I sneaked a peek at her furry sex. No longer having his cum matting her fur down there probably helped, too.

"Right. Then ye can run somethin' to Sau." Apparently, having an oversized drumstick trundling its way down her gullet did absolutely nothing to keep Kajagar from talking as she pleased.

This time, I definitely wasn't imagining it--Cotton shot me an ugly, almost accusing look, as if to silently ask why I wasn't being told to run this mundane errand. If she only knew that I would relish the chance to worm out from under Kajagar's slitted gaze!

"Yes, Mistress," she said. Kajagar seized the not-turkey's other leg and shoved it towards her, and she bounced easily off the stage. Like some of the other beastkin around here, her legs were scarcely human at all; her feet were all rabbit, meant for padding about and bounding great distances, and the haunches and calves thighs above them were contorted to aid in that. Just how much of Kajagar's pink potion had she been forced to drink before she'd ended up with legs like that?

"Ah, and go report to the pleasure tent when yer done with that," Kajagar called after her. "I called down everyone from riverside, so they'll be shorthanded fer a while."

Cotton's ears stiffened at this, though whether this was from trepidation or anticipation eluded me, and her steady voice when she replied didn't shed any more light on the matter. "Yes, Mistress."

As she bounded off past the tables and the ominous silver cage, Kajagar set her sights on the body of the giant turkey. Thankfully, this was not picked up and shoved down her throat whole; instead, she picked up a dull knife and fork and started carving it up. The pieces were still absurdly large by the time she decided they were small enough and unhinged her jaw to swallow them, but at least they weren't at risk of making her throat balloon up until it was wider across than her shoulders were. I wasn't sure I could handle watching that.

W-was that how my throat had looked last night, w-with some of the bigger beastkin…? April's had definitely… bulged a fair bit…

"Right," said Kajagar when she'd wolfed down the last of the giant turkey, leaving behind a pile of huge bones covered in strands and chunks of meat. Hollow-boned or not, there was no way that whatever this bird was had ever flown. "The Chief's tasked me with overseein' yer interrogation. 'e seems to think, what with you bein' alaj an' all, that yer sittin' on a pile of secrets that 'e can use fer 'is ambitions, such as they are."

She paused, evidently waiting for me to make a contribution of some kind. Was I supposed to start spilling secrets now? Sh-she'd said it herself--I really did know nothing! Not just about the world and lore of the game, but the mechanics of the gameplay itself! Even April would have been a better bet--she'd at least heard of the game before she'd gotten her hands on a pass for it.

"U-um… yes, mistress," I said lamely.

"Do ye?"

"D-do I have a pile of secrets, mistress?"

"Aye."

"Um. Not really, mistress?"

Kajagar sighed theatrically. "Tragic." She picked up a bacon-wrapped vegetable and popped it down her throat, no unhinging of her jaw required.

Was… was that it?

"U-um. Aren't you gonna… check, mistress?" The image of April, stock-still and eyes glowing a malevolent green, mindlessly shuffling around at Kajagar's beck and call, was still clear in my mind. "C-can't you, like… control my mind, mistress?"

"Could do," Kajagar said casually. "Course, I used up all me mana healing those knuckleheads what got got by that sea monster."

Half an hour ago, I might have taken that admission as a chance to Star Passage myself and Catwalk the hell out of this place--but there was something weird going on. Was she really out of mana? Why did she seem so… uninterested in actually interrogating me?

"Y-you're doing that thing again, a-aren't you, mistress?"

"What thing?" she asked blithely.

"Being… nice, mistress."

Again, it… wasn't exactly what I meant. She'd given me the chance to get out of drinking her aphrodisiac, and taught me a bit about potion-making, and even let me weasel out of eating another load o-of her men's cum, but… it wasn't like she'd offered me any real food, either. She wasn't being nice, she was just being… less cruel than she could be.

"Am I?" She sounded faintly surprised.

"C-can you just--" I made a frustrated noise, which something in my head warned me was impolite but didn't keep me from making--"tell me what you want, mistress??"

Kajagar gave me her characteristic cackle, but this time there was something almost bitter about the smile that came with it. Eventually, she spoke. "Fine. Yer in love with her, aye? That wolf girl."

My heart stopped. Despite that, heat still rushed up into my face, giving me a blush redder than the embers of the torches burning around us. I-I was, o-of course, but that--I mean, I'd just never really--n-not even my friends at school knew--

Just when I was finally putting my lips together to say something (though what, not even I knew), she cut me off with a wave. "Ye don't need to say it, Sugar. That face yer makin' is answer enough."

"Wh-why are you asking, m-mistress?" I croaked. She… sh-she wasn't falling in love with me, right? Was that why she'd taken me on this whole tour, dropped hints a-about keeping me as her a-assistant, played at playing nice with me, even as she took care to leave it abundantly clear that she was the mistress and I the slave?

"Say I offered ye a trade. She gets to walk free from 'ere, but we stick ye with somethin' not even the strongest alaj could take off ye and ship ye off to be a slave fer some noble an ocean away, where ye'll never see her again." Kajagar's tongue flickered out from her diamond-shaped snout, and somehow I didn't think it had anything to do with the delicious-smelling meal she'd mostly inhaled by now. "Would ye take it?"

I swallowed. A few points buzzed around in my head--This scenario was way too specific… was it purely hypothetical?--April would definitely find a way to track me down!--Did Kajagar even have the authority to just release such a valuable slave like that?--but, one by one, I swatted them aside. She… it was hard to put a finger on what exactly it was that she wanted from this question, but… somehow, some way, I knew what it was. Not just the full, unvarnished truth, but something… something more true than even that. Something so true that I didn't need to know all the niggly little details before giving my answer. She could have not asked the question at all, and I'd still know what the answer was.

I'd heard about missing the forest for the trees before. Whatever this was, it was like… being the tiniest little ant buried in the dirt beneath a forest, so small that even a single leaf was unfathomably beyond my comprehension, and--somehow, some way--still knowing, in some place that wasn't quite my brain and wasn't quite my heart, what the whole forest looked like.

April was… amazing. Even if I wasn't madly in love with her, that was something I knew I'd be able to see. It wasn't just her smarts, or her athleticism, or her kindness, or her good-natured humour: it was all of that being tied up in a single, gorgeous, April-shaped package. Sh-she didn't deserve to be tied up and… made to serve a bunch of bandit bastards until they finally managed to fix the Bug and free us. Even though the thought of the same thing happening to me made my stomach flutter and my clitty stir i-in ways that scared me more than fear alone could explain…

"Yes," I said. For once, there was no tremor in my girly voice. A long, pregnant silence fell between us. It was broken only by my brand triggering again. "Mistress."

"Right." Kajagar lifted her hand, and suddenly I realised that her staff, bones and baubles and all, had appeared in it. "Sanctum."

A grey aura rippled out from the staff's unwieldy head, and raced over the floor and the walls and the ceiling of the tent. It lingered for a moment, before vanishing, leaving behind no visible change whatsoever--except in Kajagar herself, who closed her eyes and drew an unsteady breath before speaking again.

"That should keep out any nosy eyes and ears." Her eyes flew back open and she leaned towards me in her seat. "Alright, Anne. I've come up with a plan to get ye both out of this damn camp."

"What?! H-how?! Mistress--why?! Mistress!" Kajagar rolled her eyes (and her whole head) under my confused train of squawked questions and appellations, until I finally managed to rein myself in. Obviously, these were all things that she was about to explain, but she couldn't fault me--wh-who in their right mind could have seen this coming?!

"We'll start with the why, aye?" she said. "Truth is, I bin worried about the direction Cal's bin headed down fer a while now. Far longer'n the two weeks ye've been in this world."

"His… direction, mistress?"

"Aye." Her eyes grew distant. "I'm the one what took 'im in 'ere, y'see. Back when 'e was just a ball of resentment 'n fury, fumin' against the Gilded Guard. 'e was a paladin back then, y'know? Before the war. One of their best 'n brightest, even."

"I… I see, mistress." A paladin? Weren't they, like… consummate good guys?

"But war broke out, 'n the Guard decided they couldn't 'ave a beastkin deputy runnin' things in a major city like 'is. So they canned 'im. Not without offerin' him his old old rank as a private, mind, but he weren't about to settle for that indignity. 'e declared 'is vengeance--not the greatest move to pull against the Gilded bloody Guard--and ran off to plot it in the wilderness."

"Pretty quick, 'e ran into us. We didn't live down here--" she gestured vaguely at the tent around us, which I took to mean the cave as a whole--"back then, but we were in this sorta area. The Chief back then was mighty suspicious of him--bloody fool was still in his Gilded garb, and whoever heard of a bandit tribe recruitin' a paladin?--but I managed to convince 'im to give wee Cal a chance."

She paused. "Not that 'e was exactly wee back then, of course. Even before I'd 'ad meself a chance to see him really fight, I 'ad a feeling 'e'd be more than the Chief's match."

"W-wait, is that why you--"

"Course it was, Sugar." Kajagar's lips quirked up. "A simmerin', striped ball of rage an' more strength than 'e knew what to do with like Cal? What sort of soft excuse fer a bandit witch wouldn't take the chance to mold 'im into her powerful little puppet? I 'ad 'im take out the old Chief within the year, and then we rooted out all the old goat's supporters… and then we got to improvin' this place."

"'e weren't a bad Chief, at all, y'see." Kajagar's satisfaction with how she'd betrayed her old Chief had died off by now, and now she was back to staring wistfully into space. "'e might've sworn vengeance against 'em, but 'is time with the paladins taught 'im things no Chief before 'im had ever even thought about. 'e brought us discipline--and not just the kind where ye cut off a whelp's ear t'teach the wee blighter respect. Formed us up into proper troops, came up with a whole chain of command with him at the top--and me up with 'im as his advisor, o' course. When the 'ole bloody exodus of newly jobless beastkin came streamin' outta the cities, it was 'is structures 'n protocols that had us ready to absorb 'em."

"And there was more besides that. 'e knew all the Gilded Guard's tricks, too, aye? When the tribe was gonna get too big t'escape their scryin' eyes fer much longer, 'e had us dig out this cave. Turns out eyes in the sky don't work so well when yer target's underground." She chuckled. "'e taught us 'ow they position their squadrons in the field, what protocols they use in the event of 'n attack, what spells each rank o' paladin is expected to learn--and how to best neutralise 'em."

"S-so you could start attacking them, mistress?" I hadn't exactly had the opportunity to do a head-count, either here or back in Lumberg, but there hadn't been that many guardsmen in the city. It didn't seem too far-fetched for a horde like this to overrun the place…

"That's what I was worried about at first, aye. 'specially as the tribe grew an' grew, filled up with countless other malcontents with the same bone t'pick against the kingdom. It felt like 'e was whipping us into shape as 'is personal army." She shrugged. "But the years went by, an' the most we ever used 'is inside knowledge fer was raidin' convoys with Gilded protectors. I thought maybe I'd misjudged 'im. Maybe 'e was just preparin' us in the event someone else started a war."

Here, Kajagar took a long pause. She'd finished picking at all the bacon-wrapped morsels on the plate, so she picked up a bone and gnawed on it thoughtfully, worrying it between the far smaller teeth lined up behind her monstrous fangs.

"But then we met one of those very folks. Some'un who does want t'start the next war." The bone stayed between her teeth as she spoke, twitching with each syllable. "I ain't at liberty to say much about it, or the feller 'imself, but 'e wanted us to ramp up… our slavin'. Start takin' in… a higher calibre of merchandise, y'see?"

I swallowed. "Pla… alaj, mistress?"

Kajagar didn't nod or shake her head. "Ye said it. Not me."

"R-right. Mistress." She was being cagey about it for some reason, but that had been clear enough. What was less clear was how enslaving a bunch of players was supposed to start a war. Between who? Over what?

"Cal ain't so easy to read as 'e once was, but all that stuff excited 'im. And when ye two rocked up within the week, I expect 'e was 'alfway to callin' it an act of divine providence. Ye saw it last night, didn't ye? 'is little speech, before we stuck you with those brands. 'bout makin' the gods bleed 'n such. Recoverin' our lost 'istories. It ain't comin' this week, or the one after, but 'e's fixin' fer that damn war after all."

"A-and… you don't want that, mistress…?"

Kajagar shrugged, the motion strangely understated with her head so far away from her shoulders. "The lost 'istory stuff? It'd be nice, I s'pose. But it wouldn't be worth the lives o' me an' every other blighter in this tribe." She eyed me, and though her characteristic shrewdness still made me squirm, there was something melancholy in it that shone through, too. "That's the risk ye always run with war."

"S-so… you want… April to… um… k-kill him… mistress? To… stop the war, mistress?"

Kajagar laughed darkly. "Oh, I ain't got no illusions of stoppin' it. I'm just innerested in a Chief what won't run us into the Gilded Guard the moment they look the slightest bit distracted. And yer wolf fits that bill, near as I c'n tell."

She hadn't seen most of the fight between April (and me) and the Chief… but surely she'd realised that he'd completely outclassed us, right? April had been a sliver from death, I'd been essentially dead, and the Chief hadn't even had to ask her for one of her healing spells. "I, um, is that the whole plan, mistress?"

"Course not," Kajagar scoffed. "But before I share it with ye, yer gonna have to do something fer me, first."

I moaned weakly… but sunk to my knees. "Y-yes, mistress…"

These beastkin were just insatiable. W-was that why she turned all their slaves into beastkin, too…?

To my surprise, Kajagar snorted and shook her head. "Nay, nay, ye little slut. I ain't fixin' fer that right now. Back on yer feet."

Flushed with what I could only imagine was more brilliant a crimson than I'd ever gone before, I shot back up to my feet and watched mutely as Kajagar strode over to the end of the stage--to the bucket of silver brands. They gleamed sinisterly in the torchlight, and as Kajagar picked one up and inspected it, drawing her spindly fingers lovingly along its length, my eyes flicked to the exit of the tent. One Star Passage probably wouldn't get me all the way there, but if I took a running jump off the stage--

"I wouldn't, Sugar. Me Sanctum'll keep anything from getting in or out." Did all these stupid beastkin have to be so perceptive?! "An' in any case, I'll not be doin' anythin' ye don't allow today."

She lowered the brand she'd taken, though she didn't set it down entirely. Her assurance was still far from reassuring--it wasn't like I had any way to disallow her from doing whatever she wanted to me--but a-at least she'd felt the need to make it. Surely, if all she wanted was to brand me again, she'd just Dominate me and be done with it.

"Wh-what do you want, th-then, mistress?" I demanded.

"What d'ye know about soul magic, Sugar?"

I stared blankly at her.

"Fair enough." She held the brand horizontally in front of her, and its end began to flicker the way it had last night, shifting between countless shapes in a scintillating, ominous array. "I ain't much for it, either. So I'll keep it short 'n sweet."

"Short story is, that brand ye've got on ye is soul magic. It goes past yer will and yer flesh, binding ye on a level no other magic c'n hope t'match. But somethin' as strong as that has conditions, see? Less I follow certain procedures, so t'speak, I can't draw out this thing's full power." She pointed the brand's shifting end at me, and I flinched back. "Normally, it'd take us five days ter build up t'the level of brand I need on ye--but with yer permission, we can circumvent that, aye?"

"So, b'fore I tell ye me cunning plan fer killin' the Chief, yer gonna agree to a special sorta brand. The strongest this artefact c'n produce."

"HuH?! Wh-why?! Mistress?"

"Why do I need t' brand you?" Kajagar laughed. "Yer gonna be me contingency, Sugar. If me plan works, yer little wolf is gonna be in prime position t'exact some sorely thirsted-after vengeance. Against me."

Despite the artefact being levelled directly at me, something in me rankled at the thought that April might go after Kajagar for revenge, of all reasons. "Y-you don't--April wouldn't--you weren't there when we--when she--mistress--she's not like that at all, mistress!"

"Maybe she ain't," Kajagar said. "But an old snake like me didn't get this far on maybes, aye?"

"I-if she is out for your blood, that's only because you--"

She waved me off with the brand. "I'll be the first to admit I weren't the most hospitable towards ye girlies, b'fore I realised ye could pull off me plan. All the more reason t'cover me own arse, aye?"

"Now, d'ye want to hear what yer gonna be agreein' to or not?"

Was this why she'd brought up my… feelings for April…? Asked if I was willing to trade my… freedom for hers…? "F-fine, mistress."

"This is called a brand of Contingency." As she spoke the words, the brand's shifting slowed, until at last it resolved into the symbol of a sword, blade pointed down to the ground. "Acceptin' it will mean cedin' absolute ownership of yerself to me, until such a time as the resolution o' this tribe's next duel of succession. When that comes t'pass, my ownership of ye will be transferred t'the winner of that duel."

"D-duel of succession?" I asked.

"How else d'ye think we'll get a chance t'have yer wolf kill off Cal without the rest o' the damn tribe buttin' in?"

So… i-in the event that April won… "S-so she'll have ownership of me…mistress?"

The sensation that overtook me wasn't just a thrill--it was a full-body paroxysm of something confused, and anxious, and yet overwhelmingly delighted.

"If she wins, aye," Kajagar said with a shrug. "Exceptin', of course, fer the circumstance of me bein' forced t'leave the tribe."

Right… the contingency.

"S-so you don't want her to kick you out after she wins, mistress?"

"Aye. Includin' by means such as killin' me."

She'd said it offhandedly, or at least as offhandedly as the topic of one's own death could be made, but I still flinched. The more I interacted with these NPCs, the more I sympathised with April's crisis over killing them. They were scarily human. "I, um, mistress… wh-what happens if she does… kick you out?"

"The contingency triggers. Ye'll do anything and everythin' in yer power to 'ave as much brainless, sloppy, demeanin' sissy sex with as many men as possible, includin' fleeing her so she can't stop ye."

My heartbeat kicked up. Once again, my clitty and pussy stirred, treacherously aroused by the idea of being turned into a total slut just like that. "A-ah. I… see… mistress."

"Well? I ain't got all day, Sugar. Are ye in or not?"

Was it just me, or did she sound a touch agitated?

"I, uh, I need to think about it, mistress!"

"Think faster," she growled. Definitely agitated.

The thrill of having April own me outright if all went to plan was hard to shake off, not least because a sizable part of me didn't want to let it go at all--but I had to think straight here. It was lucky that I'd been able to get Kajagar's potion ingredients right--if the lycenium had warmed up my brain again, leaving it hot and gooey and pliable, I felt certain that I'd be agreeing without another thought.

Hm. Didn't that mean agreeing was a bad idea?

BONG.

The tolling of a bell, deep and clangorous, broke off my train of thought. I glanced towards the centre of the tent, where the noise had come from: a ball of bright white light had appeared inside the sinister silver cage, casting a web of tall, slender shadows. They danced hypnotically over the tent's walls and the pew-like rows of tables that lined them, slow and ominous.

BONG.

Kajagar swore, in that beastkin language I couldn't understand at all, and--before I could do much more than turn back--rammed me in the gut with the end of the silver brand. I flinched, ready for the same excruciating pain as last time to drown me--

BONG.

BONG.

Instead of pain, a tooltip flared into existence as I staggered back. Unlike the last tooltip, this was a request, laying out the 'terms' of the new sigil. Before I could reach for either of the buttons, Kajagar's scaled hands were upon both my wrists, enclosing them in a matching pair of clammy, vice-like grips.

"Hey!"

BONG.

The fifth toll trailed off--and the light in the silver cage died out, revealing the first welcome sight I'd had all day. Her dark skin might have had crusty white scrawls all over it, and her face might have been streaked with the tracks left behind by her own furious tears, but April was still April.

"April?!"

"Anne!" April rammed herself against the bars of the cage with frightening force--they rattled, but held up without bending in the slightest. Evidently, they were sterner than their delicate appearance suggested. "Get me out of here!"

"Star Passage!" I shouted automatically--but Kajagar's grip kept me implacably from bringing my fingers to my lips to blow a proper kiss in her direction.

"Get off her!! Mistress!!" April snarled, still furiously rattling the cage. It must have been glued to the floor somehow--magic?--because it wasn't even swaying, no matter what April did.

"Let me--go!!" I kicked out at Kajagar, but she took the hit stoically, her grip on me not loosening even the tiniest bit.

"Can ye idiots shut up fer a second?" she snapped.

"No! Mistress!" April roared. She'd finally released the bars of the cage--but only to start wailing on them with a barrage of punches.

Kajagar sighed. "Oh, fer--fine."

I blanched, expecting a pair of fangs to sink into my throat at any second… but instead, her hands fell from my wrists. My hands flew up, straining against a force that was no longer there, and I only narrowly avoided socking myself in the face.

"Wha--"

"Let her out," Kajagar grunted.

I blinked. "W-wait, really--"

"Jest bloody do it."

"Star Passage!" I blew a kiss at April, the action by this point about as natural to me as brandishing my girly wand, and the familiar honeycomb sprang into existence around her. In exchange, the tooltip for the Sigil of Contingency (which had floated patiently in front of me through this entire exchange) vanished, seemingly banished by my successful spell.

"Catwalk!" April blipped into existence on the stage by my side. I yelped as she curled an arm like a tree branch around my slender waist, scooped me up, and leapt off the stage to make a mad dash for the entrance of the tent.

Sproing. When she dropped her shoulder and hurled herself at the entrance flap, however, we didn't go flying through it--instead, it stretched out, out, out, then snapped back into place, launching us back into one of the rows of empty tables lined up behind us. Kajagar's spell, I realised, once my head had stopped spinning. She hadn't been bluffing when she'd told me it would stop me from leaving the tent.

"FucK!!" To her credit, April only swayed slightly as she stumbled back to her feet, and her grip on me hadn't lightened even a little, though she'd taken the brunt of our collision with the tables. She spun around, still carrying me under one arm. "Let us out, mistress!"

She pulled back her other arm, already preparing her next move in the event that Kajagar refused.

"Can ye jest hold yer damn horses fer two seconds?" Kajagar snapped. "I'm tryna help ye."

"If you wanna help us, let us out! Mistress!" April spat out the last word savagely.

"Y-yeah! We don't need your help, mistress!" I chimed in. My brain was still reeling, trying to process how the hell April had suddenly appeared in the tent with us--I looked up at her. "Wait, did you die?!"

"Yeah," April said tersely, still glaring defiantly at Kajagar, up on her stage. "Ran off and got myself chewed up by a muddlethingy. Chief guy's ages away. Most of the troops are. It's just her gang here."

"And ye picked just after lunch fer yer wee escape attempt, cuz ye figured we'd be feeding Anne here. Jest one spell away from runnin' us over and gettin' out of here." Kajagar laughed, but this was more of a wheeze than a cackle. "Yer clearly the brains and the brawn in yer two-woman outfit, aye?"

This close to her, still snugly clutched under one of her arms, I felt it as April's hammering heartbeat slowed somewhat. She shifted, glancing both ways, just quick enough that she only had her eyes off Kajagar for a fraction of a second. "Where is everyone… mistress?"

"You tell 'er, Sugar."

"Th-they're… they had lunch… early." The dawning was slow and fitful, but it finally clicked. "Wait, you knew this would happen, mistress?!"

Kajagar's shrug was languid, oozing self-satisfaction. "Let's jest say I had an inklin' of what this wolf would try, knowin' what she knew, an' tried ter arrange things ter best take advantage of that." She scratched at her scaly chin with a long, black nail. "Ideally, ye would've taken me offer b'fore she showed up… but I s'pose I ain't as persuasive as I once were."

"Offer?" It took me a moment to realise that April was addressing me. "What's she talking about?"

"She has a plan," I said. "Sh-she wants you to, um, duel the Chief?"

"Huh? Why?" Unconsciously, April mirrored Kajagar by rubbing her own chin as she thought it over, then answered her own question. "So I can be Chief?"

"So--yeah."

"But what do you get out of it, mistress?" In her short time away from me, April had really mastered the art of injecting as much naked contempt into the word 'mistress' as it could fit.

"The Chief's gonna drag this tribe into a battle that'll kill us all one o' these days," Kajagar said with a shrug. "I'd rather a Chief who ain't gonna do that, aye?"

"Why don't you just challenge him, then? Mistress."

This time, Kajagar's laugh wasn't a wheeze or a cackle--it was a full-throated guffaw, complete with her hands clutching at her nonexistent belly. "Cal would kill me as easily as 'e breathes, pet. Hells--if 'e were in yer position in 'ere, I'd be deader'n the Styx by now."

April was silent for a while. If the thought of going in for a killing blow against Kajagar to end her spell over the tent and get us out of here hadn't occurred to her before, it had definitely dawned on her now. "Well, I-I don't know how much of our fight you saw, but I can't exactly beat him either, mistress."

Her tone had softened, losing its aggressive edge, but it was still far from friendly. She'd gone from actively hostile to… reproachful, maybe.

"That's b'cause ye didn't 'ave the cleverest asp this side o' Tiresia on yer side before," Kajagar cackled. "I've got a strategy that c'n turn the tide fer ye. If yer pet elf agrees ter the other half of me offer."

She gestured at me, still nestled under April's warm armpit--April glanced down and jumped slightly, as if she'd forgotten me entirely for a second. Sheepishly, she set me down and brushed me off slightly--then jumped again and shoved her hands behind her back when she remembered that we were both naked. "Wh-what's the other half, then--mistress?"

"Insurance," Kajagar rasped. "Ye may not be an unrepentant murderer, but I'd rather hedge me bets." She sank to her knees and picked up the fallen brand: its end still glowered up at us in the shape of a downward-pointing sword. I stiffened, and by my side April matched me. A pang of sympathy ate at my heart--the pain of last night seemed a hundred times worse, seeing the impression that it had left on April. "Ye take me out o' the picture, whatever the reason, and Annie 'ere faces the consequences."

"No. No way. Mistress." April's response was every bit as abrupt and uncompromising as I'd dreamt it would be. She hadn't even cared to hear what those consequences were. "We're not--you're gonna help us without that brand, or I'll--I'll tell the Chief all about your dumb plan. Mistress."

Kajagar's head snapped forward, so suddenly that it could have been accompanied by the sound of a whip-crack. We both flinched back--I had to fight the impulse to jump behind the reassuring wall of April's body.

"'e'd turn me into garters," Kajagar hissed. "Ye ready t'have that death on yer conscience, too?"

April sucked in a sharp breath--and with a start, I realised that her eyes were wet.

"Hey!" I snapped, taking a shaky step forwards. "That's--that's not fair--mistress!"

Kajagar's head swivelled to affix me with her slit-eyed glare. "How 'ave ye not figured this one out yet, Sugar? A witch don't do fair."

"Well--well what about your tribe, mistress? I-if you don't help us win, they'll still be stuck with the Chief!" I could barely follow my own thoughts as the words rushed out, but some kind of fire in me urged me on, fueled by the sight of April close to tears. Kajagar might have been an unrepentant sadist, but she wasn't a cartoonish supervillain. She knew what caring about someone looked like, which meant--"Do you want their deaths on your conscience? …Mistress?"

Some silences were loud. In a strange sort of unison that went beyond all the animosity that burned between them, April and Kajagar stared at me in the loudest silence I'd seen in my life so far--and then it was broken by a single, snarled syllable. "Fine." Though her narrow features were twisted, yellow fangs bared in what was plainly her version of a grimace, I thought I saw a glimmer of begrudging respect in Kajagar's murky eyes. "Ye bloody win."

Before I'd even processed the fact of our victory in this brief dispute, April swept me up in a crushing embrace. Happy tears spilled over my face, drawing tracks through all the cum that the beastkin had left on us both.

"Anne! O-oh my god that was amazing--"

"N-not so tight--"

"Ahem." The two of us looked up to see Kajagar drumming her fingers impatiently on the table beside her. "If yer quite ready to 'ear me plan now?"

With a flourish of one spindly hand, she produced something dark and shiny, and tossed it down at us. April caught it one-handed, leaving the other wrapped tight around my narrow frame, and brought it down to my eye level to reveal a familiar twist of shimmering metal, dangling from a jet black string. "My charm!"

"Aye. I've no clue how two daylings like ye got yer grubby little 'ands on that thing, but it's one powerful relic. I took the liberty o' Identifyin' it last night, and, well…"

April's brow furrowed as she scanned through something in the air in front of her--the charm's tooltip? After a moment, she stabbed a finger in its direction, and it appeared for me, too.

"Ye can shift shapes, aye?" Kajagar said coldly.

April hesitated. "Sort of, mistress."

"If ye can take on the bark o' a timber wolf, I expect ye can take on any aspect of the Chief ye please--and me fangs. Between five o' those and yer spellcastin'... well, ye'll 'ave a fightin' chance."

April stared. "You want me to turn into him, mistress?"

"D'ye happen to know anything stronger'n that hellbeast?"

April and I exchanged glances. Not in the overworld, no, but there were a few monsters in the Breachwood that might be able to give him a run for his money... like the horrible 'dragon' that had dropped the Protean Charm in the first place.

"I-I guess not, mistress," April said finally.

If Kajagar had noticed the look that had passed between us, or any shift in my expression in response to April's lie, she didn't let anything on. "Right. Then if yer both on board with me plan, I'll need ye back in that cage, wolf. We don't want Cal catchin' a whiff of anythin' amiss, aye?"

Chapter 31: Interlude II: Behind Silver Bars

Chapter Text

"Ah!! Ah~!! Ah~!! Y-you're soo--big, mistress!!"

April sat very still, back ram-rod straight, and tried as hard as she could to block out the sounds of Anne and Kajagar having sex behind her. She'd turned around for the sake of Anne's modesty, though it had rapidly become clear to her that the line between hearing someone have sex and openly watching it wasn't nearly as thick as she wanted. In front of her floated the tooltip for her newest Milestone, doing little to keep her attention.

She tried to settle herself with a deep breath. It wasn't like that was really Anne having sex. Her--his real body was safe in his bedroom, with the Phantasm Vision's headset blotting out his sight and every other sensory experience that his real body was supposed to be having. As realistic as his moans and whimpers and cries were, it wasn't really his mouth making them. The game was realistic, not real.

That, of course, was a pale reassurance in the face of April's own slickening pussy. Or her fluffy white tail, thumping itself against the silver floor of her prison. Or the yearning need that was growing in her womb. Or the slight tinge of jealousy that she was fighting valiantly to stamp out.

Slap. Slap. Slapslapslapslapslap--

"Ahhhh~!!"

Anne wasn't doing this because she--he--wanted to. Kajagar had simply pointed out that their short-lived escape attempt had left undeniable traces of April's scent outside the silver cage… and the Chief was expecting Anne to have been used by at least one of the tribe members before his return. Having Kajagar take care of this by… using Anne on top of each place April had touched when she'd left the cage, overwriting her scent with the combined scents of Anne and Kajagar's raw sex was just… killing two birds with one stone.

"Ye ready t'cum again, Sugar?"

"Y-yes, mistress!!"

Kajagar's voice was breathy, raspier than usual, her frenetic thrusting against Anne's soft behind clearly taking a physical toll--but the change to her voice was nothing compared to the keening, sloppy need that Anne's had taken on. No matter what April tried--deep breathing, reminding herself of all the very good reasons why he was doing this right now, planning out a strategy for her upcoming duel with the Chief--she couldn't help but wonder if he wasn't secretly enjoying this.

"Ah~!!"

It was ridiculous. It was absurd. She'd known Anne for years, and he'd never once given off the impression that he liked boys--or butt stuff. And he'd made it very clear, on that first, fateful night trapped in VALKYRIE, that he didn't identify as a girl in any way. Getting raped non-stop by these bandits, well, it hadn't been fun for her, but she'd at least been able to… appreciate some of the physical sensations, especially knowing that her real body was safe and sound in the real world. It had to be so much worse for Anne, since she--he!!--didn't even like dicks at all to begin with.

"Beg for it proper, then. Tell Mummy how bad ye want it."

"F-fuck--please~! Mistress!!"

And yet--no matter what he said, whether it was a wordless squeal, or a desperate whine, or a gasped protest--she couldn't shake the feeling that he was into it. Her hand slipped over her slick cunny. Only a supreme effort of will managed to pry it away. She hadn't been able to finger herself to completion once since entering this game--it'd been the first thing she'd tried for her first Beastkin Heat--but that didn't mean she wanted to chance Anne catching her trying. Not to the sounds of him getting railed by a ridiculously hung snake-woman.

"C'mon, Sugar. Ye can beg better'n that."

"P-please… I-I wanna… ah~!! Mistress!!"

April bit her lip. The witch was taunting him, teasing him, bullying him, all while she was helpless in her silver prison, barely able to keep herself from toying with herself. Part of her wanted to whirl around and demand she let him cum without any more of these games--but she was also scared to. If she turned around and saw Anne, bent over, an enormous length of pale, spongy flesh lodged up his butt, his delicate little hands splayed on the rough wood of a table and barely holding him up… what would she see in his eyes?

"Pleasepleasepleaseee!! Y-you said you'd be--hgnhh--n-nice, Mistress!!"

"An' I am." Smack.

"EePP!!"

"Barely put any force inta that, didn' I?" Another round of clapping rang out over the tent. "C'mon, Sugar. One li'l beg. Then I'll let ye cum to yer heart's content."

Silently, April willed Anne to give in. It… it wouldn't be very dignified of him, but the sooner he came, spurting his rosy scent out over where she'd been, the sooner Kajagar would be finished, and the sooner she'd get to stop fighting the urge to touch herself.

"...p-please may I c-cum, mistress…?" Anne moaned, his voice small.

Despite herself, April found herself frowning--sooner was better, but… that soon? She shook herself, inside and out. This was fine. They still had another couple of spots to get through, anyway. Why was she feeling so disappointed in him?

"Arright, ye little butt slut. Cum away."

"AHHH~~!!"

Every hair on April's body stood on end, Anne's joyful wail leaving it crystal clear that--if nothing else--he enjoyed this part. Instinctively, before she could even think about stopping herself, April sniffed the air; his scent had trickled free of the strange metal thing wrapped around his penis. Unlike the powerful musks and odours of the beastkin and their rather unclean living conditions, his scent was flowery and sweet, and the scent of his squirt--well, his cum--even more so. On its own, it probably wouldn't be enough to blot out her own smell…

"Ahh…"

… but Kajagar, with a far more composed sigh of her own, and a distinct glugging sound that April immediately resolved to pretend that she couldn't hear, provided the other half of their shared aroma. Her scent was thick and cloying, somehow both bitter and sour so that it tickled the back of April's throat as she inhaled. April squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to imagine the sticky white ropes her second cock would have strewn over the ground beneath Anne, or their musky flavour, or their chewy, gelatinous texture.

"Hungry, Sugar?"

April's eyes snapped open. "N-no! Don't do it!"

She had no idea how much 'progress' Anne had made on his Cum Guzzler Milestone yet, but hers had gone up dangerously far in the last two days, and he'd had a lead on her, with the bandits who'd briefly taken him hostage on the first night of this quest. She couldn't see what Cum Addict did, but a name like that did not bode well.

Kajagar sighed reluctantly. "Fine."

April paused thoughtfully, once again managing to force her hand away from her sopping snatch. Sadistic and ruthless as she was, Kajagar was at least taking the possibility of April winning this duel--and becoming her new Chief--seriously. She hadn't exactly outlined what authority being Chief would grant her, it was true, but she was clearly taking some pains to stay on April's good side.

"A-and stop trying to make her beg, mistress." She didn't turn around as she gave the command, and her voice trembled slightly, but her words were clear.

"Yer bein' awful demandin' fer a lass who's still Hunt Bitch," Kajagar grunted. "But… I'll try me best."

Her chest tight, April could only listen as, a few paces further away but no less audible to her fluffy white ears, Anne's helpless and yet oh-so-sweet refrain returned.

"Ah~!! AhH~!!"

Foliage of all stripes thundered past Caliburn. The golden stalks of the riverbank blurred into a yellow river on his right; the muddy trees of the forest blurred into a green one on his left. Behind him, hard-pressed but nevertheless matching his pace in a loose chain, raced the five troops he'd taken for this mission--some of his most trusted lieutenants, each one a skilled warrior in their own right. Ripper. Alabak. Gnom. Steinbeck. Felsi.

Five of his elites, and Caliburn himself, had taken the wolf-girl on this hunt. Laden her with all their gear, and a few tons of worthless ballast just to be sure. And the wolf-girl had been able to outfox them all. Unfairly, if it needed to be said, with that power of undying granted unto her by the arbitrary heavens--but even then. It was that very unfairness that made her such a valuable asset. Caliburn's instincts had been right, as usual. The wolf-girl had potential.

He cast a golden eye over his train of bandits. Ripper's strength was flagging, the gills on the sides of her neck gasping uselessly for water that was not there. His snout tightened, but he slowed himself by a notch, and the others gratefully adjusted to match. In another world, he might have sent Ripper into the river, where her top speed rivalled his own; but in truth, he was in no particular hurry.

The wolf-girl was clever, but desperation and a lack of options had culled her chances of a true escape to nil. Even if luck had been on her side, and she'd chosen a time when Kajagar wasn't present in the main tent to immediately subdue her--be it through her venom or her magic--and the elf was available to cast her escape spell on her, Caliburn had already taken the measure of her top speed. And he had her scent--her intoxicating, deliciously wild scent. He'd have her again before they even made it out of the dead part of the forest.

Despite himself, Caliburn let a smile stalk its way over his muzzle. Taming this allogene girl was already proving to be a most delightful challenge.

Focus on the number yer castin' by, and what changes you want.

"Wild Aspect." The name of her spell took on a strange new gravity as, following Kajagar's direction, the unassuming bracelet of unpainted wooden beads that was her holy symbol clutched in one palm, April tried overcasting for the very first time. It almost felt as if she was saying the words twice at once, the spell and its echo, compressed into the space of a single casting. Her body shifted and grew in response, following the vision laid out in her thoughts; a wave of striped russet fur burst out over her skin, and her very muscles rippled and warped. The sensation was totally unlike her usual timber-wolf aspect--it reminded her far more of when she shrank to make use of a sepsie's speed, though in the opposite direction. And… doubled.

"H-how does it feel?" Anne stared up at her, eyes shining with concern. She--he--was still panting with exertion from his last and final round on the end of Kajagar's penises, the physical remains of it still dribbling languidly down his thighs. He had been bound securely over a table near the cage, arms locked to his sides and the table's surface by a thick, scratchy rope, his round rear end just barely peeking out over its coils--a necessary precaution, Kajagar had claimed before she'd left, in case the Chief returned unexpectedly early and found them alone in the main tent without any… supervision. But he was concerned for her. April fought back the urge to snatch him up in a bone-crushing hug and return the favour, gushing over him and holding him close until he felt safer than ever before. She'd--she'd already fucked up so much--but she shook her head and composed herself once more. There'd be time for that after she won. And she was going to win.

"Kinda… good, actually." April turned her arms over and twisted around, examining herself as she went, and inadvertently putting on a rather impressive show for her bound audience of one. The floor of the cage was definitely a couple of inches further away from her now. She gave her fingers a tentative stretch. Even that simple, trivial action felt so much stronger. More responsive. Like she was more. There was something heady about it, like she'd just taken too much liquor, too fast, but without the burn in her throat.

She brought up her attributes with a couple of swift, practised flicks. Wild Aspect had one of two effects, really: if she pictured a creature in her head, she could take on either an attribute (like a pixie's Dexterity) or an ability (like a timber-wolf's bark skin) that belonged to it. If she didn't specifically think of one, the spell seemed to have a default for each possible model--like how it defaulted to the bark skin of the timber-wolf.

Just now, she'd dualcast the spell, focusing on the Chief's Strength and Fortitude. The plan was to pentacast it during the fight itself, but that would be a grave drain on her mana; Anne could only cast so many Infuses on her before he ran dry, and any restoration beyond that would have to come from April's own passive mana recovery.

And… April sniffed the air. Anne's dainty scent still filled it, marred only by a few cloying streaks of snake, and as her emerald eyes fell upon Anne himself, she couldn't help but linger on his restrained body, and the vulnerable position he'd been left in. Couldn't help but admit that a heat she'd scarcely ever felt for him before was rearing up inside her. The 'aspects' she chose weren't the only ones that came with the forms Wild Aspect gave her. There were also… instincts. Desires. Things that those forms' original owners had a natural interest in became… interesting to her, bending her attention towards them, far subtler but no less intractable than the lust from her Beastkin Heat.

Before this game, April had never really been interested in girls--not in that way--and even if Anne didn't want to be, right now he was one. But at that moment… sharing in some small piece of the Chief's inherent desires as she was… she had to admit that Anne was looking very cute. Very… tameable.

She wasn't going to pentacast this spell except when it was absolutely necessary.

Motion at the entrance of the tent momentarily diverted her attention, and she released her transformation, her skin slurping up her striped fur and her bones snapping back to their original sizes in an instant. In one deft motion, she dropped her holy symbol and slipped a foot over it, all without taking it into her inventory. Physical contact with it was all that she needed to cast a spell--and if worst came to the worst, she might need to cast a spell.

"Relax, ladies," Kajagar drawled as she slithered into the tent. April… dropped her guard ever-so-slightly, though she remained a long distance from relaxed, and out of the corner of her eye she saw Anne doing the same. "It's jest me."

"What do you want, mistress?" April grunted.

"Chief's back."

"What? Already, mistress?" They'd left the camp at dawn, April in tow and struggling under her over-encumbrance. The passage of time in this underground camp was hard to keep track of, but had it really been half a dozen hours already? Had they hurried back?

"Aye. Snatch."

With a swing of her staff, Kajagar cast the spell that the bandits had used to strip her and an unconscious Anne of all their belongings, whether they were in their inventories or not. April's bracelet vanished from under her foot, to reappear in Kajagar's empty hand. The snake-kin pocketed it--then repeated the process with the Protean Charm.

"I've told 'im that ye've caught wind of… protocol, as it 'e'd call it, between beastkin in this tribe. Slave ye may be, but yer still a fine warrior. 'e'll be along ter… accept yer challenge shortly."

"Right… mistress."

Kajagar jabbed her staff at Anne. "An' remember. Nothin' we've said since yer little quiz passed between us. I took ye both down, an' the Chief doesn't catch wind that it 'appened any other way, unnerstood?"

"O-okay, mistress!" Anne snapped, having recovered a few scraps of his temper, if not necessarily pride, in the short time since Kajagar had finished fixing the scent in the tent with him.

Kajagar leered toothily at them both, forked tongue playing about her stiletto fangs. "Ta-ta. An'--seein' as I won't be able t'say it in front of Cal--good luck."

The Chief's tent was a dour jade in colour, at once stately and understated; it had been plundered from a family of lesser nobles travelling between the cities of Lumberg and Sammouth, and though they had been conscientious enough to invest in a tent inscribed with a few simple warding spells, and dyed so as to encourage the wandering eye to slide over it entirely, they had not extended that same level of care to the bawdy drinking games they'd played around their campfire. The nobles and their belongings mysteriously went missing on their return trip, and their immediate relatives in Sammouth quietly agreed that the freedom to consolidate the family's resources under fewer hands than before was a much greater prize than finding out what had happened to dear Uncle Horace and his two brats.

Caliburn permitted a solitary, luxurious sigh to slink its way free from his chest. Under the warm half-light of a dozen sputtering candles, no more of a hindrance to his perfect night vision than the midday sun, the gorgeous woman draped lovingly over his lap coaxed his member up to its full length with her soft mouth. From tip to base went her tongue, again and again, not shying away in the slightest from the pale spines that dotted his length. Her talents were unparalleled among the women that the tribe had captured; already his pride, staggered by the exertion of his run home, had been brought to half-mast. The greater part of her efforts was behind her.

An approving hand fell upon her head, light so as to allow her to keep bobbing and bouncing, weaving in the occasional touch of her soft lips to his sensitive flesh, and the even more occasional nip of her prominent front teeth--but just heavy enough to remind her of his profound gravity over her. Size and strength were their own qualities; what made her heart thrill at his touch, and ache to be filled by his prodigious body, was something else entirely.

"You stink of the men," Caliburn rumbled, though it was not with any rancour. A good Chief was not above sharing his property with his tribe--so long as they understood that she was his to share. Under Kajagar's tutelage, Caliburn had done all that was necessary to sear that understanding into every last tribesman's mind.

"Y-yes, sir," Cotton murmured, as Caliburn's enormous fingers scritched their way down her floppy ears. The way he'd stroked that elf last night. "Lady Kajagar t-told me to… work the tent."

Caliburn nodded thoughtfully. Kajagar held a commanding rank within the tribe, as the only one both willing and able to use the devilishly complex art of healing magic, their resident medicine-witch, and his own de facto advisor. Add in that the troops who had remained on the camp's grounds today were primarily made up of her own personal command, resting up after a long mission in the West, and it was clear that there would be no need for discipline.

He took a deep breath, drawing Cotton's scent up into his lungs. It was a heady, alluring scent, though not in quite the same way as the effect that his own musk had on women… and sissies. Theirs was the rush of submission, of defeat, of the well and true acceptance of his superiority. His was the rush of certainty. In the span of one breath, he had the measure of his slave. Her race, her gender, the faintest trickle of her arousal that misted freely from her in response to his every touch and every word--and the quaking undercurrent of fear that lurked beneath every last expression that danced across her features in his presence.

In this respect, he could only pity the humans and the dwarves that ruled the Geldreich. Their Prime Minister would never know the sublime delight of knowing a woman in this way, of taking in her terror and her adoration in a single breath, of the damning testimony that only a nose such as his could exact from her. All their Lords and Ladies, Dukes and Duchesses both, had not the hearing to derive a woman's heartbeat from across one of their gaudy ballrooms, to detect each minute tremor in her voice as she assented fitfully to each degrading demand made of her. And of those pious ingrates who helmed the Gilded Guard--

"S-sir…!!"

Cotton trembled in his grip, every muscle locked up. Every pore exuded a terror more mortal than she usually felt in his presence. Caliburn paused. His grip on her head had grown… tight. He relaxed it.

"You may continue."

"Y-yes, sir!" The fresh spike of fear, injected directly into Cotton's heart, redoubled her dedication to pleasing her master, and soon the air was filled with a frenzied chorus of slurping and sucking. And, Caliburn noted with some satisfaction, a blossom of her renewed arousal, now that the imminent threat to her life had passed. The girl was a consummate masochist; she'd been his favourite plaything for years for very good reason.

He stroked her once more, short hair and long ears both, settling into her new rhythm. Feeling her fragile bones under his fingers. A matter that the politicians and the nobles did not have to worry about, perhaps according to some great cosmic balance that sought to compensate them for their feeble senses. If their passions were to get the better of them on a night with their chosen playthings, the worst they could inflict upon their brides or grooms might be a cut or a bruise. For someone with the raw gifts of Caliburn, and his greatest troops, the worst was a great deal worse.

That was the nature of power, he mused. The freedom to follow each of his desires, as far down whatever twisted road they may lead him; and the burden of keeping them in check, so that twisted road would not twist upon itself. Ensuring that indulging the short-lived desires of today would not intrude upon his far greater desires of tomorrow.

A familiar set of footfalls approached his tent, rousing him from his contemplations.

"Am I interruptin'?" Kajagar hissed, poking her head through the curtain that covered the tent's entrance.

"No." Caliburn leaned back in his seat. Unlike the throne he kept atop the stage in the main tent, this was a spartan, unadorned affair, sturdy but plain beyond that. Cotton continued resolutely lapping at his member, the return of Kajagar quickening her heartbeat with renewed humiliation, but not enough to make her obedience to him waver. "The allogenes are secure?"

"Aye, Chief. Still trussed 'n caged up like two winter turkeys."

"Good." He contemplated his advisor. She was hiding something from him, he decided. This was not an insight borne of Caliburn's own preternatural senses; in truth, the few times he'd ever been able to discern any sort of emotion from her, besides her usual knowing self-satisfaction, it had been a trick. The truth was, she was simply too skilled a liar to catch--and that was precisely why, all else being equal, Caliburn had learned to assume that she was always lying about something. She was simply too good at it to waste any time not doing it. "What do you think? About this challenge."

Kajagar shrugged. "She's got an 'are's chance, no matter which way ye cut it. T'me, that says she's got some sorta trick up 'er sleeve… but it's gonna have t'be a good one, aye?"

"Hm. She hardly seemed the kind to play tricks."

"Eh. Evolve an' adapt, ain't it? Things get dire, y'start ter go… off script." As always, every pause was natural. There wasn't a hint of a flinch in her stance, nor a tremor in her voice. Caliburn leaned back. Did the allogenes have any significance to her at all? She'd long held an interest in star-stuff, and she'd certainly plied their last visitor with enough questions about wherever it was that the allogenes had descended from… but had that been a smokescreen? Perhaps all this business with the duel was her way of drawing his attention from something else entirely. She, of all people, would hardly want the wolf girl to rule this tribe, with her big heart and her farraki morals. Though… if she felt she could control her by threatening that sissy elf… it would be a risky game for her, but perhaps one that her reckoning had found worthwhile.

"Very well." It was worth thinking about, at the very least.

He seized hold of Cotton by her ears--her mutation had given her such perfect handles--and pressed his throbbing cock head between her soft lips. That was all the direction she needed to push her head down of her own accord, puckering her lips to form a perfect seal midway down his shaft, and burying his tip in the top of her gullet.

"Mmfhh… mmff… mmmm…" Her contented murmurs as he pumped her throat full with his fat, sticky, load purred over his length, and he went back to stroking her head approvingly. When he was finished, he dislodged himself from her mouth, and allowed her to dip down for one final, dutiful kiss upon his cock's slitted eye.

"Th-thank you, sir," she moaned breathlessly.

Caliburn lifted her easily off his lap, and deposited her on the ground without another word to her. "Let us proceed."

"Aye, chief."

Dull grey light washed over the walls of the main tent as Kajagar's spell over them ceased, falling to the ground like curtains of water. The moment the last hint of the magic faded, a pair of familiar faces strode in; the bandits' tiger-kin Chief, looking no worse for the wear after his hurried return to the camp, and the white-furred Cotton, visibly trembling with one of her master's russet arms wrapped around her slender waist. April caught a glimpse of Kajagar's swishing tail as the entrance flap swung shut behind them--she wasn't following them in.

"I trust that the journey home was not too arduous?" boomed the Chief as he reached the cage, sparing little more than a glance for the bedraggled Anne.

"Shut up, sir," April spat.

The Chief raised an eyebrow. "Is that any way to address your owner?"

April squirmed. Something apologetic was fighting its way into her throat from some point deep inside her, just short of clawing its way into speech--

"Sir," she said neutrally. She decided not to glance Anne's way.

"That's better," he said, with a stoic, almost paternal approval. "I'm told that you wish to challenge me."

"Yes." She paused, as long as she was able--"Sir."

The corner of the tiger-kin's lips quirked upward, though it was hard to say whether this was in response to her desire to challenge him or the way she was still straining against the Sigil of Courtesy she was under. "Understand this, girl. Though any beastkin in a tribe has the right to challenge the sitting Chief, the mere act of exercising that right is one of the gravest insults that one beastkin can give to another. When you challenge me, you are not only questioning the sobriety of my judgement; you are making, in no uncertain terms, the claim that you are strong enough to kill me. That you are stronger than me."

April struggled to maintain her poker face. Kajagar hadn't mentioned anything like this--was this his way of trying to intimidate her? A mind game, to set the stage for the duel itself?

"W-well, maybe she is, sir!" Anne's voice was wan, but it was enough to draw both their attentions. The Chief seemed momentarily taken aback, as if he'd forgotten about him entirely--and if she was being honest with herself, April had too.

"Hah." There was no mirth in the Chief's snorted laugh. "If she was, she'd have proven it last night."

He reached through the bars, fingers poised to cup her chin--but when she darted down to bite down on it, a snarl erupting from her throat, his hand shifted directions and tempo mid-gesture, and his act of overt affection turned into a savage backhand that made her head spin and her jaw explode with pain.

"Hey!!" And then, since Anne had been addressing the Chief… "Sir!"

"I want you to understand this, girl. I could very easily refuse your challenge, on the grounds that there are far more fitting ways of punishing a slave for the insolence of making it." He lunged forwards again, his arm improbably nimble despite being angled through the bars of the cage, and this time April was too dazed, too sluggish, to do anything to avoid it. His fingers found her throat. "But I won't."

April clapped her hands on either side of his extended forearm and sunk her fingers into them, her breathing laboured but not yet choked. The slightest gasp of air was getting into her lungs.

"In truth, I rather welcome this opportunity to humiliate you even further. To show you what we beastkin think of a weakling--and worse, a weakling who doesn't know her place."

His grip began to tighten. April's world began to darken; the game ate at her nerves with a concerningly realistic tightening of her chest, and hammering of her heart, and blurring of her vision. She dug her fingers into his flesh, the last of her strength going into the effort, managing to draw blood with even her blunt fingernails--but the Chief did not budge. She may as well have tried to lift a mountain.

"April!"

"Of course, it needn't be too humiliating." Somehow, though he hadn't even raised his voice, the Chief drowned out all of Anne's helpless protests. Dimly, April realised that he'd brought his face all the way to the bars of the cage. Peering at her like a kid picking out a dog at the local pound.

The moment passed. He released her. Shook his arm, sending droplets of his own blood flying to either side. April fell to the floor of the cage, hands automatically jumping to where his fingers had left their heat and their scent, gasping and sputtering for sweet breath, massaging her throat to little avail. The pain--and the fear--weren't going away.

"All I ask is this," the Chief said, pacing back. He hadn't even let go of his bunny-girl escort throughout the entire ordeal; still his arm was wrapped around her, possessive and implacable. "Tell me whose idea this was."

Through wheezes and coughs, April managed to drag herself to her feet. She turned her face up to him, so that she could glare at him right in his pitiless, golden eyes. "Me. Sir. It was--my idea."

The Chief turned away. His arm fell from around Cotton's waist, and he gave a deep sigh. It was laden with disappointment; but there was something that might have approached pride in it, too, if April ignored every merciless act of sadism he'd perpetrated since before she'd first encountered him.

"Very well. Cotton!" His slave jumped at her name, ears and all standing stock still. "Bring me a brand."

As Cotton hastened up to the stage, faster than April had expected her capable of, Anne beset the Chief with a flurry of new protests. "H-hey, wait, sir, please, y-you can't ch--"

"Silence." The Chief jabbed a finger meaningfully at Anne, and though it had only been for a second, April could have sworn that she saw a golden light radiate from the palm of that hand.

Anne's mouth continued to move--but no sound came out.

April swallowed. If he cast that on her during their duel, she'd still be able to cast Thunderclap, but any other spell…

Cotton bounded back to the Chief's side. He plucked the silver rod from her upturned hands, and held it aloft. As it had last night, its head began to flicker, white-hot, between a host of indistinct shapes--and then, almost as quickly as it had started, stopped at what looked almost like a trophy. Except that this trophy had been split almost in half, with a jagged lightning bolt of emptiness.

If his first foray into the cage had been a feint, and the second had been impossible to escape, his third was impossible to follow. One second, he had the brand primed in one hand; the next, its end was already thrust into April's gut, filling her world with the same mind-bending pain as last time.

"I look forward to facing you in the ring."

April barely registered Anne's pained cry as the Chief, brand still in hand, rounded on him--nor the way he leaned in and whispered something into his ears as he wept, unable to even clutch his stomach in agony.

The Chief and his pet strode off, and all April could make of it was the dull horror of a war that had been lost before it had even begun.

Chapter 32: Tiger vs. Wolf

Chapter Text

Soon after the Chief left us, a pair of new brands seared into our stomachs, a horde of beastkin poured their way in through the main entrance, packed in tightly but stopping short of actively shoving at each other. The audience for April's duel. There were far more than the skeleton crew that I'd seen throughout the day here, I noted grimly.

At the front of the column strode a familiar beastkin; stoutly built, his fur mud-coloured and spotted with even darker splotches, his face terminating in a squashed snout and his head crowned with a straw-coloured mane. A hyena-kin, perhaps. He'd been at the head table last night, not too many places down from the Chief himself.

As he started barking orders at the beastkin milling about in his immediate vicinity, and they broke off to descend upon the tables and stools around them, I couldn't stop myself from stealing another glance at the tooltip hovering in front of my face.

It hadn't gone away since the Chief had branded me, seeing as nobody had 'attacked' me in the intervening time, and with my hands tied at my sides and my body bent suggestively over my table, I hadn't been able to dismiss it myself. So in front of me it stayed, tantalising me with fantasies of what it would mean for me.

Consider this a prize for the eventual victor.

There were only two possible outcomes for this brand. Whether April won or lost, I was going to be forced to make out with someone--either the heartless man who'd just taken her down, or… April herself, glowing with the heat of victory. My face burned. Obviously I wanted to kiss her, but this was--this was way too soon. We were still trapped in the game, first of all, and I hadn't even told her I'd liked her, or asked her out on a date, or--w-well, we had sort of had sex, only it was entirely oral, and mostly, at least on her end, out of the need to get her Arousal taken care of--

A pair of scraggly fists came down on either side of me, and unwound the thick coils of rope that bound me to the table I'd been bent over. The possible hyena-kin.

"Open," he grunted.

"Wh-what do you--" Taking the opportunity that I'd stupidly given him, the beastkin pressed a section of the rope into my open mouth mid-sentence, then brought the two halves of it to meet behind the back of my head, where he tied them off. The rest of the length was brought down to the small of my back, where he easily dragged my wrists and tied them too. Tied and gagged--I wasn't going to be casting any spells like this. As my spit soaked the salty strands of rope in my mouth, I wished dimly that I'd never learned to cast spells without my wand. A-at least they wouldn't have bothered to tie me up, and I wouldn't have to deal with how much being tied up made my clitty throb and my pussy drool. It was like being with Percy and Layla all over again…

Behind me, the cage door clinked open, a far more melodic chime than the clanging of the cages in the slave tent. I whirled around, and almost immediately flushed with regret and shame--naked like I was, there was nothing to conceal the gentle mounds of my breasts, or the humiliating metal cage that encircled my p-clitoris, from April. She'd… she'd certainly seen it all, by this point, but… that didn't mean I wanted to… parade it around in front of her.

But when April trudged out of the silver cage, her eyes downcast, they barely flicked my way for a fraction of a second. She held her hands together, not quite clasped, as if they were bound by an invisible rope of her own. It wasn't so much walking that moved her forward, as it was a pronounced, lifeless slumping, totally unlike her usual confident stride. Even her furry white ears and her tail lay limp, the very fluff in them somehow deflated. The… the Chief had spoken to her for a while. What had he said to shake her like this?

My eyes drifted down to her midriff. He'd left a new brand on her, same as he had on me, though the design was slightly different--above the black rose of 'Courtesy' sat a black trophy with a jagged, empty line through it. A broken trophy.

"MfHmh!!" I called out to April as she passed me, the improvised gag muffling my words but, hopefully, not my intent.

"Oi." The hyena-kin planted a warning hand around the back of my neck, but April lifted her head, roused from her stupor.

"Anne?" Her voice started wan, her eyes dim--but then, as if just the reminder of my existence was enough to restore some of her usual pep, she straightened up. It wasn't quite all the way--there was clearly something still weighing on her, but… at least as far as I could tell, despair had mostly given way to determination. "Don't worry, Anne. I-I'll figure it out. You can count on me."

Figure what out? What was her brand doing to her?

Any further speculation was cut short when the hyena-kin, meaty hand still on my neck, shoved me past April. I stumbled into the cage--the door clinked shut after me, and the hyena-kin stuck a dainty, silver key into the tiny keyhole on it. Another precaution. They really did not want to risk me somehow slipping away when all eyes were on April and the Chief.

From the horde of bandits rearranging the contents of the tent emerged a pair of smaller bandits, heaving a wooden chest between them. They set it down by the hyena-kin, who kicked it in the direction of April.

"'ere's yer shit."

Without a word, gorgeous green eyes still glimmering with that renewed determination, April got down on one knee and started rummaging through our gear within. Piece by piece, equipment appeared on her body. The skimpy suit of leather armour she'd worn for her bandit disguise… still missing its top after the Chief had destroyed it, leaving her breasts on full display--for me, and for every last beastkin in the tent. The wooden buckler she'd taken out for her last fight with the Chief, shimmering with its crackling enchantment. And--to my relief--the pewter twist of her Protean Charm. At first, it appeared around her throat, complete with a black length of string, but at an almost imperceptible gesture it vanished, to reappear around her ankle. It was followed in this by a bracelet of wooden beads. I had no idea how she'd shifted them around on her body like that, but it was pretty clear why--she needed to keep her most valuable gear away from where the Chief would be able to divest her of them, and he had a… tendency to go for the throat.

My clitty tingled. It had scarcely been an hour since I'd last been… satisfied, but between all the bindings and April's sexy body and the thoughts of being dominated by the Chief again and the glances and stares from the bandits working around us--I-I tried to take a deep breath, though it was stymied somewhat by the rope in my mouth. April was going to win. We--we weren't going to spend another night being… u-used…

"Right!" an unfamiliar beastkin called out over the din of the beastkin around us. Their work had finished by now, the tables and benches and stools of the main tent piled in a wide circle along the very edge of the tent. Only April and I remained in the centre of this circle, April clutching her scant equipment close to her, myself tied up and gagged in the silver cage. Even the stage that the Chief's table had stood upon was gone, split into its constituent parts and turned into part of the ring. Each bandit in the camp, even the hyena-kin who'd escorted me into the cage and offered April her stuff, had clambered upon this improvised gladiatorial ring, some of them sitting down on the precariously balanced furnishings, but most standing, hanging on to table legs that jutted up haphazardly from the mass of furniture around and under them. At the very top, perched on what I supposed were the 'best seats,' sat the biggest and meanest-looking of the beastkin--and, looking supremely steady on the interlocking floor of chair legs and table-tops beneath her, Kajagar.

"Ye've probably caught wind of it by now, but tonight, our Chief's bin served 'is first challenge in two years!" The announcing beastkin was only a row down from Kajagar; she was some kind of rodent-kin, though with a much healthier shine to her brown-and-white fur and a much more confident gait than Rastley. Unlike the plain brown armour that most of the other bandits wore, hers was a brash red, and ornamented with yellow trimming that bounced along with each emphatic gesture she made as she spoke.

A raucous cheer washed over us, attacking us from all sides; I fought the urge to cower, while April barely flinched. I'd known it was a duel, and that the whole tribe would be watching, but I somehow hadn't internalised just how much of a spectacle this was going to be until this very moment.

"The challenger is none other than the alaj lass ye see b'fore ye! Slave she may be fer now, but she's just one killin' blow away from throwin' off 'er chains and shootin' all the way up a new station as our Chief!"

Though this line wasn't particularly funny to me, it drew a chorus of laughs from the horde gathered on the ring. I shivered beneath them. These bastards had all watched the Chief humiliate April last night, forcing her to beg for his cock and beg to spare me and beg to be allowed to cum--a-and some of them had even taken part in fucking her themselves. Jealousy, and anger, and fear, and arousal, swirled together all at once in my heart. These animals had no idea who they were laughing at. She was going to follow Kajagar's plan, take that asshole Chief down, and--and show them that she wasn't just a bunch of holes for them to play with!

"And here t'stop 'er in 'er tracks is our champion tonight. The baddest o' the bad, our resident repr'sentative of the Twelve Tribes, undefeated victor 'n every last duel we've seen in th' last ten winters 'imself, I give ye--Chief Caliburn!"

With a final flourish of her arms, the rodent-kin gestured towards the end of the tent opposite her; the main entrance, where the sole chink in the messy ring of furniture that the bandits had left behind lay. On cue, the tiger-kin marched through the curtain, welcomed by a cheer a dozen times louder than any of the crowd's previous efforts. Like the night he'd captured us, he wore his set of faintly glowing armour, and carried neither weapon nor shield; though I was tempted to take it as a sign that he was underestimating April, his style of waiting for April to leave him an opening and then grappling her into submission had been a scarily effective counter to her usual tactics. If she hadn't worked out a way to counter him back...

"The rules're the same as they always 'ave bin!"

I shifted attentively in my cage, taking care not to unsteady myself--with my arms tied behind my back, I could very easily faceplant in the middle of everyone. Kajagar's plan might have hinged on this Duel of Succession working out in our favour, but she hadn't exactly gone through the rules of the contest. Were they really just that simple?

"One! Ain't nobody can interfere!" Well, yeah. Wasn't that what a duel was? "An' two! The fight goes on until one of ye can't fight no more… or gets on yer knees and tells everyone ye quit tryin'."

Scornful hollers and hoots followed the second half of this rule. April's ears twitched. Clearly, there was an outcome that most of the bandits here were hoping for. Did they not think that killing her would 'count,' since she'd just come back?

"Roughlanders!" The Chief's address silenced the tent in an instant, surer than the spell he'd used on me earlier. "You are all acquainted with tonight's challenger! Mere nights ago, she slaughtered a whole platoon of our men, as was her right--and last night, I subdued her and took her as our slave, as was mine!"

He paused, leaving room for yet another round of hollering.

"Today, this outsider exercises her right to insult me with a duel--as if my defeat of her last night was not proof enough of the gulf that lies between us!" The Chief held his arms wide, his stance square. "And so tonight, I shall exercise my right to put her in her place once more."

He slammed his hands together. A deafening crack, ten times the better of even April's Thunderclaps, split the cheers of the crowd that surrounded us.

"I've already decided what your next brand will be, girl," he sneered, at speaking volume. "Have you any last words?"

April took a deep breath and closed her eyes. When she spoke, her voice came out magnified. Like she was somehow saying the words five times at once, in an imperfect chorus. "Wild Aspect."

Her body didn't just ripple. It swelled like the tide, a river bursting its banks, exploding outwards in every direction at once. Cinder stripes surged forth over her, drowning her olive skin and leaving it to soak under entire new inches of sheer, corded muscle. Even her face was not spared, mouth and nose blending together and extending into a grizzled muzzle, sprouting a forest of twitching whiskers. The green of her eyes bled out over the whites; the only thing that broke these new oceans were the twin scars of her slitted pupils.

When the transformation ended, April stood tall, her body almost a perfect mirror of the tiger-kin opposite her. Only her hair--now a long, shaggy mane of orange and black--and her exposed breasts--no longer nearly so pronounced as they had been on her normal, human-sized frame--served to distinguish her from him.

The Chief lowered his arms, for a moment dumbstruck. He probably hadn't been in many fights where his opponent started things by transforming into him. Judging by the raw, confused silence that hung over the ranks of his followers, nobody in the tent had.

"You would dare to wear my stripes?" he snarled, finally. He thrust an arm in the direction of the rat-kin with the red armour who'd rang them in, and she hurriedly snapped to attention. "Sard!"

"Three-two-one go! Fight's on!"

No sooner had Sard finished speaking than the Chief hurtled forward, feet leaving the ground entirely as he barrelled directly into April. The sheer force of his tackle carried them both into the cage behind her--the cage that I was standing in. A hellish clanging filled the air, and I squealed through the rope in my mouth as I was knocked to the floor. It hadn't quite dawned on me when everyone was preparing for the fight, but being in the centre of the arena meant that far from getting involved, I had been involved--even if I couldn't cast any spells. The thought of being used as a human shield again reared its head for a moment--but the cage door was locked. Even if he had the key on him, April wasn't going to leave him to fiddle around with it, right?

As I struggled back to a vaguely upright position--still very much on the floor, but able to see what was going on--April lashed out with her shield arm, trying to catch him with the shield's crackling thunder enchantment. The Chief minced to her right, ducking into her to avoid her reach, but her other arm was waiting; she managed to plunge a familiar-looking dagger into his side.

"Tch." The tiger-kin spat and, completely unfazed by the attack--had it even drawn blood?--drove his fist directly into April's bare stomach. She slammed against the cage again, once again with enough force to rattle the bars--but her health-bar barely moved an inch. She lashed out with the dagger again, once again nicking him, and he struck her in the face with a back-hand. This time, her health didn't move at all. I was pretty sure she'd picked the Chief's defensive attributes as part of her Wild Aspect, but that couldn't have given her that much of a defensive boost…

The dagger. That was my dagger. The one enchanted with Warding, or whatever it was called! The one that gave its wielder shield points every time they landed an attack with it! I'd barely had a chance to use it for myself--most times I was in melee with an enemy in this game, I was about to get knocked to zero life points anyway--but April had remembered it. And out of all our weapons, she'd chosen that one.

And there was more to it than that. As she traded blows with the Chief--the Chief slamming her with crashing, spectacular hits that hurled her to and fro, April barely tickling him with the enchanted dagger--it became obvious that she'd based her entire strategy around the shielding the dagger was giving her. She was ducking back without ever leaving his reach, avoiding only the hits that she couldn't match with a strike of the dagger.

It was a total reversal of their first fight; instead of April charging senselessly in, trying to club the Chief like any of the monsters we'd fought before, it was the Chief on the offensive. But… unlike the Chief's counter-attacks, which had been just as crushing and deadly as April's club would have been, hers were clearly not doing much back to him. Her Strength was far higher than mine, but even in her hands, the dagger's damage output was still pretty weak. She was stalling, but what for?

With a roar of frustration, the Chief charged her yet again--and, this time, deftly shifted his weight towards her dagger arm, arms suddenly outstretched. My heart leapt into my throat. He'd figured out the dagger--

April swivelled on one ankle and rammed her shield down on his back.

KKRAAKOOM.

"FUCK!" The Chief stuttered back, managing to evade her follow-up dagger-strike with that preternatural, liquid grace of his, but there was something ginger about the movement. Though his front was to me, keeping me from seeing the extent of the damage to his back, a faint wisp of smoke and the scent of scorched fur rose up from behind him.

"That damnable shield," he snarled.

The crowd, which had kept up their roars and cheering during the Chief's sustained offensive, had fallen silent. The few beastkin whose faces weren't covered in fur or scales had gone pale, their expressions wan. She'd taken dozens of the guy's strongest hits, back-to-back, and she wasn't just still standing--she'd managed to land a hit of her own as a counter.

"You're a quick study," the Chief said, eventually. There was a touch of hoarseness to his voice, and his breathing was heavier than I'd ever seen it before, but--to his credit--it stayed even. He was still a long way from going down. "I was… mistaken to treat this like a spectacle, it seems."

April grunted in response, keeping her stance square. He began to pace in a tight circle, his gait hunched like a prowling animal, his distance just a hair from her arm's reach; she rotated to face him.

"Just one fight," he murmured. "One fight, and you're following doctrine that some paladins go their whole lives without understanding. " His pacing intensified. The faster he moved, the further forward he hunched; the more bestial his gait became. "All without ever having it formally taught to you. It's impressive, but--"

He darted backwards for a moment; April kept her position, not lured out by the chance to make an offensive of her own.

"Perhaps you'd like to hear it laid out explicitly."

His breathing lightened as he spoke--was he stalling to recover some of his spent stamina? Maybe this was a good window for April to attack.

"Stay as close to your foe as you can stomach."

He stepped forward, and April flinched forward in kind, raising arm and shield both--but he slipped back into his circle without missing a step. Another feint.

"Make him pay for every edge he tries to get."

He switched directions suddenly, and April took a moment to adjust--and then suddenly, he was upon her, ducking past her shield, ignoring her dagger as she struck out at his chest, and his hand had appeared around her throat.

"MFHFmfhH!" My muffled cry rang out across the clearing--but to no avail. Even with all her strategy, even with all her copied strength and speed, she'd been caught.

"And when you see an opening, take it," he hissed. April flailed with her shield, but he caught it with his free arm, then--with a strained grunt of his own--forced her arm back away from her dagger hand, keeping her from making a Thunderclap. She kicked out at him, and though it drew a pained grimace, he used the chance to sweep her legs out from underneath her and press her down to her knees. He wasn't overpowering her nearly so easily as he had last night… but he was still overpowering her. Wasn't her spell supposed to give her Strength equal to his?? Was there a limit to how high it could make her stats??

The muscles in his arm bunched up, visible even under his thick coat of fur, and April's panicked gags collapsed into outright strangled retching. The green began to spill from her healthbar, drained by her ongoing strangulation. With her sole remaining free limb--her dagger arm--she frantically stabbed at his arm over and over again. Blood poured from under his fur, but he didn't flinch for a moment… and the emptying of her healthbar didn't slow in the slightest. Choking bypassed shields.

Around us, the crowd cheered.

The edges of my vision began to dim.

"It seems that the outcome of this duel is all but decided," the Chief murmured, "but I must confess that my patience with this farce wears thin. And, if you've borrowed my Fortitude, then it will be a while yet before you finally die. So I shall have you announce my victory, pup. Purge."

Like April's Wild Aspect, this word was spoken five times at once; and a dreadful premonition settled in my stomach. A golden glow emanated from the palm of his hand, incongruously warm considering that he was using it to strangle a girl to death… and April's transformation melted away. In the span of a second, there wasn't a single shred of tiger left; she was just kneeling, half-naked, teary-eyed, heaving-chested April, clutching her throat with both hands as she tried to massage some semblance of life back into it. The Chief dropped her. He turned and began to stride away, his formidable arms crossed over his chest.

Shakily, her voice thin, April began to speak. "I--"

And then plunged her own fist into her mouth, muffling whatever it was she was about to say.

The Chief spun around. "What?"

"Mmfhfhfghmghh!" April repeated, unintelligbly. "Mmf--mgffghmghh!"

His amber eyes grew dire, and suddenly he was upon her, trying to pry her fist out of her mouth, for some inscrutable reason. "Say it!"

"Mmfhfghmmghmghh--Wild Aspect!" This time, only four Aprils joined in the chorus--and a completely new transformation overtook her body, bathing her in silver.

This was not the bank-bursting flood of the first Wild Aspect; it was a lengthening. Out grew her snout, her whole skull extruding forwards, a close-cut crop of silver fur springing into existence over her head and her hair and then the entire rest of her body. Her arms and legs narrowed and lengthened, too, joints gliding and shifting and slotting easily into new positions, as did her very back, arching forward in a twisted mirror of the way the Chief had during his pacing. Still bipedal, but only just. I swallowed thickly, for a moment glad that I was still in my cage. I… I'd seen her borrow an aspect of a wolf on countless occasions, but this was wolf-April as I'd never seen before; not timber, but silver.

A low growl left April's throat. Her new form had once again brought her to the Chief's height, but without any of his heft, leaving her with a gaunt slenderness that was only further pronounced by her narrow new snout. Far from diminishing her, however, it only made her seem more lethal; it felt as if she could slip between a man and his shadow without disturbing a hair on his head.

"Druid magic," spat the Chief. Suddenly, he was standing practically at my side, hackles raised, a dozen or so yards away from the lupine April. A strange twitch had entered his tail. Was he… scared? "Muzzled yourself, did you? Fine. I--"

April didn't leave him the chance to say another word. With the same blinding speed, she hurtled towards him--but when he darted out of the way, behind my cage, she flowed after him, turning the corner so deftly that it seemed she hadn't changed directions at all. The Chief spun around, abandoning his escape as swiftly as he'd begun it, and his face suddenly contorted with fury--and delivered a haymaker that I knew in my heart would've wiped out my paltry life bar five times over. Even April's dropped dangerously low--had she not taken any defensive bonuses this time??--but then the Chief let out a strangled cry.

April had caught his fist. With her mouth.

And now a pair of gleaming white fangs--the spitting image of the ones Kajagar had taken far too much pleasure in showing off in front of me the whole day--were buried in the bleeding flesh of his hand.

April growled again. Somehow, it sounded like a laugh.

The fight didn't last for much longer after that point. The Chief either didn't have the ability or the mana to cast Antidote or Purify on himself, and though he struggled valiantly to catch April and finish her off before he succumbed to her paralysing venom, his efforts were in vain. Between her wolf form's ridiculous agility--she must have taken its Dexterity--and a couple of choice Thunderclaps, she managed to stall him until he finally collapsed, limbs locked up and his own impotent spittle staining his front. Above April's head, her Milestone count ticked up by one. From twelve to thirteen.

Though the crowd had been silent for a while now, it was only at this point that the silence became… disbelieving. Bandits turned to one another, and even the slaves in their little pen seemed unsure of what was to come next. April herself simply stood by my cage, torn between tracking the crowd's reactions and keeping an eye on the fallen Chief. She'd glanced my way a couple of times, but hadn't said anything. Muzzled herself… could she just not talk like this? Why?

It was Kajagar, slithering down to the red-adorned announcer's side, who finally broke the silence. "It seems that we 'ave a winner."

My experience watching movies had primed me for an outpouring of… something to happen at this point. Cheering, though that might have been out of character for a crowd of bandits who'd genuinely seemed to worship the man who had just lost. Jeers? Grief?

Instead, they remained perched dumbly on the ring. Waiting… but for what? The Chief wasn't going to get any more beaten.

"Traditionally," Kajagar said, clearing her throat, "this is where the winner, ahem, finishes the job."

April released her transformation, returning to her normal self. Stupidly, the first thing that occurred to me was that her breasts were still hanging freely. "No. No way."

"Are ye saying ye refuse to claim yer victory?" Kajagar's tone was light, almost amused--but there was a dangerous edge lurking somewhere in there. Something that said this isn't what we agreed on, wolf.

A wave of whispers rushed out over the crowd. Had they picked up on the unspoken half of her words?

"No. I'm still the winner." April nodded at the rodent-kin by Kajagar's side--Sard. "That's the rules, right? Til he can't fight anymore?"

Sard jumped and glanced at Kajagar, who glowered back at her, daring her to take April's side. "U-uhh, yer right! Um. Me Chief."

Kajagar sighed. "Then what are ye going ter do with 'im?"

April looked down at the immobile Chief, as if that prospect had only just dawned on her. It probably had. "I. Uh. We'll lock him up." Her gaze drifted over to my cage, where I was still kneeling, tied up and gagged. "Anne! G-get her out of there!"

One of Kajagar's eyes twitched, and for a moment, it seemed that she'd try to argue further--but instead, she leaned back and lazily held up an arm. "Alright. If ye say so, Chief."

The murmuring of the crowd intensified as she caught the eye of the hyena-kin who'd directed things inside the tent earlier. They held each other's gazes for a protracted time, some kind of complex but entirely silent dialogue playing out between them--and then the hyena nodded, in what seemed to be begrudging assent, and ambled out into the centre of the ring. Pulling out the silver key to the cage, he opened it up for her; she almost bowled him over to get to me, scooping me up and slashing apart my bindings with the borrowed dagger.

As the salty rope fell free from my mouth, in raw, useless tatters, I put my arms around her neck and--faster than I could even think--I pressed my lips to hers. It was only as the earthy, sultry scent of her body seeped into my lungs, and my clitty trembled in response to the sheer, unadulterated beastkin of her odour, that it even occurred to me why I was doing it.

At first, April stumbled. A surprised squeak escaped her lips, and her grip on me slackened, and for a single, lurching moment I was scared she was going to drop me--but then she curled her arms around me, until her grip was even tighter than before, and then suddenly she was kissing me back. Hard and deep, she drank in my mouth, mouth parting ever so slightly, not enough for our tongues to meet, but enough that I could taste her breath, take it in as my own--

and then she pulled her head away. My brand of 'Victory,' with its order not to resist whatever she did, compelled me to keep my head still, no matter how much my heart yearned to follow her; and when the kiss was broken, and the hold it had over me dissipated, I could only stare up into her eyes. A pointed fang worried at one lip, and her stormy green eyes were unreadable.

"I-I, uhh… th-thank you," I said feebly. "Mistress."

I clapped a hand to my mouth, and April almost did the same, remembering again at the last second that she was holding me.

"D-did you just…"

"S-sorry! Mistress!" A new heat, entirely more biting than the one that had come with our kiss, suffused my body now. "I-I think it's because you're the Chief now… mistress!"

Each time I said the word, a thrill a dozen times as powerful as anything my Courtesy brand had made me say before ran through my body. April was the strong one, the smart one, the outspoken one… now, it was almost like everything I said to her had to end with a reminder of that.

April grimaced. "Okay, um, no, no way. That's… that feels w-weird." She was still worrying at her lip with that one tooth. "C-can you try something else? Why not April?"

"I-I can try… Miss April. Oh. H-how about just miss, miss? Or…" A distant memory, one that felt so much older than the less-than-a-fortnight that it had been since we'd first started playing this game, reared up inside my head. A memory of a time when I'd thought I could be her gallant knight, her protector. "M-my lady?"

Her expression turned into a wry smile. "Okay, that's silly enough. Let's go with that."

"Are ye quite done?"

April jumped, and in her arms I jerked alongside her. Kajagar had materialised by our side, and around us the rows of bandits had begun to filter out of the tent, leaving the ring of piled-up furniture untouched.

"What is it… Kaj?" April said. Her brand had stopped triggering. She was… the Chief now, after all. I glanced towards the unmoving body of the old Chief, now heaped in a crumpled pile at the bottom of the silver cage. What was it that Kajagar called him? Cal?

Kajagar swept her head in a languid circle; April and I followed her gaze. Above the hordes filing dejectedly out of the tent, a smattering of bandits still remained seated. The ones in the good seats. A shark-woman… a bulky man with the head of an ox, and a glare that could cut through steel… that one hyena-kin, who'd been given the key to the silver cage… a stone-faced man with the black skin and rippling muscles of a gorilla… and, I noted with a start, a crocodilian woman, taller and with shoulders twice as broad as the last one I'd seen.

April's body tensed around me. She recognised them. And, as they stared impassively down at us, it was clear that they more than recognised her.

"That stunt ye pulled just now weren't the most politically expedient move," Kajagar hissed. "Ye ain't exactly worked up the same level o' support that Cal got 'imself yet."

"Politically--I don't care! I'm not killing him!" April said hotly, reflexively clutching me closer to her body--and against her naked breasts. Faintly, I wondered if she'd forgotten she was holding me entirely.

"Yes, yes, ye've made that clear enough, me Chief," Kajagar said soothingly. "But that leaves us wit' the matter o' impressin' the tribe enough ter have 'em accept you as the new Chief. Else, well, ye'll be fieldin' challenges fer the next ten moons."

April's sigh was long-suffering, and deeper than any valley. "Kaj. Oh my God. I'm sick to death of this stupid cave and this stupid camp. I don't want to impress anyone, and I don't want to take any challengers! Did they not just see me?"

Kajagar tilted her head inquisitively, her narrow eyes as wide as they could get, and I could hardly blame her. Even I was taken aback by this sudden outpouring of irritation--and I had every reason to agree with everything she was saying.

"Just--" April cast her eyes around the tent-- "I'm just going to go get cleaned up." She exhaled, and with it went some of the steam she'd gathered up. "I'll figure this shit out when I get back."

Kajagar shrugged. "Fine by me. Ye look like ye could use some… relaxation."

She eyed me meaningfully as she said that last word, letting it linger on her murky lips, and I felt the colour rise to my cheeks once more.

"River's that way. Just don't, ah, be too long, aye?"

"Huh." April turned away from her, setting off in the direction she'd indicated. "Let's go, Anne."

It was only then that she blinked. "Oh my God sorry I'm still holding you--"

Chapter 33: Hail to the Chief

Chapter Text

The first rosy wisps of twilight tickled the clouds overhead, as April and I strode free of the bandits' cave for the first time in what felt like weeks. Our deep sighs mingled in a languid afternoon breeze, the song of two prisoners breathing in sweet, sweet release. Before us stretched the River Samson, a sparkling array of pink and blue beneath the sunset-tinged sky. Even the reeds clustered around the cave mouth, wafting in time with the wind, seemed to shine with a delicious vibrance.

We sank into the river in silence. Though it was chilly at first, every inch of me soon welcomed its refreshing, full-body kiss, and the way it pared away the filth that had been caked into my skin. April let out another sigh, seeming to melt into the very water itself; her long hair splayed out over the surface, and she dipped her head all the way beneath it a few times, scouring away the most stubborn cum stains with her fingers.

"I, um, s-sorry, my lady," I said timidly.

April paused in her submersions and blinked. "What for?"

"The, um… k-kissing you." I twirled my hair awkwardly in my hands. "My lady."

"O-oh. Right." The same unreadable distance as before came over her in an instant, and my stomach fell. Was this… was this her rejection face? I knew I'd never really had a chance with her. She was so gorgeous, and smart, and capable, and I was just--I was just a--I was just a sissy.

"It, um, it was my brand, my lady," I said feebly. "M-my new one…"

"Hey, hey, it's okay!" April's tone was suddenly one of concern, and she sloshed through the water to wrap both her arms around me. I was still naked, and her breasts were still flopping loose from her armour, but that didn't even slow her down. Her scent poured into my lungs, raw and rich and stunning. Had it gotten even stronger? "I-I'm not mad about it or anything, Anne! I-I just--"

She broke off, worrying at her lip with a pointed tooth again.

"I just don't want to hurt you."

It was my turn to frown in confusion. "H-hurt me, my lady?"

A grimace came over her face. If nothing else, it was clear that April had been struggling with this for a while now, and she chose her words carefully as she spoke. "I… I know you're… you. And I know the game is trying to… change you. Making you… cute. And… pretty. And, well… girly."

I nodded dumbly. She… she hadn't used the word man or boy. Did that mean she couldn't say them out loud, at least in relation to me, either? Why was the game doing this to us?

"But the changes I'm going through, the Milestones, when I Wild Aspect, they--they don't see you like you're… supposed to be, Anne. They… they see you like th-the game's made you. As… someone I should…" April looked away, and even though I felt the vibration of it through her arms around me, I almost couldn't hear the last word of the sentence. "Own."

Unbidden, a thrill ran up my spine. Before VALKYRIE, I would've never even contemplated being… owned by another person. But… it had happened so many times now, a-and by men and women and monsters who I didn't love nearly as much as April, that now… when my reaction to it washed over me, I could only call it a burst of exhilaration.

April with me over her knees, slowly easing the Bitchbreaker up my aching hole…

"I--I…" I froze. As much as I wanted it… as feverishly intoxicating as the image of it was, replaying over and over in my mind's eye, mounting on the pent-up pressure in my locked-up clitty… it also felt as if I was teetering on the edge of a pit deeper than the ocean, and darker than the night sky. If I caved into submission like this, even if it was the single most special circumstance I could imagine--being April's little plaything--what would that do to me? Every sensation in this game felt as real as I could imagine. Maybe even more real, since they had a direct line to my brain. If I grew to… to enjoy, without any of the humiliation, something l-like having a dildo eased up my little pussy, in this game… wouldn't that carry over back to the real world, once we finally got out? If… if I was serious about pursuing April, in the real world… did I really want to have memories of myself mewling in her lap dangling over me…? "I-I get it, my lady."

"Y-you do?" April said. "Because, um, I'm not saying--I-I don't think you're too lame, o-or weak, or anything! I'm just… scared I-I might end up, um, g-getting carried away, and… yeah. H-hurting you."

Hurting me. The old me, the original me, the me who had hopped into this game just for the chance to hang out with her might've scoffed at the thought. Would have scoffed at the thought. April was far too nice to want to hurt me, and if she wanted me to do something weird, I would've thought that I could just say no.

But now… after two weeks… when I looked at April, and at how big and tall she'd gotten, and at the incredible musk that oozed out of all her pores, and the ease with which she could pick me up and toss me around, and how safe and warm I felt in her powerful embrace… the thought of denying her anything seemed as distant and pointless a fantasy as winning the lottery. Worse, maybe. At least winning the lottery was technically possible.

She was right. If she didn't want to hurt me, to make me feel like even more of a girl than I already did… she had to keep me at arm's length.

You would be nothing as a man.

Fitfully, almost reluctantly, she peeled her arms from around me and let out a sigh that mirrored my thoughts exactly.

"I kinda just want to run away."

"Sorry, my lady?" I asked.

"From this… this whole bandit thing. It sucks. I… I thought maybe a quest would be different from, like, fighting in the forest, but… the way it ended up, it just…" She trailed off.

"It just kinda sucked," I finally agreed. "My lady."

"Yeah." April stared out over the river's waters. A few wooden walkways, as ramshackle and mismatched as anything else the bandits had set up, peeked out from the river's banks. At one of them, the longest, two boats sat moored, bobbing gently in time with the river's current.

"We… we could, my lady." I didn't know the first thing about steering a boat, on a river or otherwise… but as awful as it could sometimes get, VALKYRIE was still a game, after all. Surely there was some kind of interface to make driving a boat less complex. And even if there wasn't, there was still walking.

"No," April said, finally. "I wanna at least save that, um, farmer guy's son. Otherwise it'd all be for nothing, right?"

"Kajagar would probably just give him to us if we asked, my lady," I pointed out.

April made a face. The idea of working with Kajagar for anything, much less asking her for a favour, was still obviously uncomfortable for her. "Okay, probably. But I… I don't want to just leave them like this, either."

"Th-the other slaves, my lady?"

"I was more thinking--well, I mean, we need to free them too!--but I was more meaning the bandits."

"The… the bandits, my lady?"

"Yeah," said April, unaware that she hadn't quite addressed the spirit of my question. "I know they kinda… suck, but… they should get to be happy too, right?"

"April, they… th-they kidnap and… y-you know people. My lady."

"I'd have to make them stop doing that, obviously," April said. It wasn't quite a smile, but something positive was creeping back into her voice. Despite everything, my lips quirked up. After the last couple of heavy topics, something about this one was getting her excited again--and her rising mood was as infectious as it always was. "But then they'd need some other way to make money, I think? Or at least feed themselves. So I think this Guild stuff is the ticket."

"Guild stuff, my lady?"

"Oh, right! Here."

"W-wait, what is this? My lady." I accepted it, of course--anything with April's name on it was something I wanted to be a part of, instantly and without qualification--and was instantly beset by a bizarre new interface. A wire-mesh drawn in the air in front of me, floating just over the surface of the river, of a slab of forested land--and, beneath it on a second, far more irregular slab of land, a familiar cluster of tents. Beneath that sat a few columns and rows of buttons with names like 'Farm - Corn' and 'Latrine,' and yellow numbers beneath them. A scroll bar to the right suggested that there were quite a few more rows of these buttons that were yet out of sight.

April flashed me a sunny smile. "It's our Guild! I think it's something to do with being the Chief. Like… technically, I own the land, or something?"

April reached out to touch the mesh representation of the camp and the land above it, and with a start I realised that I wasn't just looking at my own copy of the interface--we were sharing it. She swept it with one finger, and the map rotated in response. She pinched it, and the map zoomed in. Pretty standard Holograph behaviour, though I hadn't used one in the real world since I'd graduated from school.

"Look, you can see everyone." Sure enough, tiny, holographic doubles of the bandits were streaming along the crevices between the holographic tents--and when April squeezed to zoom on the main tent, zipping through its walls, a tiny holographic Kajagar with her arms crossed where we'd left her.

"I'm kinda getting…"

"Sims vibes, right?" April said excitedly. Her tail splashed eagerly against the water behind her, and another smile made its way onto my face. The Sims 8 was the first ever game she'd gushed to me about. I'd sat through videos of all twenty of her first household's lovingly constructed rooms, once. "And I think you can add stuff, too."

"Like, furniture, my lady?" I asked, already stretching my fairly limited Sims knowledge banks.

"Furniture, rooms, buildings… even whole farms, I think. I think I can just… drag and drop them." She demonstrated; suddenly, a copse of trees near where we'd first entered the camp disappeared, replaced by a square section of flat land cordoned off by a rope barrier. A sign in front of it displayed the image of a cob of corn.

"Huh. Do you see that?"

"Yeah, I do, my lady."

April groped around at an invisible menu in front of her. "Treasury… Treasury… here!"

Not wanting to be left behind, I pulled up my own menu; a brand new tab, helpfully labelled 'Guild,' had appeared on the very right.

"Oh, wow, there's already money in it?" April exclaimed.

"Maybe we got the old Chief's when you beat him, my lady," I suggested. My own version of the Guild menu didn't have any Treasury option at all--probably a consequence of being a 'Novice' at this guild.

"Ohh. Maybe!" April hummed at the screen, which was apparently slightly more involved than the number displaying how much money was currently in the Treasury that I'd imagined. "Seven thousand is probably enough for now, I think?"

I blinked. "He had seven thousand gold? My lady?" The guy was more loaded than the entire first floor of the Breachwood!

"Oh, no, he had like twenty kay," April clarified. "But I'm thinking of making, um, quite a few upgrades around here, so I'm gonna top it up a bit."

Forget blinking--my eyes felt as if they were about to pop out of my head! But before I could collect my thoughts and maybe possibly broach the prospect of not spending twenty-seven thousand gold pieces on a bunch of bandits--bandits who felt that she'd be too soft a leader because she'd refrained from executing their paralysed former leader--I was interrupted by a splash of movement, just barely visible out of the corner of my eye.

"D-did you see that, my lady?" I swapped to my inventory, ready to pull out my wand, only to realise that we still hadn't gotten it back off Kajagar yet… and that my dagger was still in April's possession.

"Hm?" April glanced my way--then her eyes shot wide open. Her club materialised in her hands. "Watch out!!"

It rose from the river in a roiling tower of water. Orange and gleaming, its hide was crisscrossed by golden lines that gave it an almost molten appearance, like lava welling up behind a crust of monstrous scales. A gaping maw, toothless but dripping with fleshy red ribbons of something, marked the creature's front; a pair of soulless, milky globes sat perched on either side of it--its eyes?--and were joined by two smaller pairs in the same colour that lay just beneath them. Along the enormous curvature of its back stretched a long, thin flap of a fin. Though it was wet, it stood proud under the bright-but-steadily-darkening sky, a translucent sail that seemed to shimmer with the faint hints of a hundred swirling colours.

When, at last, it finished rising, and the last rivulets of water trickled their way down past its sedately undulating gills, the monster floated in front of us in eerie silence. It was huge; though its side fins didn't quite stretch from one bank of the river to the other, it was certainly closer to managing the feat than either of the boats nearby, and where height was concerned it towered over April with ease. Its gaping mouth alone was more than large enough to swallow my slight figure whole--and that was with its lower lip still lurking, unseen, beneath the surface of the water. Though we were a good distance away from it, that alone was enough to make me kip back in the direction of the riverbank.

Scariest of all, though, was its name… or the lack thereof. In eerie blue text, floating just above its gormless, pitiless set of six eyes, was the title ???: Level 99 .

For a long while, April held her club at the ready, knuckles white, ready to lunge at the first sign of movement more violent than the fish's gentle bobbing. I had a hand of my own halfway to my lips, the other pointed April's way, ready to Starcharge or Star Passage or something her the moment she started her attack.

And then the fish began to glow. It was with a soft, warm, light, one that eased gently from nothingness to brilliance over the course of a few seconds. April tensed, squinting resolutely into the light, not lowering her weapon an inch. What was this? Was it an attack? Was it charging up for an attack? Was this when we were supposed to attack? Were we meant to fight it at all? It was level 99!

April let out a ferocious roar and charged.

"Starcharge!" I shot her a spell so that she was actually surging forwards, as opposed to wading deeper into the river--

and then the glowing fish-monster evaporated into a hundred motes of light.

"Did it teleport?" April snapped, halting her charge and losing the glow of my Starcharge to glance up and down the length of the river, and then up into the sky and on the land around us when the fish proved to no longer be in the water.

"I, um, don't think so, my lady," I said. "Sh-shouldn't we--"

"Let's get out of here," April said, agreeing with my suggestion as she interrupted it. Her mace vanished back into her inventory, and she scooped me up in both arms and hurtled for the mouth of the bandits' cave, which suddenly looked far more inviting than waiting out in the open to become fish food.

"What the hell was that?"

When we--well, April--stormed back into the main tent, Kajagar was still standing by the silver cage, waiting for us. The 'elite' bandits had finally descended from their seats, and now stood in a loose huddle at the back of the tent, where a table had been dragged out from the pile nearby. I frowned. Now that I was a member of April's guild, they had nameplates of their own--Kajagar's simply read Kajagar: Level 36 Alchemist. For some reason, it was exactly the same light blue as the one that had appeared over the giant fish monster.

"Oh, good," she said, after taking a moment to appreciate our bedraggled, mostly soaked forms. She nodded at me. "I s'pose ye forgot the fish."

"O-oh. Right."

"The fish?" April said, depositing me back on my feet.

"That… fish… I think it was here before, my lady." So much had happened since I'd helped Kajagar heal those bandits, any thoughts of it had slipped out of my mind completely. "I-in the river."

"And you didn't think about warning us?" April snapped, jabbing a finger at her new medicine woman-slash-witch.

Kajagar shrugged. "I don't gotta be so concerned with yer safety as I did with 'im, aye? Ye were fine."

April's mouth moved on its own for a couple of seconds while she regathered her anger. "Well--what was it, then? Some kind of… guard monster?"

Another shrug. "Yer guess'd be better'n mine, seeing as yer the one what's actually seen the damn thing. All I know is it showed up t'dayish, and roughed up some of me men somethin' fierce."

"And you're okay with that?" April growled. "Don't you guys use that river for boats and stuff?"

"Well, that woulda bin the kinda thing Cal dealt with," Kajagar said.

I glanced at Cal, and almost took a physical step back--above his unmoving head floated the words Caliburn: Level 48 Oathbreaker , though they were written in scarlet rather than blue. If NPC levels were meant to correspond to Milestone counts… he was stronger than both of us combined... and even he was still only half as strong as that fish.

"I, um, h-hang on, my lady," I said quickly. Something about the nameplates had just sunk in. "The, um, the fish's name, that was blue, like Kaj and those guys, my lady. Maybe it's not an enemy at all?"

April frowned and took a closer look at the huddled bandits. "Oh. Huh."

Though she didn't quite drop her lackadaisical attitude, Kajagar raised a scaly brow. "Well, I ain't exactly sure about that. Ye saw what the fish did to me goons, aye?"

"I-I mean to us, mistress." Was the brand seriously still making me call her that? "Th-the, um, allogenes, mistress."

Kajagar scratched at her chin. "Hm. It didn't do nothin' to ye at all?"

"Not really, no," April admitted. "It just kind of popped out of the water and, like… started glowing. Then it vanished, or something."

"Huh. Now, that sounds like a summon," Kajagar mused.

"A-a summon, mistress? Like, a monster that someone summoned with magic? Mistress?"

"That's the one, Sugar."

April scrunched up her mouth, like she'd just had something sour. "Don't call her that."

Kajagar affixed her with her beady, unblinking eyes. Her long, forked tongue darted out from the front of her mouth, fast as a flash. "Right, me Chief. That's the one, Anne."

When she turned her unblinking gaze on me, I flinched instinctively in April's direction, stopping just short of outright clinging to one of her toned arms. "Th-thank you, mistress!"

"Anyway, if our fish were a summon, then that sounds like 'oever summoned it decided 'e didn't need it around anymore, an' pulled the plug on it. Sent it back ter the 'ells or the 'eavens, wherever it came from." Kajagar twisted her head around, so that she was peering shrewdly at me out of the corner of a murky eye. "Got yerself any friends in 'igh places, Anne?"

I swallowed thickly. When it came to powerful friends, the only one who came to mind was Percy. Between all her OP spells and her long playtime, was a way to summon a monster to spy on us really that far out of the question?

A quiet recognition had settled over April's face, too, but when she spoke, it was to divert the course of the conversation away from Percy entirely. "Well, if the fish isn't a problem after all, I guess it's time to talk about the future of the camp!"

Any other topic, and Kajagar might have taken note of the naked attempt to switch the subject--but instead, the thin black line of her mouth curled upwards, and a laugh crept into her tone. "Ah, yer bold plans fer our future! Ye've 'ad a chat about it fer twenny minutes, and yer ready to lay 'em upon us, aye?"

"Well, it's not an in-depth plan," April said, a touch reproachfully. "But I'm gonna get some stuff for you guys, and all you guys should have to do is build it."

Kajagar's eyes narrowed. "'Get some stuff' fer us?"

"Yeah!" April numbered them off. "We'll get farms, some outhouses, a prison for this guy--" She kicked at the bars of the silver cage, rattling them--"and, ohh, a place for you to get herbs and stuff! You make potions or something, right?"

"What in the Three 'ells are ye talking about?" Kajagar said flatly. "We ain't in any position t'be settin' up a farm 'ere, girl. We're well inter autumn, fer starters, and ain't none of these idiots know how ter put up a buildin'--meself included! I'm a witch, not a bloody architect." She paused. "And what do ye mean, build a place fer 'erbs?"

"Oh, it's game stuff." April tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Hm, maybe I should promote you?"

"Game stuff? Promote me?" Kajagar glanced at me, but I had no idea what she meant by that, either. If I was being honest with myself, I still wasn't sure why she was trying to help the bandits out at all. Kajagar had (sort of) stuck out her long neck to help us out, it was true, but almost every other bandit in this camp had happily… u-used us… j-just last night.

"Oh wow that costs a lot. Nevermind. In that case, I'll just do… this!" April pulled open the Holograph map of the camp again, and--in a single deft motion--flicked away the silver cage in the tent with us.

"What in--Ariana's eyes!" Kajagar spun around to find that the cage, and its paralysed prisoner, had vanished completely. She thrust the bottom of her staff in its direction, then rounded back on April. "Where in the 'ells is 'e?"

Past her, the huge beastkin had picked up on the commotion, and noticed the disappearance of their old leader in turn. They stalked our way, faces clearly dark with unwanted questions.

"Infuse me," murmured April, before I could nudge her.

"I-Infuse." I blew her a small kiss, and her mana bar rose. And then, because her health was still low after the protracted fight with the Chief--"Cure. Cure."

"Wild Aspect." This time, April went straight for the wolf set of transformations; in a flash of stretching silver, she grew to tower over even the muscular shark-kin that was part of this group. Even Kajagar, with her elongated neck raised at its full length, could only barely match her new height.

"What's this?" rumbled Ripper: Level 31 Barbarian , unbothered by having to crane her neck to lock eyes with April, even as she loomed over me. From afar, her featureless grey skin had given her the appearance of a boulder, hewn into a perfect statue of a shark-human hybrid, all fins and teeth and hunger. Up close, the apparent smoothness of her flesh was exposed for the illusion it was; it was studded in tiny fang-like bumps, each one wickedly sharp and tipped with a hooked barb. Just the thought of touching her felt like it might sting me--and with the raw, salty musk that moved with her, buoying her forth like a sea breeze, each lungful of breath I took stung a little, too.

"I just moved his cage," April rumbled back. Her voice had deepened somewhat, most likely due to the increase in size, but it was still recognisably hers. Not the feral howling she'd lapsed into the last time she'd taken this form. Had she done that intentionally, then?

"'Moved his cage?'" A stony-faced gorilla-man, black arms rippling free of a leather chestplate that had clearly had its pauldrons torn off, slouched to the forefront of the group. Steinbeck: Level 28 Skirmisher . April took an automatic step back--and a look passed between Steinbeck and Ripper. In unison, they stepped forward again--

but this time, realising her mistake, April held her ground. She more than held it--she leaned forward herself, and though the two challenging beastkin didn't step back in turn, their faces remained set. No hint of submission crossed them, but nor did any hint of ridicule.

"Yeah," April grunted. "I can do that. I'm Chief."

In the tense silence that followed, I could almost hear the hammering of my heart. A medley of powerful scents washed over me, enough to make my head swim and my eyes brim with faint tears. The April that stood before me, shape-shifted and unflinching, seemed a world apart from the April I'd gone to school with, and been invited to play videogames with, and, w-well, eventually fallen in love with. She'd always been the type to persevere, it was true, but there was a vast canyon between grinding her way through the last lap of a five-mile run and… this. There was no way she felt she was guaranteed to win a fight against even one of these murderous, thieving bastards, let alone all five at once--and yet, not an ounce of fear tempered her imposing frame.

"Right. Chief," said Gnom: Level 30 Skirmisher --the splotchy hyena-kin. His voice was grating and scratchy; goosebumps showered the back of my neck just hearing it. "Y'know, y'made such a good Hunt Bitch this morn, y'may as well--"

A resounding crack split the air. Two seconds later, it was followed by the creaking, splintering cacophony of Gnom's body colliding with the wall of furniture at the back of the tent.

April stood, one silver fist extended to exactly where Gnom's jaw had just been. Her elongated snout betrayed no emotion, her black lips a single, neutral line… but in her emerald eyes, I thought I caught a hint of surprise.

The other four beastkin, and Kajagar, exchanged a new set of looks; and then, all at once, they howled with laughter, of all things. Steinbeck, the gorilla, even let out a whooping cheer. April deflated slightly, without the pressure of all their flinty gazes to harden herself against--and then Steinbeck hammered her in the stomach with a punch of his own, carving away a chunk of health I'd just healed.

"OW!" April howled, doubling over. Ripper, the shark, raised both her enormous claws over her head, clearly about to bring them crashing down on the staggered April, and I raised a hand to my lips.

"Starch--" My spell fizzled as Kajagar clapped a hand over my mouth, easily keeping me from finishing the spell's name or blowing the kiss required. "MfhH?"

"Don't ye interfere," Kajagar murmured. "They're just playin'. Seein' what they're gonna be workin' with."

Like the blade of a guillotine, Ripper's fists descended upon April's back, but April managed to recover enough to twist to the side, almost rolling past the attack so that the impact was glancing at most. She lunged out to strike at an exposed portion of Ripper's chest--in this form, claws tipped the ends of each of her fingers--but Ripper stumbled back out of the way, avoiding it entirely. A high-pitched, yipping warcry turned every head in the tent.

Gnom had staggered back to his feet; he dropped a shoulder and threw himself back into the fray, crossing the distance back to April almost as fast as she'd launched him. Kajagar slipped back a few feet, dragging me with her, clearly unwilling to get caught in the crossfire--but just as clearly laser-focused on it.

I put all of my weight into stamping on one of her scaly green feet.

"Fuck!" Kajagar yelped, momentarily releasing me. "Ye little--"

"Star--"

Ignoring April entirely, Gnom barrelled straight into Ripper's back, bowling her over. She lashed out at him with a closed fist, which he caught and matched with a savage blow from his free hand, April apparently completely forgotten.

Steinbeck raised a pronounced brow and nodded in my direction. "Is the elf in or out?"

"I, um--"

"Out," April and Kajagar growled in unison.

"Y-yes," I said weakly--and then, since I was addressing Steinbeck--"sir."

Ripper and Gnom, apparently now on the same side, took advantage of Steinbeck's preoccupation with me by lunging for him--only for the crocodile lady, Felsi: Level 33 Hunter to catch Gnom mid-lunge with a brutal uppercut, and for Steinbeck himself to whirl around and slam his forehead into Ripper's snout with a wet crack.

"Then fuck off," Steinbeck grunted.

Ripper rolled to the side, to reveal April, who launched herself at Steinbeck and battered his chest with her fists. Felsi thrust a jade fist into April's side, only for Steinbeck to shake off April's barrage of punches, grab Felsi by her extended arm, and fling her over his shoulder and into the dirt floor. With Steinbeck preoccupied, Gnom and Ripper hurled themselves at April--she ducked past Ripper's shoulder-barge and intercepted Gnom with a knee to his chest. Ripper spun around on a dime, her grey heft almost blurring with the speed of it, and pelted April on her back with a series of vicious strikes--Gnom peeled himself off the floor and, apparently switching sides once again, leapt to shove Ripper off April entirely.

"C'mon, Sugar," Kajagar murmured, yanking me in the direction of the exit to the tent.

"W-wait, mistress, what the--" I flinched as Steinbeck was slammed bodily into the dirt between us and April, Felsi taking the opportunity to snarl to the ceiling in victory before she loped back to join the fight with April and the others. "What's going on?"

"Told ye b'fore. They're testin' 'er."

With a whip-crack from behind me that made me jump a foot into the air, Alabak: Level 29 Skirmisher --a towering man covered in coarse black fur and crowned with the horned head of an ox--finally joined the fight, hammering Ripper in the chest as she peeled off the ground to help Gnom and April tackle Felsi. Alliances were forming and breaking and shifting at a breakneck pace.

"Now c'mon." Kajagar yanked at my arm again. "Things're about ter get dicey in 'ere."

"But I… Lady April… m-mistress…"

"Yer lady is a big girl, Sugar. She c'n 'andle 'erself."

I bit my lip. When Kajagar tugged me along again, I didn't resist, though I kept my eyes on April, in all her ferocious glory, as I stumbled along in Kajagar's wake. The impulse to call out to her, so that she at least knew I was leaving, was strong--but I was scared that I'd distract her at some crucial moment, and end up getting her taken down. If she failed the bandits' test…

April, naked and stained a sticky white, moving lifelessly back and forth on anoth--a man's throbbing, beastly length…

"O-okay, mistress."

In short order, Kajagar had me squashed in the back of her tent again, atop her messy nest of bedding. As she puttered around with her potions and eerie odds and ends, I finally had a moment to try to straighten out the thoughts warring inside my head. Loathe as I was to admit it, the heaving bodies and strength and musk of April and those beastkin warriors had been… overwhelming. Here, with Kajagar only half paying attention to me, I could think again.

"S-so… what exactly is that fight about, mistress?"

Kajagar twisted her head my way. It took me a moment to place the movement of her eyes as an indulgent roll. "Like I said, Sugar. It's jest their way of gettin' t'know our new Chieftain, aye?"

"B-but, um, wh-why were they, um… switching sides and stuff, mistress? Some of them were helping her, and some of them were fighting her, and…"

"Ah. S'pose it wouldn't look too clear to an elf, aye?" Kajagar set down the shrivelled herb she'd been holding and turned to face me with her whole body. "It's the beastkin way, Sugar. We bin followin' it since the days of Cain."

"Cain?" I echoed. "Like… Cain and Abel, mistress?"

"So there is something ye've 'eard of," Kajagar cackled. "Aye. The good old days, such as they were. Ye fight, and if yer strong enough ter win, we'll listen to ye."

"B-but--didn't we just do that, mistress? With the Chief--with, um, Cal?"

"Hrm… not exactly, nay. With Cal, he an' yer wolf were goin' after each other's heads. It was kill or be killed, aye? Well, in a manner o' speakin'." Kajagar scratched her chin for a moment, searching for the right words. "That lot in the tent, they're not especially fussed about 'o gets ter rule the tribe in the end. Even if they figure April ain't Chief material, they'll still have ter scrap it out amongst themselves to decide who really oughta be Chief."

"So… they don't want to be Chief, mistress?"

"Nay, nay, everyone wants ter be Chief." She paused. "Every beastkin, in any case," she clarified. "It's… instinct, aye? The instinct ter want the best home, the best meat, the best women." She grinned lasciviously at me as she said that last word, and though I bristled at the remark, I didn't want to interrupt her explanation--not when April's fate was on the line. "But ter claim the title and get all that stuff, ye've gotta put yer life on the line. Risk a lot ter get a lot, aye?"

"Aye… I-I mean, yes, mistress…"

"So there's a secondary instinct at play 'ere," she went on. "That bein', the instinct to listen to the guy--or lass--'o is Chief. Because 'e, or she, was strong an' crazy enough ter risk it all b'fore ye thought ter try it. An' if they could neck the last mean mother who took the title, they can sure as 'ell neck you."

There was a certain amount of sense to what she was saying. If beastkin were totally ruled by the desire to rise to the top of their tribe, challenges to a Chief's rule would be coming in constantly. Even if the reigning Chief won every single one, the end result would be a tribe of nothing but dead challengers.

"So… th-those beastkin in the tent… they're testing to see if they want to listen to April, then, mistress? To see if she's… strong enough to not even r-risk challenging, mistress?"

Kajagar grinned slyly. "Well, that's what any o' them would tell ye, aye." She dipped her head down close to me, uncomfortably so, close enough that her forked tongue could flicker out and caress one of my eyeballs--"But the real reason is they each wanna see if the others are willing ter help her."

"H-huh?"

"Fer all our talk o' strength an' might, no Chief can rule a tribe on tha' alone. Even Cal woulda lost if 'e'd 'ad ter face all hundred-odd of us at once, though 'e woulda taken a fair few o' us down with 'im. An' even if some miracle saw 'im win, 'e still wouldn't 'ave a tribe--we'd all be dead, aye?" she said, unknowingly echoing my line of thought from earlier. "So once ye've got the strength ter, let's say, enter the conversation fer 'o should be Chief, the way ye stay there is makin' everyone 'o might challenge ye think that everyone else 'o might challenge ye is on yer side."

"But then… s-so, that fight is… but why are they joining her side, mistress?" I asked, a touch of desperation leaking into the question.

"She 'it 'em 'ard enough," Kajagar said glibly. "Everyone starts against 'er. If she gets ye hard enough, ye join 'er side, and since yer strength is 'ers now, anybody ye 'it joins 'er side too. Only gettin' 'it by the side against 'er turns ye back--an' the fight goes on until either everyone's on the same side, or th' Chief apparent gives up on 'er claim."

I tried to run through my scattered memories of the fight in the silence that followed, but it had all happened too fast, and in the heat and the musk of the moment--"Wh-why didn't you just say that first, m-mistress?"

Kajagar shrugged. "Not too sure meself, Sugar. Perhaps yer just fun ter talk to?"

There was a smile in her voice, one more sardonic than I was entirely satisfied with, but with the immediate confusion of what the rules of the fight even were cleared up, there was a more pressing matter at hand now. The sun hadn't quite set when we'd briefly left the darkness of the cave, but it was on its way out. Dusk was coming at any minute. And that meant… "D-do you think she's, um, finished by now, then, mistress?"

"Maybe," Kajagar said in a tone that told me she knew exactly what the answer was, but wasn't going to say… at least, not without some convincing. "Why d'ye wanna know?"

"So I can heal her! Mistress," I said. And also make absolutely certain that she wasn't going to be overcome with lust in the middle of scrapping with a pack of rabid beast-men.

"Healin's interferin', Sugar. If the fight's still goin' when we get back, 'ow can I trust ye won't get nervous and try t'help yer little love-pup?"

She'd been smiling for a while now, and though it only widened by a fraction of a hair as she spoke, it was enough for the stark fingers of fear to close around my heart and begin to tug it inexorably down into the pit of my stomach. It was a strange fear, not burning or freezing but uncomfortably warm, enough that a faint sweat broke out on the back of my hairless neck. This had to be how a rabbit or something felt when it saw a fox, lazing about on the opposite side of a field, turn its head and make eye contact without batting an eye. Weakly, I realised that she'd placed herself squarely in between me and the exit to her tent.

"I-I, umm, I-I just… I-I'm sorry I-I stamped on your foot e-earlier, mistress," I babbled, even as I shrank back into the back of her tent. Sh-she wouldn't, right? We both knew that April wouldn't kill her for d-doing anything to me, but she'd still be furious. C-could I perhaps pry up the canvas behind me and squeeze through the gap between it and the cave floor? "M-may I please g-go check o-on April, mistress…? I-I promise I won't, u-um, i-interfere…"

"Ah, water down the river, me dear. Though I'm afraid I still ain't willin' ter let you go back," Kajagar hissed. Was I imagining things, or was she moving imperceptibly closer to me as she spoke? "But if all yer really want is ter make sure yer lady is doin' well, I do 'ave an idea fer ye."

She drew back, for a blissful moment quashing any need to wonder if she was getting closer or not, and peered through a collection of vials on one of her shelves--then spun back around, clutching one in her hand. "What say we do a little scrying on 'er, Sugar?"

"S-scrying, mistress?" Even in my rattled state, the word rang a couple of bells. "D-didn't you say scrying doesn't w-work in caves, mistress?"

Kajagar sneered. "The Gilded Guard's sun scrying don't, aye." She shook the vial she was holding; its murky contents, almost black in the half-light that made it into the tent with us, oozed like congealing blood along with the motion, a full second after her hand had stopped moving. "But this is blood scrying. Ain't no limits ter the Black Sister's reach--so long as ye 'ave yerself a piece of yer target's flesh."

She reached into one of her myriad pouches, and produced a long, white strand of fur that could only have come from one head--or tail.

"W-when did you--" I fell silent. She'd had plenty of chances to pluck a hair from April's body. Mine, too, if we were counting.

"Now, this's a fairly costly brew," Kajagar hissed. "Not bein' able ter cast the spell meself, I 'ad to travel far an' wide ter gather up the ingredients fer it. I'm sure ye and the Chief are gonna be very busy once ye leave this place, so I'm not fixin ter ask ye ter gather 'em all up again, but if ye've got time ter make some extra coin on yer travels…"

I bit my lip. "H-how much?"

"Thirteen grand."

I winced. Thirteen thousand was just about the amount we'd collected from the deep run into the Breachwood that Percy and Layla had helped with. I'd earned a bit more since then, from a few other runs on the first floor, and all the monsters we'd fought here in the Reedlands, but that had barely covered the skill book for Purify. If I spent thirteen thousand gold here, I'd be down to less than a thousand, and for reasons that I absolutely did not want to disclose to April… again.

"W-wait." I looked up. The bandits had stolen all our money, along with everything else in our inventories (except for my girly clothes). "Thirteen grand i-is almost all the money I had on me, mistress. B-before you guys… captured us."

Kajagar tilted her head in very mild surprise. "Is it?"

"D-does that potion really cost that much, mistress?"

She shrugged. "It did take a fair bit o' work t'brew once I 'ad all the ingredients, y'know. I 'ad ter let the mind fungus steep fer sixty-six nights. Call it a labour fee."

"But--"

"And I ain't asking fer all the money in one night," she went on. "Nay. Say… a thousand each time ye see me, until yer done?" She chuckled. "It don't look like I'll need ter convince our new Chief ter make regular trips back here."

Judging by everything April had said about the Guild mechanics and the lengths she was already going to to build this place up… loathe as I was to, I had to agree with Kajagar there.

One thousand. It would hurt, but… I could probably find a way to make a thousand gold on the sly. And if I could do it once, twelve more times wasn't… too outrageous… especially if they managed to fix the Bug and get us all out of VALKYRIE before we got too far down the line.

And… there was April to think of. I had to make sure she wasn't… losing the fight, or… w-well…

"F-fine," I said, fighting to keep the straining of my caged clitty out of my voice. "I-I'll… I'll pay, mistress."

"That's me girl," Kajagar said. "I'll take the cut outta yer gold when we return it to ye girls. Fer now…" She slipped the strand of April's fur into the vial and handed it to me.

The clotted darkness within sizzled for a few seconds, and the glass warmed until it was almost too hot to the touch--and then it settled back down, so that it was indistinguishable from how it had seemed before. Was I seriously going to drink this?

"Bottoms up."

The scrying potion had all the consistency, temperature, and flavour of a trail of molten lava as it crawled its way down a mountainside, gathering up all manner of grit and rocks and debris. I gagged and choked as it went down, and for one panicked moment feared that I'd vomit the whole thing back up and lose thirteen thousand gold for nothing--but then the whole world tipped over, and I was back in the tent. The main tent, with all its furniture still piled up in a messy gladitorial ring around me.

Sort of. I could twist my field of view around, though it took markedly more effort than turning my head, and didn't go nearly as quickly. All the colours were washed out, too, and increasingly so at the very edges of my vision… and there was a definite bulging distortion that bent the centre of the image away from me, so that everything in the very middle of my field of view was ever-so-slightly smaller than everything around it.

Exactly as advertised, April was right in front of me, and I felt my mouth, eerily distant from my consciousness, start to curl into an automatic smile--until I saw what was happening.

April Cascelli, still in her wolven form, haunting silver fur and regal muzzle and all, had her legs spread wide, wide, almost as wide as they could go, around the broad hips of the dark-skinned gorilla-man Steinbeck. Between them quivered the lips of her unshaven pussy (surprisingly pink in this form)... shamelessly speared by the black flesh of Steinbeck's enormous shaft. Up and down and up and down she went, climbing to almost his tip before falling to his very base in a terrible but hypnotic rhythm, her hands planted forcefully against his barrel-belly navel. The smile on her face as she stared down at him was brilliant and genuine--and if that weren't enough, above her fantastic ass, her enormous, bushy tail wagged madly as she rode him, the final sign that this was real, this was happening, and that she wanted this.

Over her head, by her healthbar, floated the damning red square and pink heart of the Aroused condition. We'd taken too long; dusk had fallen outside, and she was deep in the throes of lust now.

"A-April!" I moaned weakly. It came out tinny and distant, warped by my transposed senses, and I reflexively clapped my hands over my mouth--or tried to, anyway. Not that it mattered: April continued on blissfully without giving any sign that she'd heard me. With my body stuck in Kajagar's tent, it seemed that the only one who could hear me was--

"Is it workin'?" Kajagar's voice was just as dreamy and faraway as mine, though it was rather more urgent. Dulled by the potion, I felt her clap a spindly hand on one of my shoulders. "What d'ye see?"

"I-I…" My throat wasn't doing what I wanted it to, and after a few moments I realised that I was choking out distant sobs. "A-April's… sh-she's… p-please… m-mistress…"

I scrunched my eyes shut, dimly aware of the hot, salty tears pouring down my cheeks, though from this far away they were only the faintest suggestion of heat or wetness, and closing my eyelids did nothing to blot out this warped, washed-out scene in front of me. I turned my head, and for a few moments I could see the naked bodies of the other four beastkin, all glistening and oily with sweat, as they gently pumped their own towering cocks in readiness for their own turns. Before too long, though, some invisible force seized hold of the back of my head, or whatever intangible spiritual thing the potion had anchored my mind to, and forcibly pointed me back to April.

"C'mon, you big monkey!" she teased him, her voice far clearer than mine or Kajagar's. Each pant between each word, each obscene smack of her flesh against his--"Is that all you got?"

"She's fuckin' 'em, ain't she?" Kajagar murmured into my ears, voice so low that, alongside the dampening effect of the potion on my body's senses, I had to strain to hear her. "She at least on top?"

Not trusting my voice, I nodded weakly. She was very much on top, as she gyrated her hips, and leaned forward, so that her bare, beautiful breasts were easy for Steinbeck to reach up to with a single, dark-grey hand, and squeeze playfully. Emboldened by this offering, he jerked his hips up momentarily--only for April's hips to come crashing down on him and stop moving for a few seconds, pinning him tightly to the ground. She really was in control.

A faint twinge from my body made me squeak, though it felt almost as if it were happening to someone else. "Wh-what are you doing, mistress?"

It was hard to place just where she was--

"Never mind that, Sugar. What's she doin'? Who's she on now?"

My breath caught at the crass phrasing, and I could only let out a choked, staggering whine. Why? Why was she--Aroused or not, th-they'd all raped her, j-just this morning--h-how could she possibly w-want to--

Another twinge, and one that lingered, drew its way sensually down the gentle curve of my bare back, a black claw pressed into skin that it couldn't break. In short order, it reached the very tip of the cleft between my butt-cheeks, and there it hovered, poised to continue on down.

"Answer me question, girl." Kajagar's voice hadn't grown any louder, but it was closer, now, and even though I could barely feel my own heartbeat, I knew it had to be hammering loud enough for her to hear back in her tent. "I promise it'll be worth yer while."

"S-Steinbeck," I whimpered, dimly aware of how my body was trembling under her touch, and far more aware of the man himself. Beneath April he lay, with all the continuity and presence of a range of flowing black hills. His lips were curled in a satisfied smirk, and though he remained still, obeying April's wordless order to stay down from earlier, his tawny eyes radiated all the supreme contentment that I could only imagine sex with a woman as divine as April would bring a man. And it was his. She was giving it to him.

"That's me girl," Kajagar hissed into my distant ears. Her finger slithered a few centimetres down my rear, and then drew back up, and then slithered back down again, so that she was caressing me in a gentle--but no less violating--circle, over and over again.

"Wh-what are you doing, m-mistress?" I moaned again. Faraway as it was, my body still wanted to squirm, to edge away from this invasive touch, but just like when I was at zero hit points, I couldn't move a single muscle. All I could do was watch April bounce and bounce and bounce on Steinbeck's enormous, vein-ridden cock, and meekly mewl my protests to Kajagar from a world away.

"Just tryin' ter help yer get in the mood," she murmured. "Now, what position're they in? What're the other lads 'n ladies up ter?"

Hollowly, I described how Steinbeck was laid out on his back beneath April, with all the princely repose of a billionaire sultan, and the other four beastkin stood gathered around them, watching on with leers of varying degrees splayed over their animal faces. Kajagar continued her tender stroking of my crack, pausing only when a sniffle or sob interrupted me. Through it all, April stayed in motion atop the gorilla-man, keeping her smile and her wagging tail even as her gaze grew more intent, and the pace of her riding quickened.

"Fuuuuck," breathed Steinbeck in a low growl, his voice so deep and clear that I felt it in my absent bones. Warmth blossomed over my face, and I couldn't tell if it was radiating from the two breeding beastkin in front of me or if it was just my own blush. If the potion could transport my eyes and ears to another place, could it do the same with my other senses?

"Are you… hahh… close?" April grunted.

Steinbeck sneered. "Are you? There's four more after me, y'know."

Like before, April hilted herself roughly and held taut against him for one, two, three seconds; she pushed a playful finger against his prominent sternum. "If you all behave yourselves. I've got a title now, mister."

"Aye, Chief," Steinbeck rolled his eyes as he said it, but there was something good-natured about it. He was playing just as much as April was.

"Besides," April said airily, twirling her flowing silver mane. "I've got a trick up my sleeve."

And with that, she placed her hands back on either side of his belly, and went back to riding him, with just as much force and furor as before.

"C'mon, Stein," grumbled one of the waiting beastkin--Gnom, the hyena. "Hurry on up."

"Patience, mate," Stein grunted, though his voice was a touch more strained than before--w-was his stamina flagging? Had April managed to find an especially sensitive spot on his--on his shaft?

"Ah!" A muffled squeal slipped from my lips as Kajagar hooked a pointy finger into my drooling little hole. "M-Mistress!"

"Don't it feel good, Sugar~?" Kajagar hissed into my ear. Further and further her finger went, its spindly length used to its fullest against me, until her rough nail gently prodded at my sissy spot.

"N-no, mistress," I gasped weakly, as in front of me April moaned out to the ceiling of the main tent, her eyes rolling up in her head. She brought herself plummeting down on Steinbeck's shaft one final time, kissing his navel with every inch of her lower lips, and though the silver fur on her belly concealed most of her muscles, I could almost see her abdominal ones contracting and straining, working their very hardest to wring the cum out of Steinbeck's enormous balls.

"It ain't very polite of a wee thing like ye ter lie like that, Sugar," Kajagar breathed. I sucked in sharply--her other hand had entered the fray, two fingers, m-maybe three, curled around beneath my imprisoned clitty. Slowly, sensually, she began to stroke the pent-up, tiny parcel that dangled impotently beneath them. My own balls, almost impossible to connect to the dark, bulbous pair that jutted out from beneath April's perfect ass at that very moment.

"I-I'm not--hahh--l-lying, m-mistress," I moaned, though the pleasure shooting up through my body from both her avenues of attack--my sack and my pussy--gave her ample reason to doubt me. My futile strain to escape her had morphed, embarrassingly easily, into a just-as-futile struggle to lean into her, to press my body into her deft, groping fingers. My clitty shivered and trembled. She pinched its cage between her remaining two fingers, and began to rub even that, smushing it around in slow, deliberate circles that reminded me of what she'd done with my crack. Treating it like a real clit.

"Ah~! Ahh~! HahH~!" April's moans, loud and proud, dragged me back to my vision. Her knees dug tightly into Steinbeck's sides, and her fists were clenched hungrily on black fistfuls of his fur, as her stomach--her womb--eagerly gulped up the load from his cock. From my vantage point beside them, I could all too easily see the shifting and stirring of Steinbeck's ballsack beneath her--and hear the glugging noises coming from her overstuffed cunny.

I must have fallen still, because Kajagar gave my own balls a reprimanding twist. "What's 'appening?"

"St… h-he's… c-cumming, mistress," I whimpered. She rewarded me with a second finger up my pussy, and soon I was moaning and trying desperately to writhe in her lustful grasp, now that a second clawed finger was dancing on my throbbing sissy spot.

"Right~!" In the main tent, April rose to her feet. Dislodged from her cunt, Steinbeck's cock flopped back against his belly--and I couldn't contain my gasp of shock. Forget a cock--this was a monstrous python, easily the length of one of April's transformed forearms, knotted with veins thicker than my fingers and crowned with a dark eye bigger than one of my pupils. As it lay there contentedly underneath a coat of her juices and Steinbeck's own gloopy, yellow-white seed, it pulsed gently, sooner resembling a sleeping beast in its own right than something attached to someone's body.

"'ow much is there?" Kajagar asked me, still fondling my clit in those maddening circles. Humiliating though it was, I knew I would have joined Steinbeck in cumming by now, should have by now, if it weren't for the flower brand on my own stomach. This was beyond humiliating. There he was, a bandit, a murderer, a rapist, getting to cum to his heart's content, straight into April's waiting womb--and I couldn't even squirt in my sissy cage without someone else's permission!

"A… hnghh… a-a lot, mistress." It wasn't just all over Steinbeck's sex, either. April's drooled it, yellow and sticky and filthy, and his manhood had distended her pussy so deeply, so starkly, so completely that it was upsettingly easy to see how much of her pink insides had been painted over with his colour. His claim to her body. His manhood. She'd been gaped by him, and creampied by him, and now--

"You're next!"

April stabbed a finger confidently at Ripper, the shark-woman. Between her thighs swung a strangely curved but clearly rock-hard penis, not quite as massive as Steinbeck's but still prodigious; I wondered feebly if this was one of her natural adornments, or a product of the root Kajagar had used to grow hers. April's sopping wet pussy was still blatantly drooling gorilla cum between her thighs, but Ripper seemed to pay it no mind; she happily let April place both her hands on her shoulders and shove her down into the ground, then follow it up with driving her creampied cunt all the way down to Ripper's barbed hilt. Thanks to the curve of Ripper's shaft, she had to lean far further forwards than with Steinbeck, so that her breasts and Ripper's were squeezed together, in a far more intimate position than cowgirl.

From the sidelines, beside my disembodied consciousness, Gnom let out a disappointed whine. April grinned in his direction, even as she began to move back and forth along Ripper's length. "Patience, Gnom~!"

"And 'o's she takin' next?" Kajagar prompted me.

"R-Ripper, mistress." I bit my lip--at least I could still move my mouth. "I-I, m-mistress, um, c-could I please…"

"Ah~! AhH~!" Maybe it was because she'd already been close to cumming when she'd finished Steinbeck, or maybe it was the more intimate position, or maybe Ripper's cock was simply better than the gorilla-man's, but April was vocal from the outset with Ripper. Her rapturous cries filled the air as she rode her, each one drawing an involuntary jerk from my trapped clitty, compounding the shivers that Kajagar's deft fingers were working out of me. Every part of my rational mind was screaming at me that this was wrong, that I couldn't be enjoying this, but just the sound of April's voice, just the sight of her naked body, just the knowledge that she was thrashing with senseless glee right in front of me--

"P-please l-let me cum, mistress!!"

I would have clapped my hand over my mouth if I'd been able to. I didn't--that wasn't something I--

"Oh?" There was always a dangerous undercurrent with Kajagar's words, but in that last syllable it had been ten times deeper. "Ye wanna cum, do ye?"

"Y-yes, mistress," I whimpered. There was no point trying to hide it now.

"So ye admit it, then, ye little freak." A third finger slithered up my aching pussy, jabbing right at my sore spot, certain that I couldn't be pushed over the edge without her explicit say-so. "Ye do like watchin' this."

"I-I--" My breath caught. "M-my lady is… sh-she's just… p-pretty, m-mistress, and--"

She jabbed her hand deeper, and my equivocations died on my lips. "An' she's so pretty, ye jest love watchin' her get piped by other men."

"P-please, m-m-mistress…!"

"Say it, Sugar."

In the main tent, Ripper had wrapped both her arms around April's thrashing back, and April had returned the gesture in kind--even as she continued to thrash her hips against hers, mashing her sex against Ripper's sandpaper navel in rabid delight. It was an embrace so deep, and tight, and mindlessly brutal that I could scarcely believe April--kind, sweet, lovely April--was a part of it. Drips and dollops of Steinbeck's semen flew free from her bouncing rear. If I'd really been there, some of it would have landed on me.

"I--I…" I inhaled again, as Kajagar laid her fingers along my parcel and my sissy spot, a wordless promise to let me finish if I finished the sentence. "I-I d-do like watching i-it, m-mistress!"

"Watching what?"

Ripper's thighs reared nimbly up into the air, squeezing April's waist between them. I'd seen the move countless times in porn videos before, except in reverse, the receptive party normally locking her legs around the giver... but it hardly mattered which way around it went. With April locked in place, her pussy once again burying an enormous shaft all the way to its very hilt, a set of visibly throbbing balls peeking out from beneath her jiggling ass--

"W-watching April have sex w-with men, mistress!!" I cried.

--there was only one possible outcome.

"That's me girl, Sugar." Kajagar gave my tiny parcel a twist, but not cruelly--instead, a tingle of pleasure shot up my spine. "Cum yer little heart out."

I was flung into the path of a hurricane of pleasure. This, for once, was not muted by the potion (or maybe it was, and this overwhelming, blissful tide was just the tiniest taste of what the real sensation would've felt like); lights danced behind my eyes and the pipes between my tiny little balls and my pathetic little clitty seized up all at once, eager to disgorge all the backed-up, watery squirt that Kajagar had teased out from my body. In front of me, April howled to the ceiling in glad acceptance of a far thicker, far heavier, far more potent load; fat gluts and spurts of it rocketed free from behind her, expelled from Ripper's bizarre cock with enough force to escape the tight seal their joined sexes had created together. She'd lifted her upper body, breaking free from Ripper's embrace to press as much of her weight down on Ripper's member as possible, her heaving breasts bouncing free and proud in the dim torchlight.

She was… beautiful. As I watched her pry herself from Ripper's sinister shaft, once again drooling a copious, deliriously thick trail of sperm from between her distended pussy lips, I couldn't stop my poor, orgasm-addled mind from desperately trying to reconcile the sight with my own shrunken clitty, reduced by transformations and sealed tightly in its metal prison. Even my real body, with its--w-with its--with its unmodified and uncaged clit, it couldn't possibly compare to the absurd sizes of these fantasy monsters. Size wasn't everything had been the age-old adage I'd tried to repeat to myself back in the real world, but… as April languidly crooked a finger in the direction of Gnom, and he eagerly bounded over to her, a third enormous cock wagging wildly in every direction… I realised that a deep lake of drool had pooled in my mouth.

"'o's next?" Kajagar asked me. If it weren't for the inherent sadism of what she was making me watch as she did it, the way she pressed her fingers back up against my wrung-out sissy parcel and my aching sissy weak spot could have almost been gentle.

"Gnom, mistress," I moaned. In front of my projected consciousness, April was already lowering herself down his splotchy, twitching, strangely twisted shaft. Kajagar resumed her ministrations. She had every intent of making me watch every last minute of April's self-inflicted defilement, at least until the potion wore off; part of me had to wonder whether I would drift off while still under its effects, the last thing I saw that night April still gleefully riding a bandit's gigantic cock.

Before long, the main tent was filled with April's sighs and moans once more--and Kajagar's tent, my own despondent mewling.

Chapter 34: The Reedlands Reunion Tour

Chapter Text

The world was a hazy blur of sultry pink when I awoke. For one heart-stopping moment, I thought I was somehow back in the cramped basement of the Lustrous Heart with its lone pink lamp, about to face another 'training session' with the Madam--but one sharp breath was enough to shake it. April's scent, almost so thick as to be choking but all the more reassuring for it, hung in the air like a warm blanket. I'd been transported to our Adventurer's Tent, and as I scrambled to sit up, I found that the softness beneath me was one of our sleeping bags, and the gentle weight on my skin was one of April's sweaters, and a long, flowing skirt that I'd seen her wearing a few times now.

April herself was nowhere to be seen. My throat, suddenly parched, grew tight at the thought of her, and my guts stirred their way into a tense knot. It took my bleary mind a moment to catch up to my body's response, but when it did, images of her unwitting display last night spiralled through my mind, dotting the murky pink sea of the tent around me, and I almost let out an audible gasp. My clitty strained madly against its cage, called to attention in what would have been the hardest morning wood I'd ever had in my life--if I had been left free to have it.

N-no… this was bad. I couldn't start finding those thoughts--thoughts of April's perfect body grinding and gnashing and gyrating against the bodies of half a dozen gigantic men--sexy! I-it was bad enough that I'd had to tell Kajagar that I did out loud. If I started admitting it to myself in my own thoughts… picturing those memories, April's wanton cries for more, the salty cum dripping from her gasping snatch… wh-while my own boner fought to burst free of its tiny prison…

I was almost grateful for the hunger pang that ripped through my thoughts. I still hadn't anything that wasn't cum since the bandits had captured us both, and thick and salty though the bandits' cum was, it was still no substitute for actual, physical food. Even if the stomach I was trying to fill was little more than a simulated stand-in for the real thing.

I paused. How was my real stomach being filled, anyway? It was hard to say exactly how long the in-game days were in real time, but it had almost certainly been more than one real day since we'd been trapped in here. My family had probably realised I wasn't coming down for dinner at some point, then come up to my room to find me unresponsive with the Vision strapped to my head… and then called an ambulance when they couldn't get it off me or stop the game from running. So my body, my real body, was probably lying catatonic on a hospital bed at the moment, being fed by an IV drip… which raised another question. Had the hospital really not been able to find a way to get the Phantasm Vision off me, or April, or anyone else in all this time?

Another pang of hunger, simulated though it was, tore my attention away from this dour train of thought and pulled me unsteadily to my feet. It would be easier to puzzle things out on a full stomach, or at least the extremely convincing sensation of one.

As I staggered out of the tent, it occurred to me that I didn't know if there was going to be food waiting for me--but then a mouthwatering scent washed over me. Something fatty, and greasy, and overwhelmingly delicious. My nose wasn't nearly as good as a beastkin's, but even I could manage to follow the fragrance over the short distance between me and its source; the main tent.

The sounds of clinking plates and muffled conversation gave me pause when I reached the entrance flap. On a rational level, I knew that we didn't have anything to fear from the beastkin anymore. April had proven her supremacy over Caliburn, the last Chief, right in front of them all--and then went on to nail it down with the tribe's next biggest threats, i-in more than just one way. But all the irrational part of my brain had to do was point out that it was April who'd done all that. If she wasn't in here… was it even irrational to be a little scared of delivering myself right into their clutches?

"Anne? Is that you?" Before I could agonise over it much further, April, back in her human--well, mostly human--form, poked her head through the flap. Seeing that it was me, she gave me a brilliant smile and swept me up into a crushing hug that I was wholly unready for.

"EeP!" As she pressed me into her unruly shock of dark hair, I couldn't stop myself from taking a sneaky whiff of her. She was as overpowering as ever--if her p-partners last night had left any traces of their own scents on her, my weak nose wasn't up to detecting it.

"Are you alright?" April suddenly set me down, her gorgeous face brimming with concern. Had she mistaken my sniff for a sniffle?

"I-I'm fine, my lady!" I babbled, heat crawling up my face.

She looked at me searchingly for a few more seconds, which only served to make my blush worse. I was halfway towards confessing that the sound she'd heard had been me sniffing her like a creep before she brightened back up and grabbed me by the hand. "C'mon, I saved you a seat!"

Ridiculous though it was, I couldn't keep myself from shaking with b--girlish glee at the line. That was one I'd hoped to hear every lunchtime for half my school life--and it had just fallen from her lips so easily, so freely, that it seemed obvious that she'd do that for me. It was just a fact of life that she would want to sit next to me. Never mind that this tent was crawling with barbaric criminals who she only had the most tenuous of holds over… the worst of which she'd willingly offered herself up to last night, to the invisible audience of m-me. She'd saved me a seat; and, what was more, an eye-popping breakfast spread of freshly fried bacon, and still-steaming sausages, and a juicy mound of scrambled eggs. It all sat on a plate as wide across as my shoulders, filling it to the brim, and beside it sat a wooden mug of something orange and sweet. Almost before I'd even taken my seat, I fell upon the meal with gusto.

"Whoah! Guess you're starving too, huh?"

As was only natural, we were seated at the table on the stage, exactly where the Chief had sat on our first night in this tent, though the purple throne he'd used was nowhere to be seen--instead, April's chair was a far more spartan wooden one, though it still had a high back and an impressive wooden arch that hung over her head, almost like a crown. The makeshift gladiatorial ring had been rearranged back into the disorganised rows of tables and chairs and benches that had originally filled the tent; the only difference in the floor plan was the glaring absence of the silver cage, which had been supplanted, in the fashion of a liquid spilling out into empty space, by a cluster of gossiping beastkin on rickety stools.

That continuity was not shared by the beastkin themselves, however. The lecherous jeers and sneers that I'd come to expect from them had seemingly vanished overnight, chased away by April's new status. And though we were seated at the table of honour, in keeping with April's rank, the other hulking figures who'd accompanied the Chief up here were scattered throughout the tent--not even April's new 'friends' from last night were sitting with us, something I took a tiny scrap of solace from. Instead, sitting with us at the table were the tribe's slaves--all ten of them.

For once, they were clothed, in starchy-looking breeches and ill-fitting tops; spare clothes taken from the bandits' supply, I guessed. Their black collars were nowhere to be seen, but even without the immediate visual reminders of their role in this tribe, they still seemed… downtrodden. Though they each had a breakfast spread to rival my own laid out for them, they only pecked at their own meals, their heads lowered and their shoulders tight. The cow-sissy had been seated next to April, on the other side from me; when I looked at her, I caught her eye, and we both hurriedly turned away from each other, both abashed to have been caught staring.

Allie: Level 1 Farmgirl . Like everything else about her, her name seemed vaguely familiar. I mulled it over as I worked my way through as much of my breakfast as I could stomach, but didn't get very far--I certainly would have remembered running into a cow-girl back in Lumberg. When I finally set down my knife and fork and splayed myself comfortably against the back of my seat, stomach fit to burst with all the food I'd crammed in it, April took that as her cue to clap her hands together--and every head at the table, mine included, snapped to attention. For a moment, her smile slipped, the slaves' reactions clearly borne of fear rather than anything else.

"Alright!" she said, just loud enough to address everyone at the table without interrupting the cosy ambience of the bandits below. "You've all been, um, prisoners here for a very long time, but today that's gonna end. I think that--well, slavery is evil, so as my first act as Chief of this tribe, we're going to release all of you girls, and take you back to where you belong!"

A wall of silent faces met her announcement. Most of their faces were perfectly blank--save for one white-furred, sneering scowl.

"I refuse," declared Cotton, the rabbit-kin. Her plate had been left completely untouched, now-cold meat and eggs now going to waste in front of her. April went stiff, her eyes flicking to me for, well, something that I couldn't figure out. She was the one who'd taken down the Chief and faced down his hulking lieutenants, one-on-five! Couldn't she negotiate with one… bratty…

"A-and why is that?" I said, my own voice as lofty as I could make it, as beside me the tension seeped out of April's frame. Her tight-knuckled grip on her own cutlery slackened. The fights--a-and the, well, sex--had been far easier for April than this. Well, easier was the wrong word; it was more that they'd… aligned with her strengths. Our bodies in VALKRYIE, as I'd experienced firsthand, weren't just neutral vehicles that our minds had been shoved in. They came with instincts and histories of their own--instincts that, in April's case, were almost definitely screaming at her to knock this uppity slave around with her prodigious Strength stat. She couldn't rely on them to negotiate, not in a civilised manner.

"Hmph." Cotton clearly hadn't been expecting me to step in for April, and she eyed us both with haughty contempt as she answered me. "Look at us. We're more beastkin than you are now, my Lady. Do you truly think we can just go back to our old lives with all the other humans?"

The other slaves--girls--glanced at each other as she spoke, imperceptible, defeated nods passing through them like a wave. Only Allie shifted her gaze back to me and April, worrying at her bottom lip with a very flat front tooth.

"Well…" April hesitated. A cloudy distance had settled in her eyes, and I could almost see her running through and discarding a dozen ideas and strategies and solutions in the privacy of her own mind. "I know it might be… harder… now that you, um, you're all different now, but you're still you, right? I'm sure your--" She glanced at Allie--"your families will be glad to see you all again!"

Cotton snorted sardonically. "Oh, I'm sure my dearest Uncle would just love to have me dropped in his lap, looking like this. Do you think he'll keep me around as a pet for his sons, or sell me off to one of his favourite brothels on my first night back?"

"I--wh-what?" April said blankly.

"It's not just 'harder' for us," Cotton said. "The laws are different for beastkin, especially where I come from, a-and like it or not, all of us would be prime merchandise on a slave market by now. Even her." She jabbed a furry finger in Allie's direction.

The other girls, especially Allie, squirmed uncomfortably--and I couldn't help but sympathise. It was one thing for someone as strong as April to chase after freedom; if she was dropped somewhere at random, without me around to support her, she might take a while to adjust to the lack of healing… but she was big and scary and self-assured enough that the number of monsters and people who even wanted to tangle with her was vanishingly low. But take someone as thin and waifish as Cotton… o-or me… and couple that with the 'training' that Caliburn had seemed so fond of, even the short time that he'd owned me and April…

"W-we could just let her join the tribe, my lady," I pointed out, looking up at April. "N-not as a slave, but a… full member…?"

"Huh." Cotton crossed her arms over her chest, as if to signal that she didn't think much of that idea either… but she wasn't refusing outright.

"I… alright," April said, doing a poor job of hiding her uncertainty. Cotton was definitely a… weird one. She'd been so meek around Caliburn, squeaking and squirming just from being in his presence--but without him, it almost seemed like she took a certain… pride in being one of the tribe's slaves. I chewed on my lip. Would she try and break out Caliburn, given the chance? Was that her angle for arguing in favour of staying here?

"Yeah. You're free now, so… I guess that makes you free to stay here, if that's what you really want." April nodded to herself, apparently satisfied with that conclusion. "Anyway, um, we only have two boats, so I guess we'll send one up north, and one down south? To Lumberg and, uh…"

"Sammouth," Cotton supplied, rolling her eyes. I had to imagine that a sassy response like that would've gotten her disciplined under the old Chief. April just dipped her head in thanks, and a flash of pique flitted across Cotton's face. It was a little contemptuous, but maybe also… disappointed?

Before I could point it out, or decide that pointing it out was something worth trying to do, or even decide what emotion it was that I was thinking of pointing out in the first place, April opened the floor to the other slaves, asking each one in turn whether they wanted to stay with the tribe or take her offer to try their luck back in their homes.

By the time we had all of their answers, beastkin had started to filter out of the tent in a lackadaisical stream, their plates left strewn at their tables. In the end, five of the slaves chose to remain with the camp, including Cotton; the other five, including Allie, had chosen to leave with April and I. Two of that five were bound for Sammouth ('Sam-muth'), which was apparently south of us, while Allie and two others were headed north, in the direction of Lumberg and a city called Amberlin ('Am-BER-lin'… like the city in Germany).

"Right," rasped Kajagar, suddenly slipping out of the slow river of beastkin moving away from us and up onto the stage. I--and most of the slaves--stumbled back in shock. Only Cotton remained unmoved, though she took care to catch my eye and sneer at me once I'd recovered. "River's clear, me Chief."

April nodded slowly, in that assured way generals and CEOs in TV shows nodded when their flunkies reported back to them, though there was still some stiffness to her rendition. "Thanks, Kajagar." She stared blankly ahead, as if taking silent inventory--"I think that's everything, then!"

"Everything, my lady?" I said.

Kajagar cackled. "Aye. While ye were enjoyin' yer beauty sleep, yer lady were awful busy. Gave us a big speech an' all, she did. Even me an' the cooks were there fer that bit."

"She even missed us returning all of their belongings, Lady Kajagar," Cotton said snidely.

"Ha! Ye'd think an elf'd be less of a pillow princess, aye?"

"Hey, enough of that," April snapped. She curled a protective arm around my shoulders; once again, I couldn't tell if it was conscious on her part or not, though I certainly noticed, the warmth in my cheeks flaring back up even as Kajagar and Cotton's ribbing died down. "Here, Anne, I'll do your stuff…"

She tapped at the air for a few minutes, in a lengthier and more intricate manipulation of her menus and inventory than I'd ever seen before. Kajagar and the slaves--former slaves--looked on in mild bemusement, though the calculating light that always gleamed in Kajagar's eyes didn't falter for a millisecond throughout the whole process.

My heart skipped a beat as I scanned through the first few items that April was returning to me. The Autovincium Major--that was the rope that was enchanted to tie me up whenever I tried to equip it, the one that Percy had forced me to buy what seemed a lifetime ago… a-and All Balled Up was the ball gag that she'd made me get with it! Which meant that--

Feverishly, I clicked through on the underlined text to expand the list to its full size. My gaze flickered over each item, barely long enough to take in the shape of its name--

"Um, is something wrong?" April said, her voice strangely faraway, as if I'd had that potion again. "Did I forget something?"

"I… n-no, my lady," I breathed, as I went over the last few items. Somehow, and I didn't know whether it was the game, or fate, or something else entirely that was smiling upon me, the Bitchbreaker--the enormous pink dildo that came with its own magical suction cup feature--was not among the belongings that April was trading to me. Which meant that either the bandits hadn't given it to her, and were keeping it for themselves--an outcome that, to be clear, I was entirely happy to accept--or they had given it to her, and she'd assumed that it was not one of the things that they'd stolen out of my inventory. Maybe she'd figured it was a… a special souvenir for her, s-something for her to remember her nights at the camp by.

Through supreme force of will, I managed to blot out the possibility that she'd worked out exactly where it had actually come from, and had just refrained from sending it to me so as to avoid an awkward conversation about why I had a ten-inch dildo sitting around in my inventory.

"Hm. Is that everything, then?" April looked between Kajagar and I.

Kajagar nodded lazily, and I was struck by the confidence of it. She probably had a mental checklist of every last thing she wanted to extract from us before we left, all the things that would set up the tribe for success--well, her version of it, anyway.

"Anne?"

"Um…" While I had only just woken up, and was only now shaking off the embarrassment of having my dildo potentially discovered. My… m-my cage was still on, and with no way of lifting the curse in sight… I-I didn't need to cum quite yet, the events of last night having drained me rather dry… but even the most minor sexy thoughts, each little provocation, came with a twitching reminder of the pent-up pressure that would build in my cage with time. I remembered my night in the bathroom, before we'd set off for the Reedlands, and the sheer bliss of riding the Bitchbreaker…

"Anne, are okay?" April loomed over me in concern, hands half-raised as if ready to yank me into a reassuring hug.

"Y-yeah, my lady!" I babbled. "I, um, I don't have any, uh, any stuff to do, my lady!"

The dildo could wait. I c-could always use my… fingers, i-if I ignored for a moment just how girly that prospect was, and in a real emergency I could always just buy another one… m-maybe a smaller one, since I still wasn't exactly sure about… ten inches…

April beamed, blissfully unaware that I was silently making tentative arrangements to get myself a new dildo. "Then let's go!"

A couple of hours later saw us gliding serenely up the River Samson, perched upon the bigger of the bandits' two boats. It was a roughshod, rickety thing, and small enough that it had rocked concerningly when April had first set foot on it--but with April now seated squarely along its centre, and taking great pains not to move around until we were moored to the riverbank again, the boat's passage was steady as we continued upstream.

Behind us, not even reaching the tips of April's fluffy ears with his squat build, Sau the toad-kin--newly released from his slave cage, the same as the three ex-slaves accompanying us--manned the boat's solitary sail. He was silent as he worked, and for good reason; to bring us up the river, fighting against the current, he had to sail us in a zig-zagging path, taking us almost from one bank to the other over and over again. I supposed, in my cursory and quite possibly, uh, problematic understanding of the various beastkin breeds, that it made sense for a toad-man to have a knack for sailing. Toads were semi-aquatic, or at least aquatic adjacent. Whether that actually translated to any in-game bonus for doing things on the water, though, was something that probably only the developers of this game knew.

"Whatcha thinking about?" April murmured. Her words rumbled up against me, carried through her chest and her arms, and I fought to keep down a shiver of delight. This boat, even as the bigger of the two, still only had enough seats for five beastkin crewmates; there was a hold below the deck, into which multiple slaves could be packed at once, but April had baulked at the idea of cramming even one person in there. Not that she was wrong to--we'd cracked it open to take a look, and it had looked about as claustrophobic as the boot of a car, and rank with untold filth to cap it off. Slamming the trapdoor to it shut and forgetting about it had been a unanimous decision… though it left us with the conundrum of how to fit six people on a five-person boat. Sau, the skipper we'd borrowed from the tribe, couldn't very well share his seat with anyone else, and it would have been… rude to ask one of the newly freed slave-girls to share their seats with each other or one of us.

That left the only people available to share as April and me, and… considering our respective sizes… it only made sense to have me sitting on her lap. Any cuddling she happened to visit on me from behind was just an unavoidable hazard--w-well, perk--of the seating plan!

"U-um," I started, well aware that Sau was in hearing range and might not take well to race-based speculation about why he had any skill with sailing, "m-my build, I guess, my lady."

It wasn't really a lie. Before I'd drifted off into thinking about the mechanics of toad-kin instincts, I had opened my Milestone list--and in fact, those tooltips were still hovering in front of me, having never been dismissed. It was rapidly becoming my go-to whenever I needed to pry my mind away from something… like the rugged sensation of April's muscular body beneath my plush thighs.

"Oh, right! You still can't see your tracks, huh?"

"N-no, my lady."

"Hm… that low Intellect thing is annoying, isn't it? I wonder why they did it like that."

To personally victimise me, probably, I thought sourly. April's Intellect was tied for her lowest stat at 12, which still put it at more than double my paltry 5, and put her above the unknown breakpoint--probably 10--that let her actually check on the Milestones she was eligible for in advance.

"You still know how many points you're at though, right?"

"Um, yes, my lady," I said quickly, switching to my spells tab, where the number of Milestone points I had left was displayed at the very top. "I'm at… nine, my lady!"

April made an impressed whistle. "Whoah, you've been busy! That's enough for tons of new spells!"

Unseen by her, I bit my lip. I'd been… 'busy', alright, but almost all of the new Milestones had been from… sex. Most of it… w-well, all of it, really… with me on the bottom.

"Is that where Thrill comes from?" April continued blithely. "The one that boosts my damage based on how low my health gets?"

"Um… yes, my lady," I said, carefully, as I tabbed back to my Milestones and refreshed myself on the one responsible for that effect. And the events of the night I'd earned it.

"What's that one called?" she asked.

From the moment she'd started down this line of questioning, I'd set some part of my mind towards working out a way to dodge its inevitable end--but before I could hem or haw in the slightest, my mouth automatically supplied the answer. "M-Muff Diver, my lady."

It wasn't entirely without hesitation… i-in fact, I stuttered as I said it, and though I didn't dare turn to face her, I felt her stiffen up slightly against my back… but my throat grew tight. Was this the brand of 'Courtesy' at work, forcing me to be polite to my better by answering her question as promptly and honestly as I could manage?

"O-oh," April said quietly. Her next question would probably have been where I'd gotten it… but that had been answered handily enough by its name.

"I, um," I fished for a way to peel the conversation out of the awkward rut we'd stumbled into, "I think, uhh, the wording says I can trigger it with Angel Down, too, my lady! Because it's just, um, casting spells on them, not necessarily, uhh, positive spells. S-so I could probably keep it up on you for ages i-if you stand in it, like against those Smidge things, my lady."

"Huh! Cool!"

A vague memory flitted into my head. "Oh, didn't you get a new Milestone too? After you beat, um, the old Chief, my lady?"

"Oh yeah," April said. "That's Pack Alpha. Here!"

More… intense, h-huh? I took a sneaky sniff. With her wrapped around me for the largest part of the last two hours, her thick, earthy scent had settled quite comfortably over me… but I was still far from nose-blind to it. Silently, I wondered if I even could be.

"It's a beastkin Milestone," April supplied helpfully, mistaking my silence for curiosity. "I, uh, the flavour text--you can't see those yet, right?--says, 'The tribe of Cain dates back to the very first of the Nine Eras, when the sky was young and the Giant's blood still freshly spilled. Though they split and split again over the millennia, into the countless tribes that we now know today, never once have they strayed from the sole edict laid down by the mother they share, Ariana Ever-Changing. Breed the strong; the weak shall perish.'"

"B-breed, my lady?" I said stupidly, caught off-guard by the inclusion of the word in an otherwise un-sexy paragraph--and coming out of April's mouth!

April giggled. "I think it means, like, breed with? Survival of the fittest, right? I figure she just wanted the strongest beastkin to, like, pass on their genes."

I frowned. "Do they even have genes in this world? I mean, it's all magic, right, my lady?"

April shrugged, an action that made her breasts shift pendulously against my back. "Weeeell… everything being magic doesn't mean they don't have genes, right?"

The conversation continued on for a few hours after that point, our chatter going uninterrupted by the four non-player beastkin in the boat with us. It was all "alaj" nonsense to them, after all, and I got the sense that the ex-slaves, at least, were still somewhat intimidated by April's new position as the tribe's Chief… even if they weren't even members of that tribe anymore. (That much had been recognised by the game itself; their nameplates had vanished completely, indicating that they were no longer 'followers' of our Guild.) Allie, the cow-girl, sometimes glanced anxiously our way when she thought we weren't looking, only to immediately turn away when I caught her… but between the relaxing rocking of our boat, and the sparkling scene painted by the cloudless sky and the rolling river and the gorgeous golden carpets of reeds laid out on either side of us, and the rambling ease of my conversation with April, it was all too easy to forget about her, and the rest of the former slaves, and the whole wide world, really. We… we were free. April and I could do what we wanted, go where we wanted, and do it all together.

Phrased like that, it almost made being trapped in the world of VALKYRIE sound like… fun.

"Right," said Sau, deftly steering the boat to a gliding stop just by a familiar cluster of reeds poking out from a bank of black silt. "First stop."

We'd agonised over it for a while, but it just didn't make sense for us to retreat all the way back to Lumberg at this point. We still needed to turn in our quest for rescuing the farmer's captured son in person, and even though going back to Lumberg would let us cash in our Milestone points for new spells, the truth was that our existing spells were more than up for the task of dealing with the monsters in the area. The… bandits had proven much more of a challenge, it was true, but with one tribe under our control and a set of new strategies that April had devised for any other tribes in the area, we--well, it was mostly her--weren't too worried about the prospect about fighting some of them, too. And when it came to bearing the two other ex-slaves all the way up to Lumberg, Sau was the beastkin that April trusted most of all to get that done… for some reason.

Sh-she hadn't had sex with him, too, right? He was a… toad.

"Okay! Allie, you get off first…" One at a time, the three of us--Allie, me, and April, in that order--extracted ourselves from the boat; the black silt of the riverbank welcomed us with three identical schlorps, and when April was steady again Sau gave her a smart salute and set about readying everything to get the boat off the bank again.

"Remember, you've gotta stick around until they're both safe with their families," April reminded him, even as she waved him goodbye.

"Aye, Chief," Sau said, glancing up from his work with the sail. "Good luck with that 'un."

And with that dubious farewell, the boat retreated from the shore, leaving us on the outskirts of the camp where it had all began.

"Alright, Alther!" April said cheerfully. "We're almost at your dad! He's just a short walk away."

The cow-sissy stared worriedly at the reeds in front of us, her eyes wide. That had been the most surprising revelation of the morning, as far as I was concerned--that the enslaved Level 1 Farmgirl April had tried to rescue on our first night in the bandit camp… was Alther, the farmer's son we'd been tasked with rescuing for our quest. If I'd remembered correctly, he'd only been a captive of the bandits for a week or so before we'd encountered him… and that had been all Kajagar needed to turn him from a strapping young lad to a wide-hipped, narrow-waisted, fat-assed cow of a femboy. Even under the ratty clothes she'd--he'd--been given today, his figure was unmistakably feminine. As bad as the game had been for me, I had to thank my own lucky stars that I hadn't had a transformation that drastic applied to me yet. My hips might have been widened, it was true, but at least they didn't jut out that far past my narrow shoulders.

"I… a-are we going through there, Miss April?" Alther whimpered. Even his voice was far too soft and girly to be thought of as a man's… though that was one regard I hadn't fared any better in.

"Don't worry," April said confidently, grinning brilliantly at him. "Me and Anne'll keep you safe, no sweat! Right, Anne?"

"Yeah, my lady!" To reinforce the point, and also to get myself ready in case we were jumped by monsters right away, I equipped my Wand of Oraia--one of the many things that the bandits had returned to me via April. For a moment, I swore that it grew a little warmer in my grasp, as if pleased to have been returned to its rightful owner.

"See?" April gave Alther an affectionate tap on the shoulder, then padded forwards into the reeds. With a helpless glance back at me--which I returned--Alther trudged after her, leaving me to guard their rear.

True to April's word, when a pair of mud-rovers burst from the silt underfoot with a pair of ferocious roars about two minutes later, they barely made it a foot in Alther's direction combined before she was upon them, emerald-studded mace in hand, smashing away at their tough skulls with frightening speed. I'd almost forgotten just how easily she carried the enormous weapon; it almost seemed feather-light in her hands, except for the resounding krrack that tore through the air each time it made contact with her targets. Though they switched focus to her almost as soon as her first blow landed, it wasn't nearly enough; they managed to weave a grand total of one bite past her barrage of blows, and didn't even manage to inflict their Lockjaw status effect with it. Once they were fully pulverised, and dissipated back into the mud from whence they'd come with a low hissing noise, she straightened back up, brushed the worst of the mud off her skirt, and continued on without another word. Alther and I could only follow limply in her wake.

The atmosphere grew glum as we reached the first ramshackle signs of the bandits' abandoned outpost; a pair of unevenly hammered-in wooden posts that had clearly been for horses to be hitched to, a lean-to with a bunch of fishing rods leaning against it, a tiny wooden platform nestled amid the branches of a leafless tree (clearly the bandits' idea of a watchtower), and a few other odds and ends. This camp, deserted though it was now, had been the site of some dark memories for all three of us. Alther's kidnapping, my kidnapping… and April's massacre.

"There's no bodies," April said suddenly. She sniffed the air uncertainly. "I… I can still smell the blood, but…"

I blinked and looked around, while Alther looked halfway between concerned and bemused at the mention of bodies. The tribe proper had obviously known something about this enclave getting wiped out--hadn't they mentioned it to April at some point?--but they probably hadn't deigned to communicate this to a mere slave like Allie. Alther.

As usual, April was right. Though there were still crusty brown bloodstains littering the camp, in practically every direction I could care to look… the glassy-eyed bodies that had left them were nowhere to be seen.

"Hey, what's that?" I asked nobody in particular, gesturing at one of the few trees that had escaped being used as a thrown weapon by April. It was a robust, black-barked specimen, bristling with thin green leaves and a tangled forest of roots… and on its bark, drawn in a white, chalky substance that could very easily have been chalk, was a plus sign.

"Th-that's, um, the symbol of the… g-gravewatchers," Alther piped up. A shudder ran through his slender body; the mention April had made of bodies was finally settling in.

"Who're they?" April said, staring too intently at the symbol to pay much attention to Alther's reaction. "A religion or something?"

"I, um, y-yes, s-somewhat," Alther said. "Th-they, uhm, take care of the… d-dead."

"Oh, okay." April frowned at the symbol. "Like, uh, coroners."

Alther nodded weakly, then realised that April wasn't facing him. "Yes."

"So… that's just what they do?" I asked him. "Cart up bodies and then… leave behind a symbol to say they did it?"

"Well, um, I-I'm not sure about that… th-they don't normally--"

"Oh!" April startled us both with an exclamation of surprise. "Anne, come look!"

She'd stepped up to the symbol--and when I followed her, I saw the popup that had drawn this reaction.

"Oh! That, uh, cat guy must have had a bounty, my lady!"

April's earlier frown had returned, and she'd added to it by chewing thoughtfully at one lip with an especially pronounced canine. "Huh. Does it say my name for you, too?"

"Um, yeah, my lady." I paused, rifling through my head for something Kajagar had mentioned in one of our… one-on-one conversations… "I think the Gilded Guard can, like, spy on people with the sun. Maybe that's how they knew it was you who… y'know. My lady."

"But it was night when I did all that," April pointed out.

"The Gilded Guard?" Alther said suddenly. For the first time since I'd laid eyes on his patchwork black-and-white-furred face, his eyes were shining with something approaching excitement… and his mouth was curled up in something approaching a smile.

"Yes!" April said quickly, spinning around to face this possible new source of wisdom. "Do you know who they are?"

"They're only the heroes of our kingdom, M-Miss!" Alther exclaimed. "They channel the power of the Sun Sister to do battle with the forces of evil! Th-they're the country's finest warriors, they are!"

I glanced back at the chalky white cross. "Do, um, do they usually team up with the gravewatchers?"

Alther eyed me dubiously. "Well… not that I know of. But…" Gears, quite possibly kickstarted by the mention of his personal heroes, had started turning in his head. "Perhaps the gravewatchers would have to report to them…?"

"Right. I get it," April said. "If a dead body randomly showed up, you'd have to tell the cops about it, right? That's probably what these grave guys did."

"Huh." To think that they'd even worked the despawning of corpses and the issuing of bounties for particularly dangerous enemies into the rich lore of this game, so that they both had their own convenient in-universe explanations. "So… the grave people discovered these bodies, then told a Gilded Guard guy about it?"

"I expect it was one of the Pilgrims," Alther said matter-of-factly. His face was glowing with definite excitement now. "They've got dragons, see."

With the mood lightened by the discovery of the Gilded Guard's letter, and the promise of a generous bounty for us to collect the next time we were in a city, and the breaking of Alther's near-total silence now that he had been presented with a topic he had a considerable interest in, the walk back to his father's upturned cart became far more jocular. Between our speculation on the limits of the Gilded Guard's investigative abilities--they had successfully pinpointed AprilThaWolf as the killer of Turg, even though it had happened practically in the dead of night, when one would have thought their sun magic would be unusable--and frequent but easily-cleared battles with the monsters of the Reedlands, Alther related to us the full extent of his knowledge on the topic of dragons.

According to him, they were enormous, terrifying creatures who came in a variety of colours, which determined whether they breathed fire, or lightning, or thunder (which was apparently a different thing from lightning), or frost, or acid. They were always hungry, and never stopped growing until they died (which weirdly reminded me of caterpillars) and they had the power to transform into whatever they wanted (which less-weirdly reminded me of the Breachwood and its Protodragon). The Gilded Guard's Pilgrims went up to the mountains around the capital to find their dragons; they only tamed the good dragons, who liked helping people, and flew them into battle to kill the evil dragons, who just wanted to eat people.

"Can dragons turn into people?" April asked, at one point.

Alther shook his head, though it wasn't without hesitation. "No… they're too big."

April made eye contact with me, clearly unconvinced, but I could only shrug back. We didn't know the rules around here. For all I knew, there was some kind of magical principle of mass conservation that meant dragons couldn't disguise themselves as people.

Rather than mountains, 'evil' dragons preferred the company of fetid bogs and swamps, and caves buried deep underground, and chasms full of lava. There was one story about a dragon who lived on a mountain and ate dwarves until a bunch of dragonborn showed up and killed him, but Alther was fairly certain that this was a mistake by the author: dwarves lived underground, as everyone knew, so this dragon must have been underground too. I had to admit that his logic made as much sense as anything else he'd talked about. As for the good dragons, their deeds were by and large overshadowed by the greatest dragon: the almighty Archalors Solomon, a golden dragon who used his thunderous breath and unbreakable claws to protect the 'Ancient Praxians' until he was called upon to fight the very worst of the evil dragons. Though he fought valiantly, he ended up dying, and was called to the Sun Sister's side in death as history's greatest martyr ever.

"What happened to the evil dragon?" I asked.

"Flew to the Badlands, she did," Alther said. "Ain't been seen ever since, not by Geldishmen."

"What about Badlands people?"

Alther stared at me for a while, as if the prospect of what 'Badlands people' might have or might have not seen had never once occurred to him. "I dunno. They must've, I guess."

For a moment it looked like April, falling back to our side after dispatching yet another pack of ravenous mud-rovers, wanted to derail his lecture on the dragons of VALKYRIE by asking him more about the inhabitants of the Badlands--but then the familiar, reedy voice of an old man rang out at us.

"By jove!" From underneath his upturned cart Belwurs Kettle--quest-giver--peered up at the three of us, the whites of his slightly mismatched eyes gleaming with some undiagnosed mania. Had he been stuck out here the entire time we'd been stuck in the bandit camp? "The adventurers! You've returned!"

No longer having to cower under the growls of a pack of mud-rovers, he scurried out and drew himself up to his full height--not too far above myself or Alther, and entirely dwarfed by April. "Then you must be the bearers of good news!"

"I, uh, yeah!" April said. "We found your son, um, sir!"

I blinked. Was that 'sir' tacked onto the end of that sentence her saying it, or her brand making her say it? If we were fulfilling his quest, that… did kind of make him our boss… at least until we cashed it out…

"Oh, blessed sun!" Belwurs threw his hands out to either side of him and arched his back so that almost his whole upper body was pointed skywards, as if to embrace the sky in its cloudless blue entirety. "Where is the lad?"

April nudged Alther--and, clutching himself awkwardly, he stepped forward. "I-I'm right here, Pa."

Beneath his bushy brows, Belwurs's pupils shrank to tiny dots, and he turned wordlessly to April--and then, when she could offer him nothing but a laboured smile, to me. It… it wasn't too hard to sympathise with his reaction. I'd never seen the old Alther, from before his kidnapping, but if I just imagined what he might have looked like--a fair-haired, fair-skinned youth, his body wiry with the natural muscles that came with years of farmyard labour, his every feature definitely and unambiguously human… it was hard to see the resemblance at all to the new Alther, with his prominent pink half-muzzle jutting out from the lower half of his face, and his pair of tiny yellow horns that just barely stuck out past the top of his golden head of hair, and… his splotchy new black-and-white coat of closely cropped fur.

"A… Alther?" Belwurs croaked, finally turning his gaze back upon his transformed son. "Is… izzat really you?"

"Aye, pa," Alther said hoarsely. "I… th-the beasts, they… they tried to… turn me into one of 'em. To sell me off. But the adventurers, they saved me." He fidgeted awkwardly with the hem of his borrowed breeches, and for the first time I noticed a slender tail, climbing up to poke out from inside his waistband. An entirely new body part, made a part of him by Kajagar's magic…

"You… you can't be…" Belwurs's gaze snapped back to April. "It's not forever, is it?"

"I… well…" It was April's turn to fidget now, as she tried to decide how much he deserved to know… and tried to weigh it against how much he'd want to know. "Ka--the bandits' witch said, um, it's a very… stable transformation, sir. It'll take a long time before he… turns back. I-if he does."

"He was only gone two weeks," Belwurs said slowly. "That's…" He swallowed thickly, and for a moment I swore I could see tears pricking at the eyes of this balding, ratty, mud-stained virtual old man. And then--with a ginger gentleness that almost brought tears to my eyes--he raised one knobble-jointed arm and reached slowly out to his son. As he did, his eyes fell over the rest of his changes. It wasn't just his face that had been lost; he had… curves now, and an exaggeratedly tiny waist, and the beginnings of a pair of breasts, visible as a gentle swell under the ill-fitting top April had given him. "Th-they didn't just turn you into a… a beast, did they? Oh, mother above… they turned you into a… a cow."

I winced, stung as if he'd been talking to me. Alther, blubbery lips wobbling, could only give a slow, shameful nod in response. And April looked between them both, her gorgeous green eyes welling up with tears.

"B-but he's still your son, Mr. Kettle!" she sniffed. Seemingly without realising it, she wrapped a single, muscular arm tightly around my waist. Clinging to me for support.

Eventually, Belwurs sucked in a deep breath. He scrunched up his wrinkled face, grey beard and brows furrowing together as if in silent conference… and then he nodded.

"You're right. Alther, my boy… you are my son. And you always will be, come hells or horses, those bleedin' bandits be damned."

In hushed silence, April and I watched the two shuffle up to each other and share a quick, perfunctory hug, before darting back apart and pointedly turning their faces away from each other. Men--the derisive, single-word reaction came to me before I could catch it. I was a--I'd once thought of myself as a man. Why was I being so snobby about their reluctance to express their feelings?

Their reconciliation complete, the old man turned to April and thrust an arm stiffly in her direction. It looked as if he meant to shake her hand--but then I realised that he was still holding the mud-coated sack of potatoes he'd been carrying the first time we'd met him.

"You've done us a great kindness, adventurers! Here's your reward, as promised."

"Um, you can keep that," April told him, as above her head her Milestone count dinged up by one.

With the matter of the Kettles' reunion settled, it only took April a couple of minutes to right their upturned cart, prying it with ease out of the deep box of furrows it had dug into the earth over the last two weeks. They seized one muddy shaft each--we'd never quite gotten around to tracking down their stolen family mule, and a small part of me did silently suspect that the poor thing had been eaten by the bandits who'd taken it--and trundled off to the north, in the direction of Lumberg and their farm. The only cargo they carried with them was the muddy sack of potatoes… and a pair of keepflame jars that we'd been able to spare. Monsters hadn't eaten Belwurs while he was waiting for us to rescue his son, but April wasn't willing to risk them getting mauled after our quest was complete, either.

And so April and I were free--finally, actually free--to continue on our own trek south, to do what we'd originally come to the Reedlands for. It had felt like so long ago since we'd arrived here, but--

"Right!" declared April. "On to Dryad Falls!"

Chapter 35: Camp Dryad

Chapter Text

Dryad Falls! The biggest and most perilous dungeon in the Reedlands. The place where we--well, April--would finally find out if she was one of the players that had been selected to fulfil the big 'prophecy' that might just end the Bug. Might was doing a lot of the heavy lifting in that mission statement, but even if doing this didn't help us at all, it was still far better than sitting around in the Lustrous Heart (and under the Madam's thumb) all day.

(Just… just so long as we didn't stumble into another week-long quest with a risk of getting us gang-raped and enslaved by bandits again.)

Fortunately, besides a steady trickle of monster encounters as we tore through the Reedlands, they proved to be quite deserted. Neither hide nor hair of any bandits belonging to other tribes came before us, though I was quick to remind myself that that didn't necessarily mean they weren't around: with April leading our charge, smashing mud-rovers and splintering reedstalkers and Thunderclapping piscies left, right and centre, any bandit with any sense of self-preservation was probably just lurking out of sight, hoping to avoid an open confrontation with April entirely. I couldn't just lose myself in topping up her immense healthbar, and occasionally casting an Angel Down to wipe out a horde of Smidgens; I had to keep one eye peeled for signs of an ambush, too.

By the time the sunset had arrived, we'd made great progress; according to the map we'd purchased back in Lumberg, we were only a couple of hours away from Dryad Falls in its entirety. We debated pressing on for a few minutes, but eventually erred on the side of caution; half a day of near-constant fighting had brought both our mana bars very low, and we still had plenty of keepflames handy. And that wasn't to mention the… other reason we had to cut our adventuring short before nightfall.

Once we'd set up our little campsite--just the keepflame and the pink tent, really--April plonked herself down on a sleeping bag next to me and we reviewed her spoils from the day's travels. There was the Milestone she'd earned from completing our first quest, and a pair of other Milestones, which she'd earned over the course of our trudge across the reeds.

"I figured I'd get that soon enough, with all the healing you've been doing," April commented as I read through Rising Tide's description. "And now that I have it, your healing's gonna be even better for me!"

I nodded. Yet another mechanic that told me the most effective thing I could be doing with my time and mana in any given fight was healing April. As if I needed one, with Scared Silly--sorry, Scared Sissy--reducing any damage I dealt by ninety percent…

April's attention suddenly snapped skyward, and I bit my lip. The other reason we'd had for stopping for the night had descended upon us, all too soon and yet not soon enough. The last few embers of the sun's light were on the verge of dipping below the horizon… which meant…

"Um, Anne…" April drew close to me, and in the half-light of the keepflame and the almost-fully-set sun, I could see her repressing the urge to place a possessive hand on one of my shoulders. "Could you please, um, help me out again tonight…?"

In an embarrassingly eager reflex, saliva had already begun to pool in my mouth. With that in mind, it almost seemed redundant to say it out loud… but my better had asked me a question, and my sigil bade me answer it. "Y-yes, my lady…"

April heaved a relieved sigh--as if I'd ever say no to the chance to bury my face in her pussy--and threw her arms around me, suddenly plunging me in her thick musk.

"Eep!"

"You're amazing, Anne!!"

Perhaps more forcefully than she was intending, April picked me up and laid me down on the sleeping bag; and though the red square of her Arousal hadn't made its appearance yet, she went on to hike her skirt up, revealing her cotton panties, and plant her knees on either side of my waiting face. In true April fashion, she made sure not to plant them directly on my long, flowing pigtails.

Even from a distance, the scent of her sex still wafted over me, stark and aching and strong, but I managed to retain enough of my wits to ask a single question--"A-aren't we a little early, m-my lady??"

"Hahh… I'm sorry, Anne~!" She kept herself aloft, the twin tree-trunks of her thighs the only thing between me and getting absolutely smothered by her pussy. Ordinarily, they would have been a comfortingly stalwart obstacle to any threat… but her knees were trembling, and there was a stain in the front of the cotton that packaged up in her pussy. Not a faint one, either; it drooled as I gazed helplessly up at it, pearls of moisture gathering at its edges. Behind it, I could only imagine--and smell--the sheer drenched, twitching, longing state of the pussy that lay in wait behind it.

And it was all for me.

"I-I think it's your smell," April went on. "Th-that jerk Kajagar got her stupid scent all over you yesterday, and now I--I really wanna put mine back on…"

My clitty didn't just throb--it shuddered, a pulsing burst of twitches and spasms against the cruel walls of its prison that got it nowhere. She could smell the claim that Kajagar had layered on me--a-and now she wanted to fix it with hers?? I gawked silently up at her pussy. My face had gotten so hot, I swore my sweat and spit would start rising up as steam off me at any second.

"I-I'm just gonna come down now, okay?" she said finally. "D-dusk is right about to fall, a-and I think it'll be fine if it starts when you've already started, okay?"

Her arousal, not even the capital-A version, was already clouding her speech, making it less coherent than usual, but it wasn't like my mouth wasn't already watering. "O-okay, my lady! G-go right--"

I didn't have a chance to finish saying yes--her thighs snapped down, the fangs of a steel trap, and ground her still-clothed pussy straight against the bottom half of my face. Plunged into darkness by the skirt she'd neglected to remove, I pressed my lips eagerly to the juice-stained cotton, thoughts of reaching up to pry it off or hook it out of the way sliding into my head only to just as readily slide back out; bursts of April's flavour, earthy and nutty and sharp, tore every thought that wasn't worshipping her to useless ribbons.

"O-oh, right, I forgot…" Though it was with clear reluctance, she shifted her weight back off me. Her skirt remained over my face, keeping me in the dark. "First you have to… um… give me permission to, uh… cum."

Right. The… sigils. It was easy to assume that they'd stopped affecting her when she'd become the Chief of the beastkin tribe, but… that wasn't how they worked, huh? If I needed permission to cum, so did she.

"Umm, you can cum, my lady!" I said swiftly, eager to have her plant herself on me again.

And plant she did; her whole weight, armed with that sweet cotton parcel, settled upon my face. It was puffy with her pussy and wet with her arousal, and through it, I felt her arms shift, moving unseen through the space beyond the black void beneath her skirt. A moment later, the taste of cotton in my mouth vanished, her panties unequipped, and the bursts of her flavour melded together into a single, unending river. My tongue darted upstream, no longer held at bay by the cotton dam, and my head spun as her decadence, likewise unbarred, flowed over it and down my eager little throat.

"Hohhhh… right there, Anne…" Her murmurs and gentle encouragement pooled around me in the darkness beneath her skirt, quietly urging me on just as much as the steady grinding of her hips against my mouth. From just above my head came two soft crunches, one from either side; she'd planted her hands in the dirt, steadying herself and giving herself more leverage with which to hump my face. Was this the sign that she'd gotten Aroused, and not just aroused?

"That's right… mfhhh… you're so good at this," April moaned. My clitty thrilled with delight, and even the uncomfortable tightness of my cage couldn't turn it back--if anything, the delight grew deeper. I--I wasn't imagining things, was I? She was getting far more into this than she had the last time we'd done this.

Emboldened by this new discovery, I managed to part her folds with my lips, and drove my tongue down the welcoming, wet valley that lay between them. The darkness under her skirt and the overwhelming warmth and musk of her body--together, it should have all been stifling, choking, disorienting… but instead it was euphoric. My mouth was an intrepid explorer, mapping out the clefts and curves and crevasses of her sex without a flicker of doubt to distract me. Each stroke of my tongue brought her a new shiver, slowly teasing her maidenhood the slightest bit wider, letting me delve even deeper inside her… for just a moment, I could close my eyes, and pretend that the weight and warmth thrusting against my face was against my clitty instead…

A spike of bitterness splattered over my tongue. A new fluid--one that I lapped up and swallowed instinctively, just like the rest of her juices. Unlike the others, this had a thick consistency to it, almost like a cream. I couldn't see it, in the darkness and with it trickling straight into my mouth besides, but I could only imagine it as a milky off-white… warm and steamy and…

"A… Anne?" April's grinding didn't slow, but she seemed to hesitate. I withdrew my tongue from her depths, my brain reeling and my heart hammering in my chest--but that did little to stop the foul-tasting cream from slithering its way after me, the muscles of her body that had held it at bay now thoroughly relaxed by the work I'd done with my mouth. Cum. I was--I'd watched her get creampied over and over again by the most elite of the bandits--and now it was--now I was slurping it back out of her!! "Anne… you've gotta k-keep going… I'm getting close…"

Tightness had wound up every single tendon and ligament in my body, and it only grew tighter as the cum, a day-old but kept warm by April's body--by April's womb--flowed up to the woefully inadequate seal of my tightly closed lips. It wasn't getting into my mouth, but its scent pressed on, darting its way down my flared nostrils, mingled by each fitful breath I took with April's. If there was one thing I had to avoid at all costs in this game, it was swallowing cum--Cum Guzzler evolved into Cum Addict, after all. Scared Sissy and the other Milestones were already bad enough. I couldn't--my mascu--my manh--my m-mind couldn't withstand whatever Cum Addict would want me to do!

"Please, Anne… hnghhh… d-don't make me beg…!!" Above me, blissfully unaware of my struggle and getting increasingly frustrated by my pause, April's grinding intensified. She… she didn't know, right? Th-there was no way she would've done this if she'd known. Th-the fact that I'd only found it after worming my tongue so far inside her probably meant she'd taken pains to clean it out of her… i-it was the beastkins' fault, f-for having such freakishly long, large cocks! This was the cum she hadn't even been able to reach…

"A-Anne?" Suddenly, she stopped bucking her hips entirely; her pussy sat squashed against my lips, still oozing its payload of bandit filth over me. Her tone had lost its plaintive urgency--it was just urgent now. "I-I think there's people coming."

"Mmhhmmly?" I squealed into her pussy. Now, of all times?? She wasn't just trying to scare me into finishing the job, was she? Because--

"Hurry!!" April ground her hips even further into my face, mashing my head even further into the blankets of the bedroll. "Th-they're players!! Just… a little… more… c-c'mon…!!"

Tricks weren't April's thing. Even NPCs could sniff out her bluffs… which meant that the other players coming were real. And even with that in mind, April didn't want to stop sitting on my face--not without getting her Arousal dealt with! My heart fluttered as I pictured the scene: April kneeling on a bedroll with her skirts spread, face flushed and panting, gazing up with shocked eyes… as my supine form stretched out from underneath her, my head quite invisible except for the two long trains of my pigtails.

"S-seriously, Anne!!" April hissed. "I'm really close!!"

I would've bit my lip, if doing so didn't come with a very real risk of biting April's, or of inviting a string of day-old beastkin semen to slip into my mouth. There was nothing for it… I just had to make her cum right now. After everything she'd done for me in this game… e-even stuff like 'impressing' the bandits with her pussy after she'd fought them… I-I could risk a little bit of 'progress' on Cum Guzzler. I… I-I was only at, like, fifteen points…

"Ah~!" April's rapturous cry as I nervously dabbed at her with my tongue again almost startled me back into stopping. Weren't we trying to be stealthy? "S-sorry… just a little more, please…"

Diving back into her slick cunt with a vengeance, I was swiftly 'rewarded' with a clumpy mouthful of bandit cum, which I awkwardly managed to squeeze out over my lower lip. I took a celebratory slurp of my real prize, a fat mouthful of April's juices--and then winced as another bitter helping of cum rushed down my throat after it. They'd been churned up and mixed so much… i-it wasn't really realistic to avoid one while slurping down the other.

"C'mon… just… a little… longer…"

It was probably the quietest that April had ever orgasmed, at least in my brief experience with hearing her orgasm in this game. Like a silent stormcloud, the sigh she made reverberated through her whole body, shaking out all the tension that had built up in her--and showering my mouth in the last of the filthy lucre that the bandits had left in her. As I stealthily tried to get it out of my mouth, she swiftly removed herself from my face and pressed something soft and scratchy into my face--a blanket--and not a moment too soon. Just as I started wiping away the shiny, wet evidence of our tryst, a fair-skinned woman with flaming red hair burst through the reeds across from us.

Above her head glowed the name Estoria_Windstrider, and a Milestone count of 16. She wore a suit of leather armour that reminded me uncomfortably of the bandits. Though it was a far more sensible, skin-concealing cut, it still clung to her lithe, long-legged figure with enticing closeness… and a daringly angled window in the front exposed the deep cleft between her freckled breasts. Behind her, strung out like a long and thin shadow, scrambled a gaggle of other figures… most of them hunched over. Were they on all fours?

"See? I told you it was a keepflame!" Though her words were high-handed, they were undercut considerably by the way she was panting, and the stubby stick of red that was her healthbar. She practically flung herself onto the ground beside our keepflame--and only then did she seem to register that we were sitting right next to it. "Oh, ah, hi. I'm not interrupting something, am I?"

I lowered the scratchy bedroll blanket. The first couple of wipes had gotten rid of the worst of April's arousal, and any cum that might have trickled over my face--but if I didn't want to answer any awkward questions about why I was wiping my face, I was going to have to rely on the darkness of the night (and maybe one or two more stealthy wipes) to take care of the rest, which I could still feel on my skin as a faint film. Hopefully it just looked like I'd been sweating.

"Oh, no, not at all!" April said, smiling falsely. Estoria_Windstrider was either too tired or panicked to see through it, though, and extended a grateful hand.

"Call me Estoria." She glanced over her shoulder; a tall man with muddy skin tumbled into view from behind her. In his arms he cradled a large, bulky black thing--a crossbow? "And that's my party, right on cue."

As their healthbars resolved over their heads, revealed by the firelight, I realised that the tall man ("n00blord667," with 13 Milestones) wasn't carrying a crossbow at all; he was carrying a short man dressed in shabby black robes ("HanlonsRazor," with 15 Milestones). Like Estoria, they were both in the red.

"Get off me!" snapped the short man. He half-jumped, half-was-dropped down to the fireside, where it transpired that he wasn't particularly short at all; he'd just looked it, bundled up in what was definitely a rather gigantic man's arms. I stared up at the giant, n00blord667. It was hard to say for certain, but he might have even been taller than Layla's orc character, Oggagoga… whatever.

"'Gee, Norman, thanks for saving my life,'" n00blord667 said in a mocking falsetto, miming mouths with his hands. "No problem, buddy!"

His actual voice was a deep, rumbling burr that went perfectly well with his towering physique. His skin, which I'd first taken to be the colour of warm embers, was really just an ashen grey--it had caught the orange light from our keepflame, and spat it back.

A chorus of snarls, dark and guttural, rose up from the reeds behind him. Even on the opposite side of the fire, I flinched back--but n00blord667 whirled around and yelled "Fuck off!" into the darkness.

Just like that, the unseen monsters--mud-rovers, if they were the hunched-over figures I'd caught a glimpse of earlier--grumbled and did exactly that, rustling the reeds as they slunk back into the wilderness. Our keepflame had worked as advertised!

"Ah, ah, hello!" HanlonsRazor had finally noticed us, and he dipped his head stiffly in our general direction. His face was rather plain; square-jawed and sallow-skinned, with stringy brown hair that fell in messy curls over his ears. His robes were a shapeless void that concealed basically every part of his body except his pale hands--I was reminded of my starting robes, before they'd been rerolled into a bikini. A blocky pair of glasses, their rims thick and dark and feathered with decals that almost resembled wings, framed his eyes. They gave his gaze an owlish intensity. "Thanks for, uh, not kicking us out." He glanced at Estoria. "Someone thought we'd be able to make it back to camp before the monsters came out."

"Oh, give it a rest, Han," Estoria said, rolling her eyes. She parked herself on the bedroll beside us and threw her legs out in front of her, reclining on it with almost queenly laissez faire. "We all voted on it. Blame Norman."

"Yeah," n00blord667 chuckled. He frowned. "Wait, don't blame me."

"I already do," Han said, though he started smiling as he said it, and sank down to sit on the ground beside the bedroll that Estoria had claimed. "So, who are you guys? I don't think I've seen you around camp."

He nodded in our direction.

"April."

"... Anne."

"You guys named yourselves your names IRL?" Han said, more bemused than anything.

"I, uh, yeah," April admitted sheepishly. "That's not my last name, though."

Han raised an eyebrow. "That wasn't something that had occurred to me, but thank you."

Estoria cuffed him playfully on the side of the head. "Oh, stop Hanning them. It's very nice to meet you, Anne and April! Thanks again for letting us crash."

We made matching noises of mild agreement.

"This is Han--you know, short for Hanlon's whatever--and that up there's Norman. That's not his real name: we just made him pick a fake one because it's dumb hearing NPCs call him Nooblord all the time." She grinned, revealing a brilliant set of pearly white teeth. "Some of them seem to think it's a noble title!"

"It damn well should be," Norman grunted. He'd remained standing, towering over the rest of us like a mountain. He was tall enough that the light of the fire didn't quite reach his face; it remained draped in shadow, only the peaks of his cheekbones and the tip of his nose poking into visibility.

"So, you guys been at Dryad Falls long?" Estoria asked.

"Um, no," April said. "We haven't even been there yet, actually."

"Oh, really? Wow, and I thought we were late." Estoria looked between us, chewing thoughtfully on a twig that had materialised in her mouth. "Well, patience is good too, I guess."

"You're the Lifespring, no?" Han pointed, rather rudely, at April. When April nodded, he nodded in satisfaction and indicated Estoria. "She's ours." Then he turned to me. "What're you?"

"I, um, what're you?" I parroted back at him, mostly because I wasn't exactly sure what he was asking yet. Did he mean the Milestone track thing?

"Everwatch," he said, and though it was hard to tell through his loose-fitting robe it looked like he'd puffed up his chest a bit. "Everwatch Priest."

Okay, it was that. Percy had said almost the same thing, back when I'd first met her, except for her it was--"Starlight Priest." I paused. "Well, um, Starlight Priestess."

"Legit?" Han said. He almost sounded impressed. "I heard there was a whole rigamarole to get that class upgrade. Is it worth it?"

Another memory of Percy bubbled up in my brain, as tired and as drunk on April's musk as I was… "I, uh… It makes me worse at what I'm not meant to do, and, um, better at the healing stuff."

"Right, yeah, the minmaxing option," Han said. He'd turned his gaze away from either of us, and was now staring intently into the night air. "Starlight, huh? You an early access player, then?"

It was April's turn to raise an eyebrow. "Why'd you say that?"

"Starlight's really tricky," Han explained. "Like, the spells are really powerful, and they have a lot of utility that none of the other divinities do, but… they're hard to use. So according to, like, every guide out there, Starlight's one of the worst divinities you can pick as a new player."

Unfortunately, I groused in my head, I didn't get to pick my 'divinity.' "O-oh. Well. I am, uh, new, so…"

"Oh, I'm sure she'll be fine," Estoria said mildly, unwittingly reminding me that I was very obviously female to basically everyone who came across me, even other players. "Not everyone had their entire optimised build planned out on a spreadsheet from day one. Some of us care more about roleplaying than number crunching."

"Yeah!" April said cheerfully. "Roleplaying is great!"

"What are the other ass ones for noobs?" Norman asked, nudging Han with a foot.

"Fellspark and Soulshape," Han said automatically. "Fellspark is the worst. Half the spells actually just kill you if you don't use them right. And Soulshape's pretty similar to Starlight."

"And Might…?"

Han sighed. "That's fine. Good, even, if you're just learning the game. It's just, like, boring."

Norman squared up his enormous arms and shuffled around on the spot. "Me Krung. Me hit hard."

On the ground, April and Estoria had branched off into their own gushing discussion about each other's characters.

"So, is Estoria Windstrider, like, your OC?"

"Mhm! I actually originally made her for a DnD campaign, but that didn't last long."

April nodded sympathetically, though to my knowledge she'd never played DnD once before in her life. Nor had I, to be honest. It was a bit too… retro. "What's her deal?"

"Well, she's like your classic ranger, you know? Grew up loving nature, had a pet squirrel--"

"Oh my gosh I love that--"

"Hehe, yeah, he ended up being my familiar and everything. He managed to steal a prison guard's keys! Oh, and he blinded a bugbear."

"What was his name?"

"Acorn!"

"Aww!"

"What about you guys?" Estoria nodded my way, and I suddenly realised that I had been included in the conversation on characters. I glanced at Han, who was solemnly lecturing Norman on the various 'divinities' that players had access to in VALKYRIE. Had we unconsciously grouped ourselves into girls and boys? "Did you make your characters just for VALKYRIE?"

"Oh! Um, well, kind of!" April said. "To be honest, I wasn't really sure what I was gonna make at first, but, I mean, look at how cute these are." She picked up her fluffy white tail and twitched her ears a couple of times. "So obviously I went beastkin."

"Obviously!"

"And there's so many types of them, you know? Like, pretty much every animal I could think of. So choosing that took ages, but I went with a wolf because, well, I've always liked wolves!" She giggled. "I used to pretend to be one when I was super little."

"Aw, cute!" Estoria said. "And you, Anne?"

The admission that April used to pretend to be a wolf when she was little had left me spellbound for a moment, but Estoria brought me back to reality by shifting the topic of the conversation to me. I opened my mouth to answer her, but froze. What was I supposed to say here? Unlike the other girls--hell, unlike anyone else who had ever installed this game, as far as I knew--I hadn't designed my character at all.

"I, um, I like elves," I said lamely. "And… magic."

"Oh, that's cool!"

April looked at me strangely. I wasn't sure if it was because she knew I hadn't actually created my character, or because my excuse had been particularly inane, even by my standards.

In any case, the conversation went on without her confronting me one way or the other. Though the tension of almost having been caught eating her out never quite left me--the evidence still stained my face, even if it was light enough that nobody else could see it--I did relax more as Estoria and April exchanged more information about their characters' personalities and backstories. Han and Norman rejoined us soon enough, although on the roleplay front their explanations for how they'd come up with their characters were mostly in the same vein as mine; "I wanted to cast all the spells" for Han, and "I wanted to hit big things with a big stick" for Norman. Estoria went into some more detail on her build--even though she was a Lifespring player like April, she was a Hunter rather than a Druid, and she'd opted for a spell called Footwork rather than the Thunderclap that April had picked. Accordingly, she had a Milestone track called Trailblazer rather than Stormbearer.

Without any clocks, it was hard to track the passing of the hours, but it was definitely well after midnight by the time we finally started to drop, one by one. For once, I wasn't the first to bed; Han was the one to pop out a sleeping bag and crawl into it, practically mid-sentence. By the time it was finished, he was out like a light, curled up comfortably by the fireside.

"I think Han's got the right idea, for once," Estoria said, through a yawn that swallowed up most of her words. "It's been great to meet you guys!"

"Definitely!" April agreed.

Norman gave us a mock salute. "See you lovely ladies in the morning."

It was hard to tell in all the darkness--the keepflame had died down to a glow just barely short of embers--but it almost looked like he was winking at us as April ducked into the pink tent.

Unthinkingly, I made as if to follow her… but then paused on the threshold of the tent. Was this alright? The plan had always been to share the tent, and she'd shared it with me last night, in the underground beastkin camp, but… doing it in front of a bunch of other players felt almost… presumptuous. W-wouldn't they get the wrong idea? My face flushed. What even was the wrong idea? Th-they'd just narrowly missed out on catching April riding my--

"Anne? You coming?" April's head, massive black mane and fluffy white ears and all, poked back through the entrance of the tent. She was fighting back a yawn of her own--strange. She normally went to sleep well after I did.

"Y-yes, my lady!" I jabbered. I hurried into the tent after her, hoping that neither Estoria nor Norman had caught me slipping in that honorific for her, or at least that they'd dismiss it as a cute quirk, or something.

The interior of the tent was far more cramped than it had been in the morning, mainly because April had to hunch, practically doubled over, just to crouch inside it. I couldn't even squeeze past her to get in without pressing up against her warm, musky body… and in the dim pink half-light created by the glowing embers of the keepflame shining through the lascivious canvas of the tent, that alone was enough to make my heart hammer in my chest, and my clitty stir in its cage.. To make matters worse, when I was finally past her, I found that she hadn't just laid out our bedrolls side-by-side; she'd put them right next to each other, so that their sides were touching. And then, as I looked on in half-frozen trepidation, she laid down on one without any further comment. As if it was the most natural thing in the world for a woman and a m--a woman and a b--a-a woman and a sissy who weren't really dating to… l-lie together like this.

Mutely, scarcely able to believe I was doing it, I curled up on the bedroll right beside her, my face to her so that I could take in her sleepy smile and stormy, half-lidded eyes. She'd… she'd cuddled me to sleep before, but… this way around, with me laying myself down at her side, rather than the opposite… there was something almost sacrilegious about it. But… sacrilegious in a good way. An exciting way.

And then, just as my heart was settling down, April made it jump again by taking a deep breath, right down her pretty nose. My eyes darted down to her lips. They were curled up and slightly parted in a tired smile… and their faint pink might as well have been a radiant glow, the way they called to me. If… i-if I could just work up the nerve…

"Much better," she murmured, exhaling at last and startling me out of reverie. She laid one big arm on my side, and curled it around me, tugging me the slightest bit closer to her.

My clitty squirmed. W-was she talking about my… m-my scent…?

And then, with a casual ease that made my hemming and hawing feel patently ridiculous, April leaned into me and planted a single, chaste kiss on my forehead. "Thank you."

The very faint film of stickiness that she'd left on me suddenly felt thicker than ever before, but--like the sacrilege of going to bed with her--in a good way. In the satisfying way that I imagined a-a carpenter's muscles might ache after a particularly well-worked project. For the first time, I was thankful for the lidded pink light that filtered through the walls of our tent: it concealed the scarlet that my face had gone quite readily.

"Th-thank you! I mean, you're welcome--I-I mean, g-goodnight, my lady!"

"Goodnight~~"

The next morning, we shared breakfast with the other party--apparently, someone camped out at Dryad Falls was an accomplished in-game cook, and had given Estoria and her party more breakfast bagels than they knew what to do with--and then packed everything up and set out. Dryad Falls was only a couple of hours away from our little campsite. In Han's estimation, there was a good chance we would've been able to sprint our way there last night, once he and the rest of his party had recovered their stamina from sprinting their way to our camp. (He did not, of course, know just how tragically low my stamina was, or he might have reconsidered this.)

"Well, it's not like we were in any rush," Estoria said airily, brushing aside an errant lock of her blazing red hair. "Besides, it was kinda nice spending a night away from camp. It's a little stifling there, sometimes."

"What's this 'camp' you guys keep mentioning?" April asked.

"Oh, right, I keep forgetting you guys haven't been there yet." Estoria nodded at Han. "You tell them."

HanlonsRazor heaved a long-suffering sigh… but that didn't stop him from pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose and launching into an explanation. "The Balladeers--that's the guild that 'Team Lifespring' are a part of, you know, the ones clearing the dungeon for us--control the area around Dryad Falls, as of two weeks ago. They've built a campsite in it, for all of us newer players--you know, since we don't have easy access to teleportation--to live in while we wait."

"Wait for what?" I asked.

"Our turn to visit the last floor of the dungeon," Han said curtly. "It… transpires that there's actually rather a lot of Lifespring players on this server. So many that the Balladeers have been having to run five or so clears a day."

"How long does a clear take?" I squawked. Percy and Layla had carried me and April through the Breachwood in an hour.

Han shrugged. "Three hours, I think? The day-night cycle doesn't matter for a dungeon, so they can go past dusk… but they still need to sleep."

Three times as long! Was Dryad Falls harder than the Breachwood, or were Percy and Layla just overpowered?

"So how many Lifespringers are there?" April cut in.

Han puffed his cheeks out and exhaled. "Hmmm, ballpark, I'd say there's a couple hundred left? I heard a lot of people got sick of waiting and left after the first night, but I'm pretty sure everyone who's still here is in it for the long haul."

"A couple hundred?!" I exclaimed.

"Like I said, it's good for new players," Han said. "I think the game even suggests it for you if you hesitate too long in the tutorial."

"The… tutorial? You mean with that, um, Mrs. Humbert lady?" It had been more than three weeks ago, but she'd basically just taught me how to cast spells and spanked me so I could use one on myself. Was that really what the game considered a tutorial?

"Yeah. Well, it's with her for priests. Each major class gets their own different NPC."

"Who did you get, m-my lady?" I asked April.

April squinted for a few seconds. "Uhh, Rowan something." She glanced at Han. "He did suggest Lifespring to me, but he asked me a question first. Something like 'why did you take up the title of Druid?' I said protecting nature or something. Wouldn't that be why he mentioned Lifespring?"

"Huh." He looked to the other two. "Did your guys do that?"

Estoria and Norman both shook their heads.

"I wonder if that's a Druid thing, then…"

It took us a fair bit longer than Han's projected hour to actually get to the campsite. Part of it was that we were taking our time chatting with each other, continuing threads of conversation that we'd started on the night before, and part of it was that we took the time to clear each monster encounter on the way there. It was probably because there were five of us now, but they came in bigger groups than April and I had ever encountered before--and in entirely new combinations, too. As a duo, the most complex encounter we'd had in the Reedlands had been a pair of smidgen swarms accompanied by a mud-rover: but in our makeshift party of five, we encountered piscies backing up reedstalkers, smidgens that swarmed and harassed us as muddleborgs tried to envelop us from underfoot and--to everyone's surprise--dirty yellow goblins that had outfitted mud-rovers with tiny saddles and rode them as mounts, while spell-casting goblins stood behind them and lobbed sickly green balls of magic at us.

Fortunately, with a second healer in Han, a second front-liner in Norman, and Estoria launching an endless barrage of manaless ranged attacks with her longbow, even these newly enhanced fights didn't pose too much of a threat. We'd all been adventuring in this area for a while by this point, so we were at least familiar with the individual enemies, and the other party's dynamic was fairly easy for April and I to slot into. The only new thing that we had to keep track of was that April had to stay out of the way of Estoria's arrows!

All in all, our healthbars, mana pools, and spirits were rather high when Estoria finally gestured grandly before us--at what I'd taken, from a distance, to be a medium-sized copse of trees--and said, "There she blows! Camp Dryad!"

In a word, Camp Dryad was enormous. 'Campsite' and 'copse' totally failed to do it justice; from the towering redwoods that ringed it in solemn vigil, the vast gaps between them sealed up by closely-knit webs of vines and roots, to the single enormous tree that rose up over even them at the very centre of the camp, to the sprawling heap of log cabins and tents and market stalls that sat within its creaking, wooden walls… there was no better word for this place than town. It had been a while since we'd last laid eyes on Lumberg's sprawling town square, but Camp Dryad had a genuine chance of being the bigger of the two places.

"Did you say players built this place?" April said as we strolled through the helpfully-labelled South Gate, an enormous arch made by two gnarled tree limbs that extended from the two redwoods on either side of it, intertwining with each other at its peak only to split apart and sink into the muck of the Reedlands at its base. Huddled beneath it stood a collection of wooden creatures--several different variants of Dryad, according to the nameplates above them. They were a variety of levels, but not one was lower than sixty. A few had basically humanoid body plans, just with the wrinkled bark of trees where skin or a face should have been, but there was also a hulking one that stood on all fours and might have resembled a grizzly bear if it had a head, and a spindly three-legged thing with no other limbs and a ball-like main body. It tottered around in a circle as we passed by them, and I caught a glimpse of a single, glowing green orb set deep in the thing's bark, which swivelled between the five of us as if it were a security camera at a high-tech compound, registering five newcomers. It may well have been--the name over it proclaimed that it was a Sentry Dryad.

Within the camp's walls there were countless more Dryads. Unlike the ones stationed at the gate, there wasn't an idle branch between these ones; if they weren't ambling down the dirt paths that had been scored into mucky soil of the Reedlands, they were planting their wooden limbs into the unfinished walls of cabins in progress or hammering away at wooden posts that poked out of the ground. Builders, I guessed, set on projects by the party that owned this camp.

"That's correct," Han said. "The Balladeers. Their Lifespring players are both summoning specialists. A Woodworker arcanist and a Woodworker… shaman, I believe."

"Woodworker?" April said, still eyeing every last dryad we passed by. "I think I saw that track when I was picking spells… is it good?"

Han made a so-so gesture with one hand. "It is if you own a guild and want cheap labour for it. Unlike most other summons, Lifespring ones last until they're killed, and if you have a certain Milestone--I can't remember what it's called--they can actually join your guild as a follower."

"Friend of the Wild?" Estoria suggested.

"Yeah, that sounds right."

"So you can just make your own followers?" April said, frowning thoughtfully. "That sounds kinda OP."

"There are limits on what dryads can do as followers," Han was quick to point out. "The main one is they can't do anything with metal. So if you want to make an armoury or a blacksmith's, you still need to have a regular mortal as a follower."

On top of the dryads, the camp was also crawling with players. I'd had the time to prepare for it after hearing the numbers Han had given, but living it was another beast entirely--the last time I'd seen so many players in one place was at the Player's Conference. The vast majority of them were low-levelled, like us, and geared in an eclectic mixture of casual clothing (like the sweaters and skirts that April and I had on) and low-level robes and armour (like the other party were all wearing). For some reason, though I hadn't been self-conscious about it with Estoria and her party, I was suddenly deathly aware of my swaying walk and dainty figure as we passed our fellow visitors to the camp. The ease, the obviousness with which our new friends had addressed me as a girl came billowing back to me. Unless they had tremendous powers of perception, every single person who casually glanced my way in this camp saw the same thing: a pretty elf girl.

"Oh, and in case you get lost--this is really cool." The group, still headed by Han, came to a halt at a wooden noticeboard. On it was a sheet of yellowed parchment, which in turn had what was unmistakably a map of this very camp scrawled on it. Within the thick ring of the camp's redwood enclosure, countless dark dots milled about. A few were stationary, including a bright pink one that was marked with a matching pink arrow right next to the South Gate. Was that meant to be me? "This isn't just a map. It actually shows you where you are in real-time. And if you do this…"

Han reached out and plucked at it. The map seemed to shimmer, and then flicker, and then peeled away from the noticeboard in his grasp--but also simultaneously remained in place, nailed firmly to the noticeboard. Han held up his prize for April and I to inspect; a perfect copy of the map, exactly identical to the original in every way, except for the fact that he was holding it.

"Cool, right?" He offered it to me, and I took it, while April experimentally tried plucking her own copy from the noticeboard herself.

"Oh!"

"S-so this item was made by a player, too?" I said slowly.

"Yeah, Pellasmith. The arcanist I mentioned before." Han sighed, somewhat morosely. "All the shit he's done here almost makes me wish I'd gone for a wizard instead. Arcanist looks really fun."

Estoria met this with a theatrical gasp. "Notorious spreadsheet warrior HanlonsRazor, putting fun over stats?! What has this world come to?"

"It must be an impostor," Norman said gravely, raising his longsword. "We'll have to kill it to be sure."

Before Han could fire off a rejoinder, April grabbed him intently by the shoulders. "Where is this Pellasmith guy? I have a magic item I wanna ask about."

"Well, Pellasmith is probably in the dungeon right about now," Han said, nodding over at the enormous tree that dominated the centre of the camp. "From what I've heard, his summons are pretty fundamental to the strategy the Balladeers are using to clear the dungeon."

"But if you're interested in magic items, you could always ask the magic shop guy!" Estoria chimed in.

"DolphinGuy," Han said. "His tag is DolphinGuy."

April glanced down at her map and jabbed a finger at a squarish region on it. "He's in this market thingy?" Sure enough, it was labelled 'Player's Market.'

"Yeah."

"Cool!" April dismissed the map and clapped her hands together. "Well, thanks for all your help, guys!"

"It's the least we could do, after you let us crash with you!" Estoria beamed. "Are you guys off to the market, then?"

April nodded emphatically, though she managed to look reluctant at the same time. "Yeah. I'd love to hang out with you guys more, but this is kinda urgent, so… sorry!"

"No problem!" Estoria laughed. "Hey, if you wanna hang out more after you've sorted out your magic item thing, come by our tent later! We're thinking of doing a floor one clear tonight."

"In the dungeon?" I asked.

"Yeah!" Seeing my expression, she elaborated: "It won't slow down the Balladeer's clears. There's, um, this thing--"

"Instancing," Han supplied helpfully.

"--that means a whole bunch of parties can go in the same dungeon at the same time, without actually being in the same dungeon together. We each get our own, like, version of it to clear. And we can go at our own pace, and leave when we need to!"

"Oh, that sounds pretty fun!" April said, wagging her tail. "Maybe we'll see you later, then!"

I nodded from behind her, though not without reservations. As tempting as working with our new friends might be, we did have the scheduling constraint of April's Arousal problem to contend with. If we were going to descend into the dungeon with their party… we needed to find an excuse to peel away from them just before dusk.

The Player's Market, as the name suggested, was a small collection of stalls, each with a colourful fabric roof. They were arranged in a set of three loose columns, and each stall housed its own range of items. There were stalls lined with shelves of glass bottles, each bottle full of a different-coloured potion… stalls brimming with racks upon racks of lethal-looking weapons… stalls that sold robes and suits of armour, mounted on a haphazard combination of clothing racks and armour stands… and even a stall that was packed with crates of fresh fruit and vegetables, and barrels of something that stunk like (and most likely was) raw fish.

Contrary to the name Player's Market, which sort of implied that players would at least be around--if not running the stalls themselves--most of the stalls were staffed by a single dryad shopkeeper, and contained no customers whatsoever. Maybe most people waited until after dusk, when the clears for the day had been finished, to check it out…? A few more of the three-legged Sentry Dryads were planted at strategic points along each row of stalls; they glanced balefully our way as we passed by them on our hunt for DolphinGuy's magic item shop.

"Is it… that?" Tucked away in the furthest corner of the market, no taller than the obviously temporary stalls around it, was a squat brown log cabin. Someone had clearly tried to paint it at some point, but had given up halfway through, leaving behind a slap-dash streak of deep blue along the cabin's homely front. Over this streak of blue, as if cementing it as the final look that the cabin's owner had always intended, someone had scrawled the name 'The Creaky Dolphin' in starry yellow paint.

"I-I think they did say DolphinGuy, my lady…"

"That's probably it, then," April said, though not without a mild grimace. She marched up to the cabin's door (it hung askew from its hinges, and swayed quietly in a nonexistent breeze) and gave it a sharp knock.

"Come in," droned a hoarse voice.

Taking great pains not to dislodge the door from its tenuous grasp on its frame, April managed to work it far enough open that she could slip through it, and I slipped in after her. Though it was bright and sunny outside, the inside of the store was dim, and filled with a musty, almost wet odour that I tried to take in as little of as possible as I let my eyes adjust to the shadow. Had this cabin really only been here for two weeks?

"Sup?" At a rickety old counter by the door, surrounded by a dozen heavily-laden wooden crates, sat a man dressed in a drab grey hoodie and even drabber, greyer track pants. If it wasn't for his piercing golden eyes, his perfectly martialled blonde fade, and the fact that his face was chiselled like a Calvin Klein model, he might have looked exactly like a minimum wage worker slumming away in a video store straight out of a movie from the 90s. Instead, that impression was mostly borne out by his outfit and the way he was slouched over a book at the counter. The words floating over his head, and healthbar, declared that he was DolphinGuy: 46 .

"Um, you're DolphinGuy, right?" April said, hesitantly extending a hand towards him… only to drop it when he wordlessly indicated the nameplate over his head. "Um, right."

She started twirling her hair as she trailed off. Behind her, I watched her fluffy white tail swish back and forth, and the fluffy white ears on her head drop to either side. Was she… sh-she wasn't, w-was she? Okay, he didn't look... too bad, but… b-but he was being so rude!

"You here to buy something?" DolphinGuy prodded her.

And his name was freaking DolphinGuy!!

"I, uh, yes. Well, no, actually. Well, maybe."

"That really clears things up." A slight smile had finally quirked at his lips, and without moving his head he switched his attention to me. "And you?"

"I, uh!!" Great! He'd startled me, and now it looked like I was just as tongue-tied by his surprisingly handsome face as April had been. He dropped his attention back to his book, apparently done with both of us. "We're here about, um, a magic item!"

I nudged April from behind. If there were any more specifics to this situation, I hadn't been kept abreast of them. She was going to have to take it from this point onwards.

"Right," April agreed--and suddenly, she was back in business mode. "There's this, ah, artefact that we found on a quest a few days ago, and I'm really curious about it."

"Did you try reading what it does?" DolphinGuy grunted, without glancing back up from his book.

"Well, yes, but… oh, just look at it." She held out a hand--and in it materialised a disturbingly familiar rod. Long, slender, and sleekly silver, it lay unmoving in her grasp as she held it out to DolphinGuy… except for the rapidly alternating series of symbols that fluttered at one glowing, white-hot end. One of the bandit tribe's brands. She'd taken them with us?

"Huh." DolphinGuy raised a single, Calvin-Klein-perfect eyebrow, and plucked it from her hand. "Huh."

"Well?" April said, leaning forward tentatively. It occurred to me that, even sitting down and slouched over, he was very nearly her height. "Can you see what--"

"Where did you find this?" DolphinGuy interrupted her, rudely.

"Um, it was a bandit camp," April said. "Not too far from here. They, umm, captured us, and--"

"Did they use it on you?" Another interruption. I bristled from my spot safely behind her, but before I could work up the nerve to step forward and say something on her behalf, she reached behind her and--out of DolphinGuy's line of sight--planted a cautioning hand on my shoulder.

"Y-yes," she said, faltering slightly at the memory. Memories.

"Show me," he said brusquely.

April glanced back over her shoulder at me for just the slightest second. But then--before I could process what she meant by it, or what she wanted, or even what 'showing him' the result of the silver brands would entail--she took hold of the bottom of her sweater and pulled it up. My stomach plummeted into the depths of my guts--and then I almost sighed in relief when I realised that she'd only gone far enough up to show him her navel, and the two brands that had been seared on it.

To my surprise, he rolled his eyes. "Not the physical brands. I meant the effects."

I glared at him. April had shown him her belly, practically one tiny tug away from outright flashing him with her gorgeous breasts, and the only thing he had to say about it was basically calling her an idiot?? She wasn't the one dressed like a stereotypical teenaged loser in a shack that was somehow both two weeks old and already falling apart!!

"O-oh, right." April tapped at an invisible menu… and then a tooltip appeared for me and, I could only assume, DolphinGuy.

I blinked. That explained that part of her duel with the former Chief.

On his side of the counter, DolphinGuy's eyebrows knitted together. "And that… works?" He gestured for a moment. "You had a Duel of Succession and it did that?"

"Yes," April said.

"Huh."

He sat there for a while, his book now completely forgotten, twirling the branding iron around in his hands. Which, I noted with considerable chagrin, were very large and coarse and overridingly masculine.

"Um, so, what's up with it?" April prompted him, after a few awkward minutes.

"Hm?" DolphinGuy glanced up at her. "Oh. Well, this is a player-made artefact."

"Okay, um, cool."

"W-we knew that already, actually," I cut in. "Sir."

W-wait, what? Was my stupid sigil acting out?? I-I hadn't called him 'sir' the first time I'd said anything to him, had I? Wh-what had changed??

DolphinGuy eyed me evenly. Something in his golden eyes had intensified, as if he was seeing me properly for the first time. "Then I suppose you know what's so weird about it."

"I-I, uhh," I stammered. Electricity, sharp and frightening, seemed to spark across the distance between us… a-and, for once, the normally-reassuring bulwark posed by April's body didn't seem to slow it down one bit.

"It's a soul brand," he finally elaborated. "Soulshape-aligned. Brands stuff with magic sigils."

Okay, more things we already knew, th-though I didn't feel particularly inclined to call that out again…

"But it's not meant to work on players."

He gave the brand another twirl, staring at it again as if that would cause it to give up its secrets.

"Then… what are they normally for?" April asked.

"Followers, mostly," DolphinGuy said. "They can't keep up with a player's Milestone gain otherwise." Another thoughtful twirl. "I guess you could brand a random NPC if you really wanted, too."

April's tail was still twitching, but there was something considered about it now, not the bashful swaying from earlier. The gears in her head were turning. "So the sigils… they're normally good?"

DolphinGuy nodded. It might have been my imagination, but his eyes seemed to soften somewhat. "Yeah. Stat buffs. Milestones they normally can't get. Whole tracks, sometimes."

"I… see."

With an exaggerated sigh, DolphinGuy blipped the brand in his hands into his inventory, then leaned back on his stool. "Well, that's all I've got."

"C-can I have it back?" April said awkwardly. "I, um, I kinda want to ask around…"

DolphinGuy waved her off, shaking his head. "No need. I'll show this thing to Pell and the others. They're the real eggs for this kinda shit."

Eggs? What did that even mean?

"Then, um, can I come along?" she asked. "I'm really curious about all this stuff, so…"

DolphinGuy rolled his eyes again, but eventually nodded. "Guild cabin. Tonight. After the last clear."

"When does the--"

"Noticeboard." He looked between us both and, when no further questions or conversation seemed to be forthcoming, picked up his book again. "Feel free to check out the store. Steal anything and I'll neck you."

About an hour of browsing later, we left the Creaky Dolphin with considerably less gold than before, and a couple of new magic items in our inventories. In truth, there had been quite a few other things that we'd wanted to buy… but they had been expensive. Any wand that was any kind of upgrade over my Wand of Oraia would have cost me upwards of eight thousand gold, and there were boxes full of golden-tiered 'keepsakes' that went for twenty thousand each. I'd thought of asking DolphinGuy why they were so pricey--some of them had effects that did not look particularly good, to my untrained eye--but the prospect of trudging back to his dusty counter and craning my neck up to ask him any kind of question had stopped me. Nothing was worth dealing with that sardonic git any more than I had to.

In the end, though, I had to admit that the item that I had ended up picking out for myself was worth every penny he'd charged me. Yes, it was a touch girly, but for once I'd found something that actually worked with all my Charisma-boosting Milestones and item effects, while still providing me with an effect that I actually wanted.

With these slender copper glasses on my face, dainty and curled with flowery little accents though they were, my Intellect was now a towering 13--one point higher than April's! That meant that, for the first time in the more than three weeks that had passed since we'd started playing VALKYRIE, I could actually see the entire tooltips for each of my Milestones.

And that wasn't all: I had the ability to sort my Milestones now. Alphabetically, if I wanted, or in the default order of when I'd gotten each one, or in groups according to which tracks they all belonged to. And even that wasn't all! With 13 Intellect, I could actually open my Milestone tracks like April, and peer ahead into what I was capable of unlocking!

The two extracurriculars that I had unlocked were both… basically what I'd expected, judging from the names. Ingenue seemed to be as angel-themed as the spell Angel Down implied, while Bimbo was packed with shallow, eye-catching titles. I still couldn't tap on the individual Milestones to see what they actually did, and the descriptions for unlocking them had been left rather vague--maybe increasing my Intellect even more would add those features?--but I'd been left with enough information to start trying to strategise my Milestone advancement, even if it was only the tiniest bit.

While I imagined that, for most players, the sole objective would be trying to get as many of these Milestones as possible, I'd very quickly found a number of Milestones that I really did not want. For one thing, Mrs. Milkshake could've had the most overpowered effect in the world, but the name did not bode well for whatever transformation it would give me, and there was no chance I was going to have sex with a minotaur for it. (Quietly, I resolved to look up everything I could about where minotaurs could be found in this game, and then do everything in my power to convince April never to go to any of those places.)

It wasn't all negatives, though. Feather Veil sounded like some kind of protective effect, and it sounded like all I had to do for that was learn more spells that worked like Angel Down; cast and channel. And I imagined that I hadn't made much progress towards Bombshell because April had been doing the lion's share of the damage for us in each combat--but now that I knew there was a Milestone waiting for me if I got the finishing blow on a few more monsters, we could try to take a few fights slow and work towards Bombshell that way!

For her part, April was now the proud owner of a "Copper Dagger of Mana Boost" and a "Soulbreak Tether." The dagger was fairly self-explanatory; it was a grey-quality dagger, like the Rusty Iron Dagger of Warding, that increased her maximum mana when she wielded it. In her mind, the main threat to her now that she had access to a bunch of mana-hungry but extremely strong transformations was running out of mana. With a dagger that did basically nothing but give her mana, and could be wielded alongside her thundery buckler, we'd have at least one emergency cast of whatever level of Wild Aspect we needed to protect ourselves!

The Soulbreak Tether was for the other main threat to us: powerful "Soulshape" effects, like the bandits had tried to use to enslave us both. It had been expensive, and it was only single-use, but the next time an NPC tried to forcibly alter April's spawn point, or brand her, they were going to have a nasty surprise.

"Helloooo? Earth to Anne!" April nudged me, and I realised that I was staring vacantly into space.

"Oh!! Um, sorry, I didn't catch that, my lady!"

April grinned wryly; my flustered sputtering subsided, and I couldn't help but grin back. "I was just saying that we've got a ton of time to kill before the Balladeers are back tonight." She was right: the sun was still high in the sky. She held out her map of the camp. "You wanna explore until then?"

Chapter 36: Supreme Geas

Chapter Text

By the time dusk had crept over Camp Dryad, we'd experienced just about everything the place had to offer, thanks to the handy maps that we'd taken. There was the main campground, where we'd pitched our pink Adventurer's Tent, and ruefully informed Estoria and her party that we wouldn't be able to join them on their dungeon crawl in the evening. The mess hall, a low, wide, blocky building with a muddy green roof and open walls, all the better to let the simulated wind and sun of VALKYRIE flow easily over its patrons. The sparring ground, a collection of small, fenced-in arenas and wooden training dummies that trundled along and swung blunt wooden swords of their own accord, animated by the dryad followers that had built the campsite. And--last but certainly not least, considering it was the tallest structure, cabin or tent, within the camp's walls--there was the guild hall.

Three storeys tall and stout, with balconies attached to every window and ivy climbing down its creamy white walls, the guild hall was nothing less than a manor compared to the squat cabins that distantly neighboured it. It stood near the great tree that marked the entrance to Dryad Falls itself, though not so close as to lie in its shadow. Like the three large gates that led into the campsite, this building had its fair share of stationary dryads standing guard--and among them were the very strongest we'd seen so far, including a few that had levels of over a hundred.

I frowned as we passed by them. Most of the adventurers here in this camp didn't even have more than twenty Milestones, myself and April included. Yeah, the Balladeers probably didn't want anybody rooting through their stuff while they were stuck clearing the dungeon over and over again all day, but did it really warrant this many high-level dryads?

Clonk, clonk. April, taking the lead as per usual, took hold of the brass knocker attached to the hall's dark mahogany door and gave it a pair of raps. She'd scarcely dropped it when the door swung open.

"Ahh, our honoured guests! Come in, come in!" Greeting us, in the finely marbled anteroom of the guild hall, was a dryad a couple of inches shorter than me, dressed in a ruffled white shirt and a stern black vest. Rather than the rather crude approximations of faces etched on the bark of most of the other dryads' heads, this dryad's face had clearly been much more carefully sculpted--though it was still very obviously inhuman, lined with deep 'wrinkles' of its bark skin, it still had a very clearly matching pair of glowing green eyes, a stubby but well-defined protrusion that was its nose, and a carefully chiselled line for a mouth. "Welcome to the master's hall!"

"Um, thank you!" April said, managing to steamroll over her initial shock with record speed. "Mr… Butler."

That was indeed the name over its head: Mr. Butler, Level 120 . I grimaced. The little dryad didn't look particularly threatening… was it a spellcasting monster? Regardless, we followed behind it as it tottered deeper into the anteroom. "My deepest apologies, honoured guests, but I am afraid the master and his party have yet to return from their questing this day. You are of course invited to await them in the comfort of our sitting room."

He gestured grandly with a spindly, twig-like arm, and the door nearest to us swung open, revealing a homely room, far smaller than the comparatively grand entrance hall, filled with chintzy armchairs and bookshelves and a solitary round coffee table. The marble floor of the anteroom gave way to a remarkably soft brown carpet. Though I hadn't seen a chimney on the roof of the manor from outside, a fireplace lay against one wall, a pile of logs burning cheerfully away within it.

"Ooh! Cosy!" April gave an approving nod, and her tail wagged in agreement. I could already see her taking mental notes for our eventual guild hall, back in the bandit camp. I smiled weakly. She was so unbridledly cute when she was excited about things.

"Please, have a seat," Mr. Butler said warmly, indicating the chairs nearest to us. "Have you had much to eat? Shall I bring over some refreshments? Tea, coffee?"

"Oh! Um, some… tea, please!" April said quickly.

I nodded too. "Y-yeah, um, I'd like some tea too, please."

"As you wish, honoured guests!" The edges of the butler's mouth crinkled up in a surprisingly lifelike smile, and he bowed his way out of the sitting room. The door silently fell shut behind him.

"Wow," April said. "This is kinda amazing, huh?"

"Yeah," I said dumbly. In all honesty, my mind was not… all there. My face was still musked-over with a fresh coating of April's scent from the dusk that had only just fallen, and though this time around I'd taken care to eliminate all of her stickiness… that did little to assuage the dull throbbing of my clitty in its cage. It had only been a couple of days since Kajagar had last… toyed with me, but the evidence was mounting. I was getting… p-pent up again.

I tugged awkwardly at the midnight blue hem of my Lustregown. We'd found a dryad in the Player's Market selling the "starthreads" that were necessary to repair it, after the damage that Caliburn had done to it… and though they hadn't exactly been cheap, I had to admit that getting the Charisma from its passive effect back felt nice--today, it was bringing my Charisma up by a whole 10 points! And really, how common were enemies that could break it? Caliburn had been the only thing that could even scratch it so far, and he'd been a very… level-inappropriate encounter for us.

"Ah, Master Pellasmith!" Mr. Butler's voice was muffled by the door, but that soon ended when it swung open, revealing the small dryad laden with a tray bearing a remarkably ornate tea set; pot, cups, saucers and all. Being trapped in the bandit camp, with all its shoddy handiwork and furnishing, for so long had almost made me forget how pretty random objects in this game could look. "Our guests are embarked in the sitting room here, my lords."

"Thank you, Butler," rumbled a new voice. "We'll take it from here."

Mr. Butler nodded gravely and set the tea set down on the coffee table, between April and I; for a moment, it looked as if he were straining to pour out a cup for each of us, but instead he bowed deeply and backed out of the room once again.

"Alright!" 'Master Pellasmith' was far smaller than his deep voice suggested; in fact, he reminded me of Professor Lizzlewhizz, the gnome potion-maker from Lumberg, though Pellasmith's pointed hat was wide-brimmed and bent at the tip, giving him a distinctly wizard-like appearance instead. Most of his face was dominated by a grizzly brown beard, which somewhat detracted from the wizard impression… and rather than the flowing robes I was starting to be accustomed to as the norm for casters in VALKYRIE, he wore a suit of armour. This seemed to consist of a set of underlying leather, or perhaps some kind of fabric, overlaid with a series of greenish-blue plates with a distinctly wooden texture. It glowed in the same faint way that Caliburn's armour had, but rather than purple, this set had a strange iridescent sheen… almost like an oil slick left behind by a car.

"So, these are D.G.'s new friends, huh?" Her voice low and amorphous, like a cloud of smoke, Pellasmith's companion followed him. Her, I recognised; she was the red-skinned woman who had introduced 'Team Lifespring' to everyone at the Player's Conference. With April sitting down and Pellasmith being half my height, she towered over everyone in the room, even before accounting for her horns. Smooth, curved, and the bloodiest red I could fathom, they branched from beneath her inky black bangs with wicked ostentation, drawing all eyes to them… and the name that hovered over them. Hoodwink, 143. Beneath them, the rest of her body was clearly just as curved and lethal, even in a casual, but stylish, low-cut white top and airy blue pants that contrasted nicely with her red skin.

Together, they took seats on the opposite side of the tea set from us. Pellasmith murmured something at the tea pot and it lifted itself in the air to start pouring out cups for the four of us, while Hoodwink studied us both. Her eyes were glowing pools of magma; two golden vertical slits, with two even tinier slits of black that ran down their centres, split them in half. When she noticed that I was staring back at her, she held the eye contact… leaving it to me to bashfully avert my gaze. Wh-why did she have to look so scary and hot at the same time?

"I, um, I wouldn't say that," April said finally. It took me a moment to realise she was talking about D.G.--DolphinGuy. "He seemed very…"

"Standoffish?" Hoodwink suggested. When April nodded, she smiled. Her lips were midnight black--was that lipstick, or her race's natural lip colour? "You'll have to forgive him. He's been having a tough time lately."

"Oh. Um, why's that?"

Hoodwink raised an eyebrow, and I realised that what I'd taken for weird black-and-gold markings on her skin were actually studs and piercings. Studs on her brows, on her nose, a rosy pair on those perfect black lips… "If you really want to know, you'll have to ask him about it. We're here to talk about these."

She said a word, foreign and jangly and backwards in a way that made my skin crawl--and then the familiar silver brand appeared in her outstretched hand. My skin kept crawling.

"Oh! Right!" April said. "Have you worked out what's up with them?"

"Did D.G. not at least give you the basics?" Hoodwink pouted, looking strangely put out by her guild member's apparent dereliction. "They're soul brands. You're supposed to use them to apply something called soul sigils to followers in your guild. Those are, like, buffs you give 'em so they're not totally useless in lategame raids and dungeons and such."

"I, um, he did say that part, actually," April clarified. "But these ones work on players, right? How do they do that?"

"Arcanists," Hoodwink said, nodding at Pellasmith. "One of the class upgrades that wizards can get is arcanist. That's basically focused around creating magic items, building unique buildings for guilds, all that good stuff. Really useful for tailoring builds to specific dungeons or world regions."

"Whoever crafted this used a modified version of the soul brand template," Pellasmith said gravely. "One that works something like a wand, only it stores only one very specific implementation of only one very specific spell."

"W-wait, wands can store spells?" I said suddenly.

"What's the spell?" April said, at about the same time and just as suddenly.

Pellasmith looked to me first. "Yes. And the spell is something called Supreme Geas. It's… a control spell, in essence. Like, ah…"

"Thunderclap?" offered April.

"Yes! But much higher-level, and therefore much more powerful. Thunderclap is just a point-blank AoE stun for a few seconds, with some damage attached. Supreme Geas might not deal damage at all, but rather than just stunning, it can force its victims to perform any action that the caster wishes, even turning against their own allies. And unlike the few seconds of a Thunderclap, a Supreme Geas lasts indefinitely."

April sat there in a churning silence. I had to imagine that her thoughts were tracing the same paths as mine, only a few steps ahead, unhampered by my stewing arousal and endlessly stiffening clitty. The effects of the Supreme Geas did sound a lot like what had happened to April and I.

"Th-that sounds kinda… overpowered," I said eventually.

"Mm, not really," said Hoodwink. Her molten eyes were laser-focused on me, now that I'd spoken, and I could do little but shift awkwardly beneath them. She was just as big as April… and with the horns, and the scary orange eyes, and the blood red skin, a dozen times more intimidating. "It costs a shitton of mana, for one thing. You have to spell out everything you want the target to do when you cast it, which leaves you open to being interrupted by the target or one of their allies… and even if you get the spell off, it's fairly easy for a priest or druid to break. A max-cast Purify does it."

Wait. I knew Purify. "W-wait, so I can Purify this--"

Hoodwink shook her head, and though she was smiling, there was something morose about it, too. "A normal Geas, sure. But yours has been delivered by the soul sigil system, remember?"

"We're still not sure how they did it." Pellasmith picked up where he'd left off. "Soul brands are what we call system items in the VALKYRIE community. They and their templates can only be bought from specific late-game vendors, and basically no modification magic or ability works on them. We can't even reduce their weight, not even temporarily." He sighed, strangely wistful. "What's more, the person--or people--who did this didn't just jam a spell into this system item and call it a day. They've somehow worked the spell into the sigil mechanic, so that it piggybacks off the mechanisms that the soul sigil system uses."

"So instead of pointing at the target and saying, 'Supreme Geas,' you would simply pick up the brand and brand them with it," he concluded. "In fact, since the delivery mechanism is based on soul sigils, which already can feature a heavy language component, my theory is that you wouldn't even need to spell out the Geas. You could simply write them ahead of time and then store them as 'sigils,' exactly like someone with an unmodified sigil brand."

"And since you can't Purify or Purge a sigil," Hoodwink drawled, "you can't get rid of this Geassed sigil with 'em, either."

Unconsciously, I moved my hand over my navel, where that black rose and trophy had been seared indelibly into my skin. Every new thing I learned about them seemed to tighten their hold on me. Constricting, inescapable… emasculating…

This time, April was the first to break the silence. "Well, um, you're right about your theory, Pellasmith…"

"Oh?" said the gnome, leaning forwards inquisitively. "You were actually conscious for your branding?"

"Yes?" April frowned. "Wait, have you seen other people with brands?"

"The short answer is 'yes,'" Hoodwink said. "But nobody who'd actually managed to nab one of the devices that left them, or even seen what they were, for that matter… until you two."

April and I stared at each other. The Chief had treated our branding like a spectacle. The first instance of allogenes being scarred by mortals. He hadn't even been sure it would work.

"So… there's other people going around branding players?" April said. "Not just the tribe that did us?" The obvious innuendo leapt out at my pent-up mind, but now wasn't quite the time to sputter in embarrassment or bite my lip… I-I just let my clitty twitch in its iron prison and kept listening.

"Not just branding them," Hoodwink said darkly. "We've had reports of disappearances all through the last two weeks. At first, I thought it might be people finding a way out of the Bug… logging out at last… but a few days ago, we found an escapee. Someone who's been branded, just like you."

"DolphinGuy?" April guessed.

Hoodwink tilted her head. "What? No. He's been here since launch. It was some newbie, like you guys."

"Oh."

"Anyway, judging by their reports… the disappearances are connected. The victims have all been in bandit-heavy regions of the world map, and they're all lower-level players. Usually, but not exclusively, female."

I swallowed thickly, and out of the corner of my eye I caught April doing the same. That sounded like the modus operandi of our bandits, alright.

"I've asked around some of the other members of the Alliance, and this isn't even the only region this has been happening in. This new kind of bandit is active all across the Reedlands, Sanctuary Coast, and the Mackelbarrens." Hoodwink's fists were clenched. If we weren't in a video game, I might have expected her stiletto-black nails to draw blood from her palms. "And now we have physical proof that this isn't just NPCs acting up. There's a player, maybe a whole group of players behind this. An enemy who's managed to hide themselves behind hordes of NPC bandits, who hands out game-breakingly OP items to 'em like candy, and who isn't afraid to catch players in the crossfire of whatever they're up to. Worse than that--who might actively be targeting players, especially those too low-level to handle their bandit minions."

She tossed her dark mane back and leaned back in her seat. "Normally, this is the kind of thing we'd report to the GMs and be done with. But with the GMs out of reach, and no way for the victims to log off and escape these… attacks… we're going to need to take matters into our own hands. Real damage is being done to real people."

"From our, ah, conversation with the other branded player we've met," Pellasmith said delicately, "we understand that you may be… embarrassed by some of the things that happened to you when you were held captive. But we need to know as much as possible about these attacks. Everything you know. Who the culprits might be, where and how you were taken, what the NPCs were planning to do with you--what effects they gave you with the hacked sigils."

"Please," Hoodwink said. Though they were as intimidating as ever, something in her molten eyes had softened, drawing me deep into thoughts of her red-hot, demon-girl embrace. "For the sake of every player who's been captured--every player who might be captured before the Bug ends--you have to tell us everything."

April sucked in a deep breath, steadying herself even though she was firmly planted on the couch next to me.

"Okay."

April took it from the top, at least as far as the Reedlands was concerned: our encounter with Belwurs Kettle and the quest to rescue his son. She gave a basic outline of our first brush with the bandits, including their strategy of targeting me--the healer--while she was distracted. And how after the first attack had failed, they'd waited for us to split apart before going for me again. When it came to her discovery that I'd been captured--she had minimised the role of the vole-man to some background information about why there were beastkin bandits running around the countryside--Hoodwink's head snapped to me.

"Well? What happened before she caught up with you?"

A powerful hand squeezed down on mine. I managed to break away from her for long enough to find April, a concerned smile on her face, silently cheering me on. I gave her a wordless nod of thanks, and--slowly, haltingly, but still successfully--took over the story. Though I… mentioned what they wanted with me, I glossed over the details, instead focusing on the little tidbits that they'd let slip, in the minutes leading up to my… a-abuse. The boats, the place 'Zazeek', the way they'd identified me as alaj--a player… some of it was stuff that the vole-man had said, or maybe Kajagar, in the main camp… but I hadn't exactly spent my captivity calmly and coolly absorbing all the facts that had been tossed around at me.

"Wait, do you mean Zayikh?" Hoodwink interrupted me.

"Umm.." I glanced at April, who was nodding. "Yes, my lady."

"It would make sense," Pellasmith observed. "They were beastkin, after all."

Hoodwink pulled a face, only to move swiftly on with a noise of agreement. "Mm. Right. Keep going."

After my first rescue, there was really only the main camp to go over. April explained our plan to infiltrate it, disguising ourselves as a bandit-slave duo, in order to finish Belwurs' quest… and then explained how it had failed, and the matter of our capture, and the long speech and ceremony that had surrounded our branding, and the way April had been bound to that silver cage in the main tent.

"They turned a Soul Anchor into a prison?" Hoodwink said, with more than a tinge of wonder.

"At least that seems like vanilla behaviour. Just a novel application of it," Pellasmith pointed out. He peered at April curiously. "Are you still bound to it?"

"Um, I think so?" April said.

"Hm. I wonder if…"

Hoodwink waved him off. "There'll be time for that later, Pell. There's still more of the story to go. Right--you were saying?"

After that, it was mostly my show again. April hadn't heard much from the bandits as their 'Hunt Bitch' the next morning, and didn't seem inclined to share the details of it… f-for obvious reasons. That left me to relate everything that Kajagar had explained to me… at least, my shoddy, jumbled-up version of it.

"They're turning the slaves into beastkin?" Hoodwink said sharply. "Pell, isn't there a whole thing about beastkin slavery?"

"Mm. Could be a hook for the new region."

"And this stuff about a willing Geas…"

"Sounds like a pact mechanic. Same as the archfey."

"Hm." Hoodwink looked back at me. "Was that everything, then?"

Well, besides April's duel with the Chief, and her night with his elite warriors… and mine with Kajagar…

"Um, there was also this giant goldfish," April said. She described it briefly, as well as the way it disappeared, either teleported or dismissed by its mystery owner. "Could that have been summoned by whoever made the brands?"

Hoodwink frowned. "Sounds like a Carassian Eminent. Starlight summon… but there's Soulshape spells that can summon those. Hard to say either way… but if it didn't attack you, my guess is it has nothing to do with the brands."

"Because it would've kept us from escaping?"

"Yeah. Anything else?"

"Umm… oh!" I practically jumped out of my seat. "There--there was a player, my lady!"

"In the camp? Did you bust them out, too?"

"No, um, we ran into him a few hours before…" I looked helplessly at April, who had something on the very tip of her tongue…

"Taciturn!" she declared. "You're right, Anne! Oh my gosh, I totally forgot about him… he even used a soul spell too, I think…! Maybe he's the guy making the brands!"

We looked expectantly to Hoodwink, who was just barely fighting back a grin.

"Taciturn? Taciturn113?" She wasn't quite scoffing, but it was close. "I mean, he could get Supreme Geas, but he's not an arcanist."

"He could be in league with the arcanist, though," Pellasmith pointed out.

"Nah… what's the Evershroud tree that even gets Geas? Lawgiver? Isn't he still on that stupid Twilight build?"

"The tree is Magistrate," Pellasmith said. "He could have dipped into it for Judgement Day."

"But if he took Geas too, that's ten points for two spells that take ages to cast on a melee DPS."

"Judgement Day is rushable."

"Ah, whatever. Let's save it for later." Hoodwink nodded at us: April was leaning forward intently, doing her best to absorb everything they were saying, as byzantine and foreign as it was… while I was doing my feeble best to match her. "I think we're losing 'em."

Pellasmith coughed. "Ah, right. Well, er, thank you both very much for sharing everything that--"

"Hang on," Hoodwink cut in. "Where's the camp?"

April blinked. "The… camp?"

"Yeah. I wanna send someone to investigate, maybe do some interrogations." Perhaps mistaking April's alarmed expression for some level of scepticism, she elaborated: "NPCs have pretty damn good contextual memories in this game. If they met with another player, they should know what we're talking about and be able to tell us who they were, or at least what they looked like at the time." She grinned, showing off two yellow rows of teeth. I was suddenly keenly aware that each one tapered to a wickedly sharp spear-tip of a point. "If they don't wanna volunteer that stuff, my guy 'haf vays of making them talk.'"

April inhaled sharply.

Hoodwink tilted her head. Her slit-like eyes bored into April--and then, when she gave nothing away, swivelled to bore into me. "Is there something wrong?"

"I-I, um…" April hesitated for a while, seeming to weigh up the pros and cons of… something. I tried not to flinch as Hoodwink turned her gaze to me again, as if hoping I'd give away whatever it was that April was thinking of. Wh-what did she think I was, April's secret whisperer? "They're, um, kind of my guild, right now."

"Sorry?"

"Ah." Pellasmith's mouth moved for a few seconds before he started speaking. "That's how you escaped?" Though he nodded as he said it, he sounded just as bemused as Hoodwink. "They let you start a Duel of Succession?"

April nodded tersely. "S-so, um, they're… well, they're… mine. I don't really want you guys to… you know. Interrogate them."

"Huh." Hoodwink's black nails clacked rhythmlessly against the dark wood of the coffee table between us. "Interesting. Okay. They're not dissenting or anything?"

"Um… is that this thing that says 'active followers, 131/132'?"

Pellasmith nodded. "Correct. So, you have one dissenter. The old Chief, I suspect?"

"I think so, yeah. But, um, I put him in jail."

"Did you get around to questioning them, then?" Hoodwink asked.

"I, um, kind of," April said. She seemed somewhat sheepish. "But, um, she kind of dodged the question, and there was a bunch of other stuff I had to sort out first…"

Question-dodging. Though she hadn't said a name, one face loomed into my mind, bringing with it a host of face-warming memories--and one line that now stood out to me, even with my clitty throbbing away in its prison.

I ain't at liberty to say much about it…

"I, um, I think they're Geassed too, m-miss," I said quickly. "Kajagar and Caliburn. U-umm, the snake lady and the tiger guy, my lady."

A long silence followed. April, Pellasmith and Hoodwink all stared at me--then at each other. Hoodwink kneaded her forehead and broke the pause with a groan. "Right. Obviously. The worst thing in the world for them would be getting given away by one of the crappy mid-level minibosses they've roped into this shit. Of course they're gonna Geas every single one." She sighed. "With the brands, too, just in case someone thinks about Purifying one."

"So they won't be able to tell us anything about it?" Pellasmith said incredulously. "What about Mind's Eye?"

Hoodwink glanced at him. "Do you know anyone who's wasted their points on that useless-ass spell? Shit's worse than Geas." She sighed. "Sorry. I'm just… this whole thing is just really stupid. But… yeah, I guess that could work. If we find someone who took it. And she tells us where her Guild is."

"Is Mind's Eye a mind-reading spell?" April asked, as inquisitive about the workings of this game as ever. "What's wrong with it?"

"Well, it's not that there's anything wrong with it, per se," Pellasmith started. "It's just that there aren't really any very good use cases for it. Using it in combat is, well, bad, and if you want to get information out of an, ah, uncooperative NPC, you're usually better off just using Charm or Dominate--which have a large number of other uses, too."

Like getting someone in position to let you rape them, I thought sourly.

"They also have the advantage of only costing gold to learn, not Milestone Points. With all that in mind, it's really only in this specific case, where the NPC might have been Geassed into staying quiet, that Mind's Eye is the better choice."

"Huh," April said thoughtfully.

"Right, okay," Hoodwink said. "April. It's going to take us a while to find an Everwatch player who took this damn spell. When we eventually do, can I count on you guys to take them to your Guild and let them cast it on your guys?"

"It won't, um, hurt them, will it?"

Hoodwink glanced at Pellasmith.

"Not as far as I know, no," he said, clearing his throat. "The spell doesn't do any damage on its own."

"Then… okay," April said. She took a deep breath, and her voice quietened--"b-but, um, before that, could we ask for a quick favour?"

My eyes shot wide open. April, imposing on someone else and asking for a reward? Before we'd even done the thing she wanted the reward for??

Hoodwink rested her chin on the heel of a scarlet hand. "Oh? That's a bit bold, don't you think, Pell?"

Pellasmith shrugged. "There's no harm in hearing them out. Though--" he gestured apologetically--"if you want me to make you a magic item, I'm afraid that'll be impossible for a while. As you've seen, I have to budget my mana usage rather… aggressively for these dungeon clears."

"Oh, um, that's fine! I wasn't gonna ask for that… actually, this is more about the dungeon clears… could we actually take ours early? Like, um, tomorrow, if possible?"

"Hm?" Hoodwink brought her other hand to her chin, and steepled her fingers together. "Hmm. If we did that, we'd have to push people back one slot, you know. Including some people who've already had to wait two full weeks."

"Um, couldn't you just… take us as extras?"

"Not exactly." Hoodwink paused for a few moments, composing her thoughts. "You know about adventuring parties, right?"

April looked at me. As far as I remembered, we hadn't actually ever formally entered a party together… except for that 'slave party' thing we'd entered into in our Breachwood runs. Did that even count?

"Well, a party can have up to six members. Players, followers--any combination. And the more members a party has, the more dangerous the enemies that get spawned to fight it are."

"It's not exactly linear, either," Pellasmith chimed in. "Six-player parties have to fight encounters much more than six times worse than one-player ones. The idea being that teamwork and coordination can give a party that fits well together much more than six players' worth of power."

Hoodwink nodded. "Anyway, that doesn't mean that six is the limit for teamwork in this game--it just means that once you have a party of six, adding any more players means you have to stick them in a new party." She held up two perfect red fingers, then brought them together. "The new party can then be joined to the first party, through a game mechanic called platooning."

April's eyes lit up with recognition at the phrase, and I was once again reminded that she'd actually followed the game a bit before the beta had launched. Probably not to the extent of that HanlonsRazor guy, but still… more than me.

"A bit like adding more players to a party, adding parties to a platoon increases the difficulty of the fights you get into. It's the game's way of balancing teamwork, right? If a hundred players could all charge into a dungeon that was only designed to be challenging for six players, then it would be way too easy--so the game scales the dungeon so that it's just as much of a challenge for the hundred."

"We--" She indicated herself and Pellasmith--"use the platooning system to speedrun you guys to the top floor, by having the six of us Balladeers in one party, and then a hodgepodge party of you Lifespringers in another. The problem with that, though, is that you guys are effectively--no offence--dead weight past the first floor. You just don't have the experience with this game, or the stats, or the Milestones, or the equipment to handle the enemies from the Crisis Bloom onward… which means that we have to deal with enemies that are basically twice as strong as they're meant to be for our party of six, while still making sure that you guys don't die."

"So if you added a third party…"

"It'd be three times as hard."

April nodded sadly. "Right. That… that makes sense. Um, sorry."

"Hey, no need to say sorry! As it just so happens--" Hoodwink flashed Pellasmith a roguish smile, which he returned with a groan--"some of us have been floating the idea of a three-party clear since the beginning of all this."

"It won't work," Pellasmith grumbled. "I'm not gonna have the mana to sustain two Husks and you guys in the front and the Horder."

"What if we took D.G.? Instead of two Husks, we can have him protect the back party."

"What? Is he even Milestone 50 yet? How is he meant to tank?"

"Shield Stance, Hierarch Prayer, and a Crucifix." Hoodwink's response was instant, like she'd been waiting for an excuse to give it. "I know his rezzes are low, but we can lend him something from the vault… and he'll have, like, twelve Lifespring noobs healing him up after every fight."

"And the DPS?" Pellasmith said. "Bamtha's gonna have ten million HP, you know. Literally. Ten million. I mathed it out the other day."

Hoodwink nodded. "And I mathed it out with the twins. We'll have to pop a grand mana at the end of floor three, but we can get him down in six full rotations. Maybe five if we get enough crits. Even with ten mill."

Pellasmith closed his eyes and started mouthing numbers. "And we're full rotating Helluva?"

"Yeah, we figure she'll be four."

"Five," Pellasmith grunted. "If we're full rotating her, her adds won't die quickly enough. The Death Novas won't be maxed."

"Should we just room clear, then?"

Eyes shut again. More mouthing. "No, full rotating is still cheaper. We'll need room clear for everything between the bosses." He cracked his eyes open. "Alright, fine. We'll try one three-party clear tomorrow. And if it doesn't end in a complete disaster, we can talk about continuing with it."

And then, just short of under his breath--"God knows I'd like to get away from this stupid dungeon quicker."

"So--so you're taking us?" April said.

"We're taking you," Pellasmith clarified. "I'm sorry, but we can't afford to use a party slot on someone who isn't Lifespring and doesn't add anything to our strategy."

April bit her lip and shared a look with me. She clearly wanted to say more, but at the same time, the concession of being allowed to jump the queue was already so big…

"I, um, if mana's a problem, I-I have Infuse," I said awkwardly. "That… gives mana, right?"

Hoodwink looked at Pellasmith pointedly.

He waved her--and me--off. "You've got elf stats. You'll die to a stiff breeze."

"W-well--" April suddenly clapped her hands over her mouth. She stared over them, mortified, at me. Had she just… had she almost told them that I was…

"What is it?" Pellasmith asked, but April shook her head mutely.

Hoodwink tilted her head. "Come to think of it," she said slowly, "you never told us that the bandits Anchored you, Anne."

Though there was no earthly way it was true, I felt certain that my skin had gone as scarlet as hers. It certainly felt hot enough to be. The cogs in my brain locked together, sputtering, jittering senselessly back and forth--what was I meant to do? Plead ignorance? Lie? Admit to this tall, gorgeous, thoroughly curvaceous woman that I was a sissy, which was apparently a universally recognised mechanic in this stupid game??

"Oh." Pellasmith peered curiously at me. "Are you a… slut?"

W-wait… what?

"U-um…" It occurred to me that I could just nod. For some reason, the thought of being known as a slut felt less… humiliating than being known as a sissy. Maybe because… maybe because it didn't exactly call to mind my whole… situation, with my clitty cage, and my former masculinity, and my… stifled attraction to April…

but lying to him would just be so rude

"N-no," I admitted weakly. "I'm… I'm a sissy."

Pellasmith made a face, but to my surprise it wasn't disgusted, or mocking, or even confused--he just seemed contemplative. Like this was nothing more than a mildly unorthodox choice for my build. "And this is your first character?"

I nodded mutely. Why did people keep asking me that? Did they really think I wanted to be in this sissy elf body so badly that I'd made a whole new character just to have it? Or was becoming a sissy meant to be hard, or obscure somehow?

"Hm." He glanced over at Hoodwink, whose eyes were gleaming with orange triumph. "Fine. If you can't die, then… I suppose there is no reason not to take you. Should save us a grand mana potion or two, at the very least. And give us a safety net in case the calculations are off."

I couldn't say I was happy, being reduced to the level of a mana potion by these high-level players, but… at least it was a grand one. I nodded.

"U-um, thank you."

"I guess we'll be seeing you guys at dawn, then," Hoodwink said amicably, clapping her hands together. Behind her, the door to the sitting room swung open, admitting Mr. Butler, who nodded solemnly in our direction. "You'd best rest up--this dungeon is a slog."

Chapter 37: Dryad Falls

Chapter Text

A light rain fell over us as we gathered at the enormous tree that was the entrance to Dryad Falls. It was almost identical to the one that grew over the Breachwood, down to the starry black gash in its trunk that would transport us into the dungeon itself. Though its sprawling boughs shielded us from most of the drizzle, on occasion a fat droplet of rain would bead up on the end of a leaf, to splatter down on the earth below.

There were seventeen of us in total descending into the dungeon. The five Balladeers stood right by the trunk of the enormous tree in a loose gaggle, talking quietly amongst themselves; they could have been making last-minute adjustments to their strategy, or just discussing the weather, for all I could tell. Behind them, staring vacantly into the distance over their heads, towered another of their dryadic followers. This one was Horde Lord, 123 : the highest-level follower that we'd seen yet. Though it was nominally humanoid, with hulking, broad shoulders that soared two or three feet above even the pointed tips of Hoodwink's horns, and a tiny, misshapen head from which two sunken green eyes glowed solemnly out at the world, there was no mistaking it for a person. A faded blue cloak hung in tatters from the top of its towering frame, doing a miserable job of covering any of its gnarled physique; a set of five lilac runes, arranged in a tight circle, sat on the twisted forest of branches that might have charitably been called its chest. Almost unconsciously, I fingered the two black brands seared on my own stomach, the enchanted fabric of my Lustregown suddenly feeling thin and flimsy. Were these the soul sigils that the Balladeers had given him? Ones that made him stronger, instead of a more obedient slave?

The other two groups of six stood in two lines. I was next to April, on the very end of the line in front--per the strategy that Hoodwink and Pellasmith had discussed last night, DolphinGuy stood with us, on the other side of April. That left nine other beginners--three filling out our rank, and six behind us. To my relief, their wide-eyed stares were mainly reserved for the Balladeers and their Horde Lord, with a few going the way of DolphinGuy. I couldn't fault them: there was a certain awe that came with seeing a Milestone count so far above yours, and even DolphinGuy's 46 marked him as a cut above the rest of us. My own status as a Starlight player went unremarked upon… or perhaps unnoticed. After all, looking at the scruffy, cobbled-together loadouts of the players around us, I had to admit that I couldn't see any real giveaway that any of them were Lifespring, or anything that tied them to April in any way that I couldn't be. There weren't even any other beastkin; most of the other beginners were boring old humans, with just a pair of green-skinned orcs and one other pointy-eared elf breaking up the monotony.

DolphinGuy, a human himself, had exchanged his dowdy grey hoodie and sweatpants for a proper suit of armour; though I was loathe to admit it, it suited him far better, alongside his leonine features and immaculate golden hair. Rather than a sword and shield, however, or indeed any other standard knightly weapon, he held a fragile-seeming crystal staff. More slender than even my spindly wrists, and a pale, icy blue, it looked far too fragile for his hearty grip.

"If I could have your attention, please!" Hoodwink had detached herself from the other Balladeers, and now stood poised to address the twelve of us. Like DolphinGuy, she too had switched outfits since yesterday; but where his steely suit of armour was stolid and practical, every bit as bitingly pragmatic as the man who wore it, hers was… something else. Wrought of flowery, billowing curtains of metal that slipped effortlessly past each other as she moved, and parted in a hundred places so as to leave only the most private stretches of her to the imagination, it was hard to call it a suit of armour at all. Even those parts of it that did manage to cover any skin were sewn with countless tear-drop shaped holes, still leaving sizeable portions of her vibrant red shining through. Clasped around her throat glittered a choker of the same indistinct, multicoloured metal as her armour; inset in it were four gems. Magic items, I surmised.

A tooltip flashed in front of me, and I suddenly realised that I hadn't been paying attention at all. A pair of dryads had come up to us and were now handing out what appeared to be twigs--which might have been disappointing, except that the colour of their leaves flittered between a senseless rainbow of colours, bright and absurd in the midst of our dour, drizzled-on surroundings. April turned hers over in her hands thoughtfully for a few seconds before pocketing it.

"Don't go thinking you're immortal and do something stupid as soon as we get in there!" Hoodwink said warningly. "Remember, you get one. If you get dropped a second time and get kicked out of the dungeon, you're going back to the end of the line."

"How come she didn't get one?" piped up a guy from behind me. I turned around to see who he was talking about--and found him pointing at me. My face flushed. I hadn't even noticed that I'd been glided past, having been so absorbed in Hoodwink's… armour, but--it did make sense. With my gender, stopping me from falling to zero life points was just a waste of a high-level item. I-I just… h-how was I going to explain that without mentioning that I was--

"She has her own lifeline passive," Hoodwink said smoothly. I nodded along, trying my best not to seem frantic or flustered about it.

"Huh," said the speaker--one of the orcs, whose username read Fuckywuckylmao, 19 . For a moment, I was quietly surprised that there wasn't a profanity filter in place for that kind of name--then it occurred to me that this was the kind of game where goblins were programmed to get boners and wolves were programmed to commit gangrapes. They probably preferred their players to have vulgar names.

"Right. We all got a Sprig?" The other players all nodded. Hoodwink beckoned us to follow her, up to the other Balladeers--they'd gotten into a line, hand in hand in a daisy chain of armed-to-the-teeth adventurers--and reached out to clasp my hand in one of hers. My eyes went wide, and it wasn't just from the unexpected physical contact. Her skin was shockingly warm to the touch, like a freshly seared steak, o-or the sultry air in a sauna. With how much larger her hand was, it was like mine had been wrapped in a heated, weighted blanket. Almost like being clasped in April's arms--only confined and concentrated into a far tinier area.

And then April herself piled onto the sensation by snatching up my other hand. Hers was a few notches cooler than Hoodwink's, though no less firm--i-in fact, was I imagining it, or was she gripping me even tighter than usual? Was she perhaps jealous that Hoodwink had taken my other hand? As we joined up with the Balladeers, Hoodwink linking up with the hooded, tentacle-faced… person at the end of their column, it was all I could do to stare at my feet, my heart thrumming in my chest, pinned--happily, yes, but still pinned--between two towering women.

"We all linked up?" Hoodwink hollered, and I felt her voice vibrate through her hand. A pause, as she tallied up all the nods, perhaps gave everyone's hands one last once-over, making sure everyone really was part of the chain, and then--

Sprawling greenery stretched out around us, as far as the eye could see. Around our feet teemed shrubs and tangled brush; behind us bristled trees and vines and branches, packed together in a phalanx so tight that even my slender form couldn't possibly have slipped between them; and before us, rising from the rich earth in all its twisted, overgrown glory, loomed the slopes of a mountain, laden with what seemed to be miles of untamed jungle. A handful of narrow cracks in the greenery offered us passage into it--though each path was cramped and twisted, hemmed in every way by the plant life around them, they seemed at least an easier prospect than trying to pick our own way through the trees.

The patter of rain on leaves hadn't stopped, and as I gawked up at the forest before us, it was patently clear why: unlike the Breachwood's cave ceilings, Dryad Falls had a sky. Moody grey clouds swirled in it, an eddying, maelstrom crown for the jungle below: they grew darker as the treetops beneath them grew closer, until--at the very peak of the overgrown mountain, where the trees were so high up that wisps of cloud all but obscured them--they were a murky, patient black.

Over us, there fell a ginger drizzle. It was, for the time being, lighter than the rain we'd left behind in the overworld, but there was a worrying bearing to the clouds behind them, and the way they darkened as they neared the mountain's peak. An expectant weight that hung over us. Some animals were meant to be able to tell when a storm was coming; was this the way they felt?

"Wh-what's this?" I asked, pointing uselessly at the tooltip that had appeared in front of me. Could anyone else even see it? Belatedly, I noticed that both April and Hoodwink had released my hands; April had summoned up her customary emerald-studded club, while Hoodwink now held an ornate red-and-gold crossbow, perfectly suited to the aesthetic she had going on with her red skin, devil horns, and scandalously revealing armour.

"The Wild Mantra?" Hoodwink said. "That's from the big boss. The closer we get to him, the stronger all this is gonna get."

"Oh." I'd seen a couple of Wild Mantras before--but they'd done things like reduce my healing, not summon a crazy, damage-boosting storm that covered an entire dungeon at once!

With my questioning finished for now, Hoodwink strode forward to address the group. "Alright! Let's go over formation. For the first floor, you guys are all in front with the Horde Lord. You'll be doing the bulk of the fighting, but remember: don't hit any dryads!" She smacked the side of Horde Lord--she could only convincingly reach up to the middle of its rune-branded chest--and it let out a long, creaking groan, deeper than the darkest depths of a storybook forbidden forest. "Leave those to this bad boy."

"What are you gonna do, then?" asked one of the other players. Fuckywuckylmao again.

"Supporting fire," Hoodwink said blithely. "Down here, the enemies aren't very strong--there's just a ton of them. We'll help out, of course, but we're better off conserving our mana for the other four floors."

I looked dubiously at the mountain ahead of us. If I squinted at it, there was something sort of terraced about it, the wild canopy of its trees jumping up at what might be considered intervals, until you got to its storm-shrouded peak. So each 'level' of this jungle was a floor in the dungeon? I thought of Percy, and her flying platform spell. Couldn't a party just skip right to the last boss with a spell like that?

"Horde Lord! It's your show, buddy."

With another aching, creaking groan, the Horde Lord lumbered down one of the paths that spidered off into the undergrowth, seemingly confident in where it was going… and in a nervous trickle, the new players followed behind him. But when I made as if to follow April into his wake, Hoodwink grabbed me by the shoulder.

"Hold on, Starlight. You're sticking with us."

"Huh? Why?"

"Can't have you wandering off and going down somewhere we can't find you," Hoodwink said with a shrug.

April and I exchanged looks--hers concerned, mine worried. As a primarily melee fighter, and a tank, April would be better off near the front of the Lifespring group… and as I gazed at the sheer wilderness of Dryad Falls, I had to admit that it was all too easy to picture myself immobilised and getting dragged off by a surl creep or a pack of goblins or some other monster I'd never even heard of, and then… f-finished by them.

"R-right. Um… yeah, that makes sense, my lady," I said. "You can go ahead, April! My lady. I-I'll be safe back here."

"Damn right she will," Hoodwink said, with a wink that showed off the smoky eyeshadow that adorned her eyelids.

"Right… right!" April nodded back to us, as if she'd convinced herself. "I'll see you when we finish, okay?"

"Okay, my lady!"

April rushed off to the group of Lifespring players, presumably to claw her way all the way up to the front of the group--and then, at a much more leisurely pace, the Balladeers and I followed her. Hoodwink took up the front, her crossbow slung lazily over her shoulder, and her hips swaying hypnotically in front of me. She had a tail, I noticed dumbly, as red as the rest of her and tipped with three prongs like a trident, and though it looked small against the swinging backdrop of her perfect rear end, it did reach all the way down to her knees--

"Hiya!" My heart leapt into my throat as a tan blur lunged up from behind me. She dropped to my pace on a dime, a feat of dexterity that my brain registered as subtly much more impressive than anything the tiger-chief Caligula or wolf April had done with their stats, and suddenly I was staring at Axelpraxel81, 144 . The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end: this was a full-blown beastkin, her skin coated completely in short beige fur, besides a wavy brown bob-cut that went neatly down to the base of her neck. A pair of floppy, round-ended ears, the same beige as her fur, peeked out from beneath her hair. Between those and the contorted bends of her legs and the enormous hind paws that she padded along on the balls of, I might have taken her for a rabbit-kin, except that behind her extended a long, swishing tail, easily the whole length of her body on its own. At its tip was a narrow bulb of some kind.

"U-umm, h-hi!" I said meekly. Though she seemed friendly enough, thoughts of the last few beastkin I'd interacted with flashed through my head--and I couldn't help but notice that in her large, brown eyes, every bit as shiningly adorable as an actual rabbit or mouse's, she too had narrow slits for pupils.

"You're the sissy, huh?"

"Axel!" Pellasmith grunted admonishingly from behind us.

"What?" Axel said. "I'm not judging her for it! I'm just curious!"

"I, umm, y-yes, I am," I said.

"Cool! Whatcha think about it? Is it good?" Axel asked. "I heard there's a cheese for it that works best at low levels. Is that why you went it?"

Her questions came out rapid-fire, jolted out so quickly I could hardly remember the first one by the time I was ready to start answering them.

"I, um, not really, I don't--"

Suddenly, a bright green vine lashed out from the branches above--and just as suddenly, a crossbow materialised in Axel's hand, and she launched a bolt straight through it.

In front of us, the pack of Lifespring players had come to a halt. A swarm of similar vines--surl creep, I realised, though it was a different colour to the ones that spawned in the Breachwood--were slithering their way at the group from all directions, and they were far from the only things attacking them. Before them glowered a dryad, its leafed head high enough up that it scraped against the unruly forest canopy; and at its side stood a retinue of far smaller dryads. Each of their arms ended in spear-like points, though on the enormous dryad the effect was more of a pair of industrial drills.

"Leave," groaned the major sentinel, the word forced, raw and hateful, from the haggard gash of its mouth--and then the Horde Lord, hunched over at the front of the group, plunged a gnarled, wooden fist into the dryad's stomach. The sentinel writhed for a few moments, its twisted limbs shuddering and shaking… and then, when the Horde Lord withdrew its arm, it turned around and seized the two smaller sentinels next to it by their heads, and slammed them into the forest floor. Realising that the dryads were no threat--Hoodwink had told us to leave them to the Horde Lord, after all--the horde of Lifespring players were left free to focus on the masses of surl creep lunging at them, wailing on them with clubs, maces, swords, and every weapon in between. I caught a glimpse of April, right at the furthest point of the melee from me, ravenously tearing vines apart with her bare hands.

Blissfully ignoring the battle between the Lifespring players and the surl creep that raged behind it, and even the feeble efforts of the remaining dryads to resist it, the Horde Lord went on to plunge its fists into each of the other sentinels' bodies. One by one, they writhed (though none for as long as their leader), and then were turned to our side. By the time the surl creep had been dealt with, the whole host of sentinels stood impassively at the Horde Lord's side, not a single hostile twig in their bodies.

"Pretty cool, huh, sissy?" Axel said, nudging me with a bony elbow, as we started moving again, the Horde Lord apparently satisfied with the outcome of this first battle. "That's why we call him Horde Lord!"

I winced, both from getting jabbed and from the carefree way she'd addressed me as 'sissy.' I--I had a--

"She has a name, you know," drawled Hoodwink.

"Ah, right right!" Axel nodded quickly. "Anne," she added, emphasising it like I'd never heard it before. "Ohh, can I call you Annie?"

The nickname reminded me uncomfortably of Percy, but I nodded. It was better than being called 'sissy' for the rest of the dungeon.

We continued through the first floor in the same formation, slogging our way through ambushes and outright confrontations in much the same way as the Breachwood clears I'd done with April. Not every fight was as easy as the creep and sentinels, either; though a few more clutches of dryads did appear to attack us (and were summarily absorbed into the Horde Lord's mind-controlled horde), we were also beset by packs of monstrous beasts, and hooded spellcasters who commanded hulking columns of earth and water, and--bizarrely--a phalanx of sword-and-shield-bearing skeletons, who wore horned helmets and bore a standard with a black flag. Each group fought with an eerie discipline, even (to an extent) the animals, flanking us through the trees and taking defensive stances and on one occasion even trying to draw the main body of Lifespring players into a spike-filled pit. Their front line held ours in check, while their back line held back and pelted us with ranged attacks--they almost felt like a series of pitched battles, not a dungeon crawl!

The difference-maker, of course, were the Balladeers and the Horde Lord. Though Hoodwink had claimed that the Lifespring players were going to do most of the heavy lifting on this first level, and indeed neither she nor any of her party members had cast a single spell since entering the dungeon, from my position in the back with them it was easy to see that each arrow or crossbow bolt they fired landed with devastating effect, instantly killing even untouched enemies and shattering whole formations without any fanfare. And with his ability to turn the dungeon's own dryadic defenders against it, and absorbing hits both with his own hulking frame and those of the dryads he'd claimed, no amount of strategy could let these low-level monsters deal with the Horde Lord. Privately, I suspected that, at this point in the dungeon, even the Balladeers' contributions were entirely unnecessary--at the rate he was going, the Horde Lord looked like he could steamroll his way all the way to the end of the dungeon without any help whatsoever. As much as I knew that this wasn't actually the case--the enemies were bound to get much harder with each new level, and who knew if his ability worked on all dryads, or just the lower-level ones--it was hard to shake.

"Oh, finally," remarked Hoodwink when, soon after our first brush with the skeletons, we came upon a burbling river. Here, on its banks, the trees and undergrowth were clustered far less intensely together--and, for the first time since we'd entered the forest, I found myself with an unbroken view of the moody grey sky.

"Is the river good, my lady?" I asked. Maybe it was because I'd spent so much time around the billowing waters of the River Samson lately, but this one didn't seem particularly impressive to me. Its flow was sluggish, even with the constant drizzle falling over us, and under the overcast sky (did Dryad Falls even have a sun?), its waters were a murky, unpleasant grey.

"Yeah," Hoodwink said. "You know how this place is called Dryad Falls, right?"

She pointed.

At the end of the river, down what looked like a full mile of twists and turns carved through the jungle, crashed the pounding waters of a waterfall. Even from this distance, the white wake that surged from it was palpable, and though I couldn't hear it yet, I knew I would soon.

"The river leads you to the Falls," she said loftily, like it was a quote from an NPC or something. It probably was. "The Falls lead you to the heart of the storm."

"So, it's like a shortcut, or something, my lady?"

"Something like that."

A series of shrieks descended from the heavens.

Almost bored, Axel raised her crossbow once more, and a crossbow bolt rocketed through the core of the closest swirling mass of wind descending upon us. The creature dissipated--and then the bolt jerked in mid-air, spinning on a dime to shoot through the core of the next-closest one… and then again, to pierce the one after that… and then the thirteen other ones after that. A chorus of awed gasps rose up from the Lifespring players in front of us, and Axel cheekily put the tip of her crossbow to her lips and gave it a quick blow, like it was a pistol.

"Was that a spell?" I said, aghast. Was this why I'd never seen more than one surl creep coming for our group in the back, even in the fights where the Lifespring players had had to struggle against hordes upon hordes of them?

Axel grinned. "Nope! It's Ricochet!"

Before I could ask her to elaborate, Hoodwink went back to explaining the significance of the river. "Instead of a shortcut, you could think of the river as a… reliable-cut. It's not exactly shorter, and the monsters here are different--in really annoying ways, sometimes--but, unlike the jungle paths, it's always going to take you towards the next level. There's no getting lost or turned around."

She was right. Though seeing our destination laid out in front of me like that had made it seem far more approachable, that had just been a trick of the senses. Monsters still lurched out of the trees to attack us at regular intervals, and they were joined now by a variety of monsters descending from the skies--twisting air spirits, like the taranic skyhawks, but also flesh-and-blood birds, like crows with razor-sharp beaks and eagles that launched waves of barbed feathers at us with each flap of their wings--and a host of monsters that rose up from the river itself. Giant amorphous blobs of water, whippersnappers like there were in the River Samson, solitary piscies that would silence a random one of us and then flutter off at top speed… the struggle was unending.

Until, eventually, it did end. A stone archway greeted us as we came upon the waterfall itself, its legs planted on either side of the river. At its zenith grinned an etching of a skull: through it roared the deafening crash of water on water. Here, at the base of the waterfall, the river's waters had pooled into what was almost a lake, its banks rounded into an arena. On its surface floated what I could only describe as giant purple lily pads, each one easily large enough to hold ten of us at once.

The Horde Lord, still leading the way, stopped short beneath the skull-marked archway and turned around, his collection of dryad slaves fanning out on either side of him. Though he didn't say anything or hold out a hand to stop the players following him, they got the message.

"Right," Hoodwink said, striding up to his side. "The Crisis Bloom is a real bad matchup for Horde Lord, so he's going to wait out here. That's going to leave all of you guys as our front line, alright?" She got some nods from the gathered Lifespring players, even the spindly-looking ones in robes. "He has some pretty brutal attacks, so watch out for those--one solid hit and he's hundred-to-zeroing any one of you. It would be real shit if you lost your Sprig at this point in the clear." More nods. Even one from Fuckywuckylmao. "Oh, and don't cast healing spells if you can help it--he has a Mantra that heals him when you do, and one that makes your healing weaker anyway. Try to stick to shield points and buffing your rezzes."

She clapped her hands together, and the Horde Lord moved stiffly to one side behind her, unblocking the way into the boss area. "Alright! Let's go kill a flower!"

The moment Hoodwink bounded through the stone archway, the monster rose up from the centre of the small lake, water cascading from its hulking, black form in a million rivulets. Five dark petals, bristling with purple thorns, flexed and rolled in the balmy air; a fine mist rose up off them. At their centre gnashed a mouth, full of bone-white teeth. Beneath them extended a towering trunk, easily twice as thick as any tree we'd seen in the jungle around it, but every bit as supple as the vines that now rose up from the water around it, clearly extending from its base at some interminable point beneath the surface.

The hooded, tentacle-faced Balladeer--his nameplate read Galataeus_Agemnon, 122 --murmured something I couldn't catch through the din of the roaring waterfall, and the battlecries of the Lifespring players around us, then gestured at the water. A long, thin trail of ice whistled along its surface, all the way up to the gnarled base of the Crisis Bloom, where it flashed against the flower's flesh in an icy nova. Seeing that they'd been given a pathway to join the fight at the centre of the lake, the mass of Lifespring players surged down it, still roaring in a group. My heart swelled at the sight of April at the very front of the group: she'd switched to her pair of daggers, having apparently taken Hoodwink's advice about prioritising defence to heart, but looking no less fierce for it.

The fight ended swiftly. Under the sustained fire of Axel and the other beastkin Balladeer--TaxelPraxel81, who had no fur on her skin, a pair of much more rabbit-like tan ears, and a stubby cotton-tail instead of Axel's long, swishing one--and the ruthless attacks of Hoodwink, who had switched from her crossbow to a pair of long, thin blades with rounded crossguards, and bounded back and forth between the purple lily-pads to make each attack without a single hint of hesitation, the Crisis Bloom had vanishingly few chances to launch any of the crushing 'Venom Whip' attacks that its tooltip had mentioned, let alone land them. Though it did manage to shatter the icy bridge leading up to it (bowling over most of the Lifespring players into the roiling waters around it) and it managed to launch an oozing black pod at our group in the back (which exploded into a faint cloud of sickly green gas, painting a glowing purple skull over the healthbars of Pellasmith and the tentacle-faced Galataeus), those victories were minor at best.

One final blow from Hoodwink brought it down. Its body disintegrated into inky black dust; Galataeus gestured at himself and Pellasmith and muttered 'Antidote,' clearing away the purple skulls of their poison; and a tree sprouted up from the centre of the lake, where the Crisis Bloom had stood just before, reaching up all the way to the very top of the waterfall before us. From its trunk radiated out flat wooden branches, in a tight spiral: a staircase. The way up to the next floor.

I stared up at it. Its 'steps' were still dripping with the water of the lake, and it didn't exactly have handrails, either. I wasn't sure if fall damage even existed in this game, and even if it did, I knew it at least wouldn't kill me, but…

"W-we're climbing up that, huh?" I tried to say lightly.

"Don't worry, Starlight." Hoodwink clasped my hand in hers, and my breath caught again, the steamy warmth of her skin enough to make my clitty shudder in its prison--"I can hold your hand, if you'd like."

On the cliff overlooking the waterfall down to the first floor, the Balladeers made some adjustments to the order of the platoon. The Horde Lord and his dryads would still lead us along the river, all the way up to the next of the waterfalls; but now the Balladeers were in the front, taking me along with them. Hoodwink stuck with the swords she'd taken out for the Crisis Bloom, and the two casters--Pellasmith and Galataeus--swapped their crossbows for a leatherbound spellbook and an ornate staff of black metal, respectively.

"Summon: Dryad." Pellasmith pointed into empty space; with a bellowing cry and a flash of warm green light, a new dryad burst into existence. Heartwood Husk, 88. No monster entries popped up for me: either this kind of dryad didn't spawn in Dryad Falls at all, or it belonged to a later level, one that April and I hadn't been allowed to buy a knowledge book for.

"Protect the weak players," Pellasmith told it, and it lurched off to the back of the group, presumably to do exactly that. Though it looked decidedly less humanoid than the Horde Lord, that almost made it less uncomfortable to look at; it was just a hollow ball of brambles and twigs, mounted on a pair of sturdy tree-trunk legs, and mounted with a pair of spindly branches for arms.

Seeing me stare at it, Pellasmith obliged me with a brief explanation. "That thing takes ninety percent of the damage for allies near it, and heals itself when it sees things die. It's how we're gonna keep the Lifespring players alive."

My eyes almost bulged out of my head. "Ninety percent? That's--that's--!"

Pellasmith chuckled. "It's not as good as it sounds. Its health pool doesn't scale nearly as well as an actual tank's, so once you get to endgame boss territory, it's pretty much just tanking ninety percent of one hit and then checking out. And a lot of the lower-damage attacks that it would survive do much worse things than deal damage."

"Oh. Like… control spells?"

He winked. There was something weirdly fatherly about it. "You're learning."

With the group set up, Hoodwink gave the go-ahead to the Horde Lord, and we set off again, moving down the river.

"Right. You didn't have much to do last floor, but starting now, you've got a job," Pellasmith said as we walked. Somehow, despite his tiny gnomish stature, he was keeping up easily with me and the quiet Galataeus--something to do with our stats?

"Casting Infuse?" I asked nervously. I tapped through the menus to retrieve my embarrassing pink wand.

"That's the one. If it's not too much trouble, I'd also like you to note down how many times you cast it during this run, and your exact Charisma. You don't have any effects that change it dynamically, do you?"

I thought back through all my Milestones and equipment. The Starry Lustregown changed from day to day, depending on 'star signs' or something, but other than that… "Well, I have, uh, Centre of Attention?"

"Hmm," Pellasmith said, apparently not needing a refresher on what that did. "That should be maxed at all times here, I think, considering the size of this party. We'll assume that any time there's less than ten of us looking at you, that there's enough enemies on the field to make up the difference. So, what are you at now?"

I pulled up my stats. With today's bonus from my Lustregown, and Centre of Attention, and that 5% bonus from my wand equipped, I was at--"Seventy-two."

Pellasmith made an impressed noise. "That's pretty good for Milestone 16." He muttered to himself for a moment, and I thought I caught the words elf and priest--was he trying to calculate my build? "Right, okay. I'll memorise that, so you don't need to keep track of it. Just focus on casting Infuse, okay? Try and cast it on us when we drop below half--not before."

"Half… health?" I said, stupidly.

"No, mana."

I stared at the bars hovering over everyone's heads. Green. Green. Green, green, green--it was only my own HUD, at the top of my vision, that displayed a blue bar at all, sitting untouched underneath my health bar.

"C… can you see mana?" I said quietly.

Pellasmith frowned up at me, though it wasn't with animosity or frustration, just… confusion. "Can you not?"

"Her Int must be too low," murmured Galataeus, on Pellasmith's otherside. His voice was thin and reedy, but somehow resonated, as if he was overcasting a spell with each word.

"Aren't those Secretary's Spectacles, though?" Pellasmith's gaze shifted to some distant point over my shoulder. More muttering. "Ah. I get it. A priestess, not a priest."

"So… what should I do?" I said. Tears were pricking at the edges of my eyes. It had never occurred to me before, but it did make sense for someone restoring mana to, well, be able to see how much mana their allies were missing. Why did this game want me to be so fucking--

"We got Intellect problems back here?" Hoodwink had materialised in front of us, and was now walking backwards at the same pace as we were, her hands behind her back, seemingly unbothered by the treacherously twig-and-vine laden floor underfoot. I glanced down at her feet. Wait, was she wearing heels?

"Oh, do you have a seed?" Pellasmith said brightly.

"Mhm. Here." Hoodwink snatched up my hand--blessing it with that fiery warmth--and pressed something small and hard and wrinkled into my palm.

"Um, th-thank you, my lady!" I blabbered.

"No worries, Starlight."

"She's been carrying that thing around since we cleared Edelwyn's Mansion," Galataeus observed evenly. "It's about time someone used it."

Hoodwink rolled her eyes and sauntered off back to the Horde Lord's side. I popped the seed into my mouth, with just the tiniest bit of hesitance, and took a bite--

Around me, healthbars popped upwards, making room for a set of brand new blue bars beneath them--and, to my surprise, a host of empty yellow circles next to them, too! Stamina bars, I guessed.

"Is that better?" Pellasmith asked. I nodded. "Excellent."

In this new configuration, each set of monsters that came across us went down… quickly. Though I wasn't quite close enough to make out everything that the two beastkin Balladeers were saying, let alone Hoodwink way up in the front, I could see it--the way Hoodwink vanished completely from view, her swords drawn, untrackable to the naked eye except by the gashes that opened up on the bodies of the monsters as she eviscerated them, while Axel lazily launched bolt after bolt into the melee, occasionally casting a spell that made her crossbow glow and launch numerous thorny bolts at once, and Taxel occasionally lowered her towering bow to cast some kind of large-area spell that drastically slowed down the movements of all the enemies caught in it, while accelerating herself and the already-lightning quick Axel and Hoodwink. The Horde Lord, once the one to wait for the fighting to abate after converting each group of dungeon dryads, was now the one being waited on, its slow two-by-two process no match for the blistering advance of the three Balladeer damage-dealers.

Of course, this game being VALKYRIE, and the enemies in it being annoyingly intelligent because of it, the front was far from the only place where conflict raged. Behind us, opportunistic ambush monsters (that had wisely chosen to let the overpowered players in front of us pass through untouched) dropped from the skies and erupted from the earth and leapt out from the trees to attack the low-level Lifespring players now trailing us. These were primarily dealt with by Pellasmith and Galataeus; Pellasmith had a spell called 'Blast' that he used quite liberally--each cast didn't seem to move his mana bar at all, though he was still missing a chunk from when he'd summoned the Heartwood Husk--while Galataeus was fond of 'Death Orb,' which launched a warbling ball of wobbling black energy that passed straight through most things it hit, killing them instantly. Anything that it killed seemed to rise back up as a zombie to fight on our side, though the zombies didn't last particularly long, easily clawed to shreds in the first wave of attacks from the next set of ambushers.

The first Balladeer to drop below half and need an Infuse was Taxel; the second was Galataeus; and the third was Hoodwink. Four more Infuses later, we were at the end of the river, staring at the archway up to the second floor boss.

This time, the enormous figure that rose from the water at the base of the waterfall was gaunt and skeletal. A dozen dark, thorny vines, much like those of the Crisis Bloom, rose up out of the water to bind it in place at its waist, leaving its arms--long and whip-thin and riddled with a dozen joints each--free to jitter through the air as they pleased. Pale scraps of something dangled wetly from its soaked bones, and it grinned down at us with a pair of fleshless skulls fused together at an angle, so that only one long, prehensile neck joined them to its hulking body.

Its two jaws clattered open as its eyeless sockets fell upon us, and it extended a bony hand in our direction--but the Balladeers had already been casting for a while.

"Pinpoint. Scattershot. Paradigm Shift."

"Pinpoint. Footwork. Springtouch."

"Rootbind. Summer Balm. Forest Aegis."

"Pinpoint. Unburden. Inner Aspect."

"Withering Claws. Omen of Frost. Heartbreak. Snow Cloak."

A million different things happened at once. Snow and sunlight and jagged spikes of black energy descended on the massed Balladeers--and, since I was still between the two casters, me!--and a host of random auras appeared around Hoodwink and the archers. White bars of shield points appeared in each of our health bars, protecting us from damage. In the midst of it all, an enormous jet of black energy hurtled at Rattlebones, sending him staggering backwards and painting him with an inky black outline of his own.

As the snowfall ended, everyone suddenly vanished from view--and when I looked down at myself, I found that my own body had gone translucent, and I could see the muddy banks of the river through myself.

"Horror," Rattlebones snarled from its two mouths, still gesturing towards us--evidently, it had some form of object permanence, and hadn't been fooled by all of us turning invisible. Its voice reverberated with the force of an overcast, the same as April's had--but how much? Twice, three times? Or maybe, with its two mouths… ten times?

A horrible, bulbous wave of something green wafted from its finger towards us. A tooltip blipped in front of my face for just a second, just long enough for me to see it had the red header of a warning--but then the voice of Taxel rang out from some interminable point ahead of me.

"Unspell." Flat and rote, like she'd done it a hundred times before. She popped back into view, about where I'd last seen her, pointing back at Rattlebone in exactly the same stance that he was pointing at us in. The freaky green wave stopped in midair, then reversed in direction, as if being rewound--and that was when the Balladeers' assault began in earnest.

Axel was the next to reappear. She'd equipped a second crossbow, and bolts flew from both of them at machine-gun pace, faster than any she'd fired before. She was followed shortly by Hoodwink, who had somehow closed the distance all the way to Rattlebones in that split second since Taxel's 'Unspell.' She launched a flurry of attacks on it with her two rapiers--and as the brutal rain of Axel and Taxel's arrows fell upon them both, simply shouted "Ethereality!" and vanished from view entirely.

I frowned. Percy had used that spell, back in the Breachwood. It hadn't made anyone invisible, though--and judging by the lacerations that continued to appear across Rattlebones' dripping husk during that period of invisibility, Hoodwink was clearly not entirely intangible, either. Was that a Milestone she had, or something?

Pellasmith and Galataeus rounded the assault out with two spells of their own-- 'Earthshatter!' and 'Grave Tidings!'--and that was when Taxel lowered her bow once more, pointed at Rattlebones again, and said, "Quantum Collapse."

The air itself twisted and warped around the grinning skeleton--and then snapped in on itself in an instant, seizing the skeleton by each of its hundreds of bones and yanking them inwards with it.

And then, just like that, the spell ended, with Rattlebones nowhere to be seen. Like the last boss room, a spindly tree in the shape of a spiral staircase sprouted from the water where it had once stood.

"C'mon, guys! There's still plenty of dungeon left to go!"

In an awed silence, the Lifespringers and I followed the Balladeers up to the next floor of the dungeon.

Over the next hour, we struggled onwards. The fights grew fiercer, the monsters tougher and smarter, and the rain deeper, turning into an outright downpour that blunted the archers' arrows and leadened Hoodwink's slashing and dashing. For the first time since I'd met them, the Balladeers started taking hits, and though Pellasmith topped them up with relative ease--healing, shielding, and even slightly restoring their mana with a single spell-- each blow still carved out a wicked chunk of their health bars. For all the damage that Hoodwink and the others could put out, it seemed that they weren't very good at taking it.

Between the increasingly brutal fights, though, Pellasmith was happy to field my questions, which had only grown more intense and numerous as the combo they'd used against Rattlebones saw more use on the third and fourth floors. That was the 'full rotation' that he and Hoodwink had mentioned last night in their guild hall: the most reliable, highest-damage, and most mana-efficient combination of spells and attacks their party could pull out against a single target. The lynchpin of their specific party's full rotation was Quantum Collapse, a spell which took all the damage that a single enemy had taken in the last nine seconds, and dealt it all to them again in an instant. Accordingly, their full rotation was based around dealing as much damage as possible in those nine seconds.

"You can actually do a similar combo, when you have enough Milestones," Pellasmith was quick to add after his initial explanation. "Heartbreak's somewhere in the Starlight tree, and there's another Starlight spell called Anathema's Reprise that has a similar effect to QC."

On top of the full rotation, the Balladeers had another combo they started using on these floors; the 'room clear.' This started with Taxel using a spell called 'Time Siphon' on a large group of enemies, slowing their movements to a crawl and transferring all that lost speed directly to herself and the other Balladeers. (I didn't notice it the first few times, but Pellasmith pointed out that she was catching the Horde Lord's collection of converted dryads in the slow effect as well, enhancing the acceleration effect that much more.) Then Axel launched a few shots at the less defensive monsters in the back, her Ricochet shots no longer instantly killing everything they touched but still dealing heavy damage in their own right, paring down their ranks and whittling down the survivors. Hoodwink, Taxel and Galataeus would join in too, at this point, though their own area damage paled in comparison to Axel's--

until the time came for Galataeus to cast Death Nova. A burst of black-and-white energy that emanated instantly from whatever point he chose, and swept out over an area that felt as wide across as a football field, the first few that Galataeus dropped drew spontaneous claps and cheers from the Lifespring players behind us. Each time he casted it, it struck twice; Pellasmith helpfully explained that this was a synergy with one of his Milestones, Death Echo. So long as Galataeus killed enough things with the initial cast of a spell, it would summon up its own echo afterwards, dealing the same damage again. And because Death Nova specifically dealt more damage based on how many enemies had died in the last dozen or so seconds, up to a cap, the second cast of this spell normally dealt more damage than the first one.

Unfortunately, the spell also cost a monstrous amount of mana. By the time we reached the boss of the third floor, let alone the fourth one, I'd run completely dry and informed Pellasmith that I'd managed to cast a grand total of thirteen Infuses, most of the last few on Galataeus.

"Right. Thanks for that, Anne."

After that came the preparations for the fight against the third boss. Unlike the last two bosses, his arena lay in a shallow cave that the floor's waterfall flowed into and the floor's river flowed out of. I didn't get a Monster Entry popup for him--the librarian in Lumberg had refused to sell us a book for the third level of Dryad Falls, and cautioned us heavily against attempting to go that far into it. The game's way of subtly hinting that this wasn't content we could clear yet.

"Sabre's rough," Hoodwink said, by means of explanation, to the group at large. "We can't lock him down with Rootbind, and he actively targets the weakest players in the party. In his main form, he goes invisible, and he tries to be unpredictable with when and where he reappears. In theory, multiple Dex-based DPSes is the ideal matchup for taking him down, but that doesn't mean we're going to do a great job of protecting you guys. This is the fight where we normally lose the most Sprigs."

"So--try your best to dodge his attacks. Keep in mind that he can go invisible. The most dangerous time for you guys is when he's peeled us off to the other end of the cavern--he loves doubling back to go for you guys, and he can move fast."

A chorus of nods--then it was time to pass through the skull-crowned archway, and into Sabre's lair.

Shallow though it was, the cave was wide. A squat pillar of loamy earth, studded with pale rocks, dominated most of the available space and split the waters of the river that flowed through it in two--but still a wide channel wound around it. And it was in this channel, in front of the pillar, where the split rivers met back up, that the beast emerged from the water.

Dark, splotchy fur, under which muscles rippled like riptides. Pitiless green eyes, shining like emerald stars in the depths of an endless black ocean. Two rows of wicked amber teeth, gleaming with all the ancient glory of a primordial sunset. A chill ran down my spine. Forget about April. Forget her new beastkin lieutenants, forget Kajagar, forget the wolves of the Silverwood, forget even Chief Caliburn--this was the beast to end all beasts.

It swept its gaze over us. Behind it flicked four tails, whip-shaped and whip-fast. There was something casual in the way it eyed each one of us in turn, but also something unmistakably calculating, too. Though it spared none of us more than a half a second of attention, if that, it was somehow absorbing everything there was to know about each one of us. Identifying the threats… the weak spots… the chill in my bones only deepened. Though it was certainly the most animal of the bosses I'd encountered so far, there was something terrifyingly intelligent in its jade eyes.

And then they met mine.

Like that, the beast had found its target. The beast's spotted hide blurred, and then it disappeared.

"Who is it?" Hoodwink and the others leapt into action, drawing their weapons, casting their gazes about the cavern, looking out for telltale signs of the beast padding through the water or over the dirt floor.

"Arborcraft," muttered Pellasmith from behind me.

I turned to find him standing with the enslaved dryads--they were holding hands in a circle around the Lifespring players, Pellasmith laying his hands on the Major Sentinel we'd picked up way back on the first floor--and then a roar rattled the world. Up and down flipped, a piercing pain tore through me, black became white and everything flared a blinding red--

"Heartbreak!"

"Slash!"

"Anne!!"

I slammed into a wall--or the floor--or maybe the ceiling. Another roared echoed through the world, and though this one reverberated deep into my bones, too, it was shallower, more incensed than dominating. I blinked the tears out of my vision. When my arms refused the order to reach up to my eyes to help in the effort, I realised that my healthbar was empty.

"Summer Balm!"

"Earthshatter him!"

But it was too late--as the golden wave of energy radiated out from Pellasmith, scattering healing and shielding and a tiny bit of mana over every player in the cavern, and I managed to wrench myself unsteadily onto my feet--the enormous, four-tailed panther vanished from sight.

"Cover her!" Hoodwink jabbed a sword in my direction, and the two archers swivelled to point their various bows at me. She stood at attention by their side, glancing from side to side--making sure that they were covered if the boss chose to attack them instead. Some distance behind her, Pellasmith had his hands on the dryads once again. They were… changing. Flattening out, melding together, bark and branches shifting so that they were less separate beings and more a single wooden barrier, wrapped protectively around the Lifespring players and DolphinGuy and the Heartwood Husk that stood in their midst.

Another roar ripped through the air--but this one was deeper, quaking through the ground alongside the air. Hunched over almost uncomfortably in the confines of the cave, right beside Pellasmith, a titanic mass of grizzly black fur cracked him over the head with two clasped paws. A bear--and when the first hit dropped his health by a quarter and sent him staggering back, in the vague direction of his teammates, it followed up with a slash from a second set of arms, jutting out from the sides of its shaggy torso. Pellasmith dropped below half, and a fusillade of arrows hurtled over his head, followed shortly by Hoodwink, lunging in their wake like an avenging angel.

"Slash!"

They tore into the boss's flesh. It roared, took a set of three swipes at Hoodwink that she deftly dodged between, and then--with its remaining arm--slammed a fist into the ground. The whole cavern shook, viciously enough that even I was knocked off my feet, my brain rattling around inside my skull, even though I was the furthest away from it by a large margin. By the time I'd regained my wits (and my footing), the bear had vanished again.

Another roar--the original one--and that same agony ripped me apart from behind. I hurtled through the air, this time dimly aware I was being pitched into the ceiling, at least enough so that when I dropped, ragdoll-like, into the river below I wasn't surprised to be suddenly face-down in rushing, ice-cold waters.

This time, though, the monster's assault didn't stop at a single hit. It pounced its way after me. A pair of enormous jaws closed roughly on the tops of my dangling pig-tails, and I screamed in pain, nerves aflame with the sensation of my hair being pulled writ a hundred. At the same time, a monstrous stink flooded my lungs. Unbidden, my clitty trembled in its prison. Boss or not, this thing was definitely a beast. The pain and the terror weren't enough to outweigh the arousal that the monster's musk stirred up in me--and then I was thrown unceremoniously into the barrage of arrows and crossbow bolts that the Balladeers had fired the boss's way. Though I was far too small and dainty to take them all, or even most of them, a few bolts of pain still erupted across my body as I flew into the river.

A sliver of health and shielding reappeared in my healthbar, just soon enough for me to struggle to my feet, hacking and coughing from all the water that had spilled into my throat from my short-lived dive--and then a bitingly cold wave plunged into my back, knocking me back down to zero again. Please, I tried to burble into the river, face-down once again--stop bringing me back!

"MMdhHHffh!!"

This time, as the waters around me grew choppy, and roars and battlecries and slashing noises intermittently cut through the river and reached my point ears, I ignored my healthbar when another sliver of health and shielding reappeared in it. The yellow bar of my stamina reappeared, and started dropping at an alarming rate--was having my mouth and nose submerged doing that??--but before I could spin around and try to take a breath, something massive and scaly walloped me from above, smearing me into the shallow riverbed. My mind went careening madly into black nothing, only for another roar to bring me back. This one shuddered through the clawed foot planted squarely on my back and neck and head. Had that even been an attack, or was it just standing on me?

Another tick of healing and shielding brought me back up--and though the pressure on my back vanished, Sabre lunging off to attack some other hapless victim, I promptly drowned again, unable to extricate myself from the riverbed with my moment of release. Was this healing from Pellasmith's Summer Balm? Had he meant to keep bringing me back like this, or had I just been caught in his way of protecting his dryads and the Lifespringers?

By the time I managed to pry myself out from my predicament, at least enough to lift my head tentatively from my hiding place in the river, I was shivering, and soaked, and desperately praying that the boss was dead. Silently--I couldn't even mouth the words, my teeth were chattering so badly--but praying all the same. The fight had raged on through my struggles to escape the river, intermittent roars and quakes and shouts breaking through the surging waters to reach me… and, unfortunately, it continued on as I cowered in the river, unwilling to give the monster a single hint that I'd stopped being 'dead' again.

The sky was visible again. Grey and dreary as ever, Dryad Falls' omnipresent rain lashed against my back and the top of my head, churning up the waters of the river around me. As I timidly inspected what should have been the cave walls around us, all I found were spikes of barren dirt and rock. Where had the cave gone?

The world flashed electric blue, and a thunderous crack split the air--no, not thunderous, thunder! I dared to glance the way it had come from; a splotchy black bird, trailing behind it four twisting, gold-tipped feathers, crowed furiously in the sky above. It sliced a wing savagely in the direction of a pair of figures--through the driving wind, I could barely make out that they were there, let alone who they were--and then, like an aftershock, a bolt of lightning hurtled out at them. The two figures managed to duck out of the way, and in the chaos of the rain and the lightning and its thundering wake, I lost track of them. In midair, the giant bird's flesh and feathers warped, and suddenly it was the four-tailed panther again. It vanished from view--and moments later, reappeared on the ground to take a heavy swipe at a wooden dome that hadn't been there when I'd gone down. Pellasmith's dryad wall, I realised dimly.

It groaned under the attack, and whether that was the wood creaking or the cries of the dryads I couldn't tell, but--before the boss could swipe again--the familiar silhouette Hoodwink materialised on top of it, blades at the ready. She slashed at it, and it disappeared again. I stared at the dome. It wasn't just a trick of the rain or the whipping winds; it was trembling. A green glow welled up around it. Pellasmith, probably, restoring some of the health the dryads had lost from that last attack. But was it enough? Even through my rattled thoughts, and the freezing cold that had numbed my lips and turned my fingers into immobile claws, one stark thought struck me. April was in there.

Against foes our level, she was the hero. She was the one who took the hits and dished them back out, the dryads and Hoodwink rolled into one, while I hid behind her, trying my hardest to avoid being a target--but this wasn't an enemy she could protect me from. One hit would take out her Lifeline. Another, and she'd die. Get kicked out of the dungeon. Have to wait for another run.

Terrifying though the prospect of taking another hit was, I dragged myself to my feet. I was bedraggled. Shivering. My spectacles were streaked with raindrops, blurring my vision beyond even what the rain was doing. It and the river had chilled me to the bone, and judging from my healthbar I was only alive by the slimmest of margins. I didn't look, or feel, the slightest bit like a hero, like the knight in shining armour we'd joked about me playing all those weeks ago, but--

the monster's smell hit me before its clawed fist did.

The hammer blow swept up from below, skimming the surface of the river and spraying me with yet more water--the insult before my inevitable injury. It cut under my ribs, and I might have spat blood, if I was capable of it. A wave of weightlessness followed it, and I realised I was in flight, suddenly a dizzying height over the barren brown pillar and the doughnut-split river that had once been inside the boss's cave. The boss, back in its four-armed bear form, leered brutally up at me. For the first time, I saw a dark river of blood leaking from its squashed snout, staining the amber teeth beneath them. At least it was taking damage, I thought dimly.

Then it was the falcon again, emerald eyes laser-focused on me as it shot up after me, and then straight past me. Arrows whizzed past me, one catching me in the gut. They didn't stop the falcon from casting its shadow over me--or that shadow from tripling in size, once again giving up its majestic wings and tail feathers to become a ball of raw power. Alarmed shouts rose up from the ground. I let my eyes fall shut, the weightlessness of being in the air strangely calming, and told myself I was prepared to be spiked back into the earth, even if it was with the full strength and weight with the boss's bear form--

but the impact, when it came, was from the side. Something hot and sharp dug into my ribs, and then I was on the ground again. Well, not on the ground, exactly--

"Hoodwink?!" My guardian angel gazed down at me… past the two impressive red mounds of her mostly-exposed breasts. A smile flickered across her face, but as her black lips parted another boom reverberated through the clearing. The boss had landed.

"Stay on the ground," she said tersely instead, depositing me on the ground with some urgency and drawing her swords again. "We lose you, we're fucked."

Huh? As she took off again, eager to get off an attack during Sabre's brief window of being visible, I had a dozen questions I wanted to shout after her. How was I meant to stay on the ground? If the boss wanted me in the air, there wasn't really anything I could do to stop it! And what was so bad about losing me? I'd dropped to zero health points a dozen times in this fight! My survivability as a--as a sissy was the whole reason I'd been allowed to come!

Maybe she just wanted me to play dead. I bit my lip and stayed on the ground, even as Pellasmith's heals and shields trickled back into my healthbar again, doing just that while I thought. The boss had turned back into its panther form and vanished again, so the dome wasn't under threat right at that very minute… but I could hardly leave it to get attacked again! And wasn't it better to have the boss trying to finish me? Every attack it made was a chance for the damage-dealers to chip at it a little more. Maybe she wanted me to be a bit more deliberate about when I popped up to distract him?

The boss reappeared, this time in the river, and as an enormous black crocodile with twice the normal number of legs. It reared up on its hind pairs, slamming its front half into the water--and where its long snout and four clawed feet struck the river, towering crescents of water shot from its body, flying at the distant Hoodwink and the hooded figure of Galataeus. Hoodwink vanished from view, and the beast roared in pain. Blurring into a panther again, it disappeared once more.

Trying to avoid moving my head too much, so as to let the monster think I was still dead, I tried to scan the battlefield. Where was it going next? Who was it going to target this time? Th-the archers? Pellasmith? Hoodwink? Galata--

the beast's thick stench choked out all other thoughts. It was here. I-I scrambled back, ignoring the way my clitty shouted at me to stay on the floor, the way my pussy was salivating beneath my sopping robes, desperate to submit to this powerful beast's blatant advances--

"H-helP!! HERE!!"--

And then a clawed hand snatched me up. The bear, again. I trembled under its powerful grip, my body wafer-thin between any two of its tree-trunk claws, let alone all five. April and Caliburn a-and the lieutenants and even Hoodwink, they could all lift me up easily, but they couldn't do it with a single hand, couldn't wrap me all the way up in one set of fingers, couldn't--

thoughts of it stripping me naked in one swipe, of it whipping out a massive length and spearing me on it, of it jerking me up and down its shaft like a tiny little fleshlight

my clitty spasmed madly in its cage, even as I kicked uselessly against the paw holding me, even as Hoodwink and the others raced to reach us. In the beast's grip, all thoughts of levels and game stats and dungeon runs fled my mind. There was only raw, bestial power--and between the enormous monster that had me, quite literally, in the palm of its hand, and the tiny specks coming to save me, it was obvious where that was. The monster was going to tear my clothes off and ravish me, r-right in front of them, and all I could do about it was shiver in excitement--

"SlasH!"

"Thorn Shot!"

"Decelerate!"

The attacks plunged into the beast's hide, the mass of distorted time wrapped around its body--but it shrugged them off. Implacably, it lifted me up, up, up, right over its mammoth head. I almost squealed, or maybe I really did, my own voice or the lack thereof inaudible between the rain and the river and the beast's lumbering breaths--

and then I was flying through the air.

"FUCK!"

"SOUL TETHER!"

This time, I wasn't going straight up. There wasn't any cave wall to interrupt my path, either. No Hoodwink to catch me in mid-air and bring me back to ground. Driven by its uncanny animal instinct for combat, but no less intelligent for it, the monster had decided that I was simply too hard for it to finish off. Killing me didn't work, and nor did plunging me into a river… so it was going to accomplish its goals through the brutally simple application of distance.

We lose you, we're fucked.

I'd watched too many movies. Played too many video games. The thought of being lost in its most literal, pedestrian sense hadn't even crossed my mind: and now I was stuck in a crater, at zero life points, in some far-flung grove of trees I had no chance of escaping by myself. Even if this was the very lowest level of the dungeon, even if by some miracle Pellasmith's Summer Balm was still working on me (it had been several minutes since I'd landed, and I hadn't received a tick of healing yet), I could barely take on a timber-wolf by myself. My stomach roiled. I was immobile and alone. It was only a matter of time before some random monster showed up and realised I couldn't fight back… and by this point, it was blindingly obvious what was going to happen after that.

Despite myself, my clitty stirred in its cage. For a moment, I found myself wishing, almost wistfully, that…

"Oh, thank fuck."

Hoodwink's smoky voice was more urgent than I'd ever heard it--but it dripped with relief, too. I heard, rather than saw, her skid down the loose dirt and rocks of the side of my crater, and then her shadow was over me. A red bottle entered my vision. The cold glass of its neck pressed up against my lips.

"Drink up."

Just like that, my healthbar shot to full. With a girlish groan, I staggered to my feet. My ears hadn't deceived me--Hoodwink herself stood in my crater along with me, alternating between watching me with some concern and keeping an eye out for incoming threats. I dusted myself off. The crater had felt far deeper when I'd been lying in it, paralysed, but that had mostly been a trick of the slope that we were on, and the tussock that a tree on its perimeter was growing on. It made sense, really… I hadn't flown that far.

"How--" I coughed, my throat hoarse from my screaming and the repeated drownings and who knew what else--"How did you get here, my lady?"

"One of my spells," Hoodwink said. "Followed you. I was hoping to yank you towards me, but… that bear form has pretty insane Strength, huh?"

Her healthbar was sickly yellow. Not quite at a quarter, but dangerously close. I automatically drew my wand, but she waved me off.

"Save your mana. I've got potions." She paused. "Unless you have enough for an Infuse?"

"Um, no, my lady," I said sadly.

She grimaced. Though the expression was no less gorgeous on her than any other, I felt my heart throb with dismay. This was… th-this was all my fault…

"Guh. This is all my fault," she said. "I shoulda just done a slave party."

"H-huh?"

Mistaking my confusion for incomprehension, she elaborated. "You haven't done a dungeon yet, huh? It's this whole thing you can do. Keeps sissies and sluts from getting stuck in dungeons forever. But it's kinda risky, and anyway it would've kept you from taking advantage of that sissy thing… the first time you went to zero, we would've just lost you."

She sighed.

"Sorry, Anne."

I bit my lip. "I… I-I mean, we kinda… talked you into it…"

Hoodwink chuckled. "You really are a relentless little cutie, huh?"

"I-I--I'm not a cutie, my lady!" I said hotly. "I--I am a g--a sissy, you know!"

"Right, right." Hoodwink clapped her hands together. "Right. Let's forget about who's apologising to who for now. Right now, we've got a situation on our hands." She indicated the trees around us. "Sabre hurled us all the way up to level four. Ordinarily, that'd be a great thing--but I had a look around on my way to you, and we're on the far side of it."

"Which means…"

"Which means there's miles and miles of jungle--and monsters--between us and the waterfall back down to Sabre's cave." She took a swig from a red bottle, and her healthbar rocketed up to almost full. "Miles and miles that one of our two groups is going to have to hack through to reach the other."

"R-right." I had a feeling I knew which group that was, but I had to ask anyway. "And… i-it can't be them because…?"

"It's just too risky. We lost a couple of Lifelines in that Sabre fight, and without me to hold aggro on the front, the twins aren't gonna be able to cover the horde. We lose too many of the noobs, and there was no point in doing this run. We lose too many of the dryads, and the Bamtha fight becomes impossible." She hesitated. "Impossible for the noobs to survive, anyway."

She nudged me with a steaming hot elbow. "On our end, though, we've got an endgame M-DPS and a legit immortal. We can move quick and carve through any encounter that can keep up with us. I can spam Ethereality to avoid taking hits, and you can keep my mana up with Infuses. Only problem is…"

I looked over her head. Her healthbar was doing fine, as was the yellow circle of her stamina beside it, but beneath it… only the faintest trickle of blue was left. "We're both out of mana," I said. "My, u-um, my lady."

"Mm. I used my last grand mana on clearing out the monsters around here--the Soul Tether wore off halfway through our, ah, flight." She brushed a strand of raven-black hair from her face. "So, the question is…"

She let the word hang in the air for a few moments. Anticipation built up in my core like a physical sensation, though I didn't know what I was anticipating. She was so tall, and so smolderingly hot, and--more importantly!--sh-she knew so much about this game. She had to have an answer of some kind, right?

"You have Cum Guzzler, don't you?"

Chapter 38: Her Spring Flows Eternal

Chapter Text

"H-huh?"

Without meaning to, I stared down at Hoodwink's crotch. The toned red of her mostly-exposed navel, divided into three scarlet bands by only the slimmest of metal strips, guided me gently to the mound nestled between her thighs. A single flat sheath, thin as satin, was all that hid her sex away. There was no way that she was packing a dick in there… right?

"Heh." Hoodwink didn't sound offended by my staring in the slightest--and when I snapped back up to meet her eyes, she gave me a tiny smile that made my stomach flutter, those perfect black lips puckered into a distant kiss.

"H-how am I… I mean, my lady, you d-don't…"

"Whoah, tiger. You're moving fast. Lemme see what I'm working with first."

"Wh-what?!!" I clutched my robes, my brain still stuttering back and forth on the idea of blowing her.

Hoodwink sighed. "The Milestone, Starlight. Cum Guzzler."

"R… right." Belatedly, I thought of playing dumb. As… as obvious as I'd made it, with my flustered reactions up until this point, she couldn't make me show her one of my Milestones, right? Especially not one of my most humiliating ones! Especially since her asking about it at all meant she probably intended to make me use it somehow… I, I didn't want that…

As I hemmed and hawed, Hoodwink called something into her hand--in that same jangling, backwards language she'd used once before--and tossed it absently at the crater I'd left when I'd landed. A glass bottle. When it made contact with the ground, it burst into eerie blue flames, which burned on happily despite the occasional raindrop that fell through the tight-knit canopy of leaves above us and sizzled in its light.

"Hurry up," Hoodwink said. "That keepflame isn't gonna last long in here, and I haven't topped up in a while."

I swallowed. Right now, we were safe, but only temporarily. We were still in the direst depths of the fourth level of Dryad Falls, and the longer we spent here, the more likely it was that something would take down Hoodwink, and the more likely it would be that--

"Thirty-seven, huh?" Hoodwink pulled a face. "They really put you through your paces at that beastkin camp."

I quietly decided not to mention that I'd actually earned this Milestone, and my first bit of 'progress' for it, in an entirely unrelated gangrape.

"I-I, um, my lady, do you know what happens if I… y-you know…?"

"Evolve it to Cum Addict?" Hoodwink frowned. "Well, the mana restoration gets a lot stronger. But, uh, there's a side effect. A pretty inconvenient one. If someone shows you cum, you basically can't resist drinking it down."

My stomach twisted, even as my clitty strained in response to the humiliating imagery of me, in my dainty glasses and starry robes and all, dropping to my knees in front of some faceless man, in the middle of some barren wilderness.

Hoodwink noticed my squirming, and gave me that smouldering little smile again. "I know it sounds kinda fun, and you might think that the sight of cum is easy enough to avoid, but trust me: it gets inconvenient. You basically can't do anything that might jeopardise getting your fix, and the whole time you're digesting it your Wis gets cut, same as Guzzler."

"I-I'm not--it doesn't sound fun!" I snapped. Even if her reference to digesting it made me picture a thick, steamy load roiling around in my belly. Even if my pussy was twitching under my panties, between my ass-cheeks, wet and excited by the prospect of having to lap up any cum I ever laid eyes on--"D-do you have it, my lady? Is that why you know so much about it?"

She laughed. "I've had it, yeah--but not on this character, no." She shrugged. "Like I said. It sounded like fun, but it didn't end up being that way."

"Right." She clapped her hands together again. "Twelve should give us plenty of wiggle room. Let's start with four, and see how far we get on that, hm?"

Another jangled, backwards word, and a teardrop-shaped pendant appeared in her hand. It was the same deep azure as one of the gems set into her choker--and when I glanced up at it, that azure gem had vanished, leaving just the other three.

"You don't have a Lifespring Keepsake yet, do you?"

I wasn't exactly sure what she meant, but the only Keepsake I had on me was the Everwatch one--my Secretary's Spectacles. I shook my head.

"Here." She offered me the pendant, and I took it wordlessly, still trying to work out what she meant.

"What did you mean before? With the t-twelve? And four?" I asked helplessly, as I equipped the pendant and it appeared around my neck, dangling its way into the shallow cleft left between my tiny breasts.

"Cumshots, darling," Hoodwink said kindly. "If we hit thirteen, you'll get Cum Addict--so we'll start with four. Twelve times two times four is ninety-six percent of your total mana. You use all that on Infusing on me--while I'm wearing that pendant--and that should fill me up twice over."

"I-I, uh, umm," I stuttered, unable to keep myself from staring down at her crotch again. Laid bare like this, the plan was… c-confronting, but… it was what I had to do to avoid being trapped in this dungeon… alone and at the mercy of a hundred overpowered monsters… "O-okay, but, um, my lady, you, well… I-I mean, how a-are you… you don't…"

"Don't I?" Hoodwink murmured. She planted two perfectly sculpted hands on my shoulders, and I almost winced--her skin had warmed even further since the last time I'd felt her touch, and now it was positively hot. She pushed down, the pressure light and airy but unmistakable in its intent; I sank down to my knees. From tall to positively looming she grew, her muscular red legs turned into the imposing pillars of a towering archway. I tilted my head upwards, caught her molten eyes, her own head tilted all the way down to follow my descent, half-obscured by the tremendous red mounds of her own chest…

She drew a long, bulbous fruit from her inventory. It was a deep, rich shade of brown, and when she bit into it, viscous white juices spurted freely from its smooth flesh, and ran over her scarlet cheeks suggestively. Movement flashed at the corner of my vision; the tiny sheath of armour that concealed her groin had vanished! I caught an uninterrupted glimpse of her pussy--puffy, hairless, and the same brilliant red as the rest of her skin, except for the thinnest sliver of black flesh that lurked within--and then, bursting into existence over it in the blink of a stunned eye, came her cock.

Plap.

"Eep!"

It slapped wetly against my face, hot and heavy and rippling. Strange thorns jutted from it at irregular intervals, short and stubby but bony, far bonier than the throbbing red flesh that was still hardening beneath them. I inhaled sharply and immediately wished I hadn't--Hoodwink's scent, hot and sharp and cloying, filled my brain in an instant. It was nothing like April's--smoky where she was earthy, dry where she was moist--but it overpowered me all the same, had me drooling hungrily beneath this magnificent woman, beneath this tremendous specimen of masculinity that was attached to her--

"C'mon, cutie."

My face still glued to the underside of her cock, my heart racing in my chest, I felt my tongue slip past my lips and give her the gentlest of strokes. I flared red--but then my tongue fluttered out again. And again. Though it had been weeks ago, the lessons of the Madam, back in the basement of the Lustrous Heart, had been ingrained into my mind. Even without my conscious input, even though Hoodwink had done nothing but slap her cock against my face and call me a cutie, my mouth had been trained.

"Ohh, fuck." Hoodwink's manicured fingers found easy purchase on the sides of my head, and she shifted herself sensually against me, dragging her cock down, down, offering more and more of it to my probing tongue. A flutter of pride ran through me, though it was tinged with a sting of shame moments later. Her moan of delight had been almost instant. Why hadn't April reacted like that?

Hoodwink's head flopped itself against my tongue, the star guest stepping out onto her red carpet, and I gave it a tender roll. Drops of her excitement oozed from her crown, translucent beads that splattered into my mouth one-by-one, filling it with her metallic flavour. Instinctively, I withdrew my tongue, scooping the strange nectar into my mouth wholesale, and puckering my lips forward, replacing the one point of contact with two, the upper lip against her steaming tip and the lower massaging her tight foreskin. The whole pillar throbbed as my tongue returned, this time playing at the twitching black eye of her urethra. Another trickle of her pre spilled out on my tongue; I slurped it back, feeling my mouth fill with juices more pungent and satisfying than any fruit.

"Holy shit," Hoodwink murmured. I cracked my eyes open--when had I even closed them?--to find her staring down at me, lava-hot eyes wide and eerie pupils tight with adoration. Again, a misplaced pride buoyed my heart. I was impressing her. I was good at this. Tentatively, I pushed my head forward, accepting more of her crown past my outstretched lips, slurping down another helping of her pre with my waiting tongue. I swept my tongue from side to side across her tip, drawing out a shuddering moan, and then another wave of encouragement.

"That's right, Starlight…" Though she kept her hands on either side of my head, Hoodwink's arms were slack as I worked, as if afraid to get over-eager and interrupt me. "Fuck…!"

Letting my eyes fall shut once more, I followed my instincts and pressed forward again. Between my kneeling thighs my clitty trembled, the sensation of still more of Hoodwink's shaft filling my mouth enough to make it whimper weakly for release. Sh-she was so big. So much bigger than me. As if triggered by that thought, as if I hadn't quite realised that she was entering me up until this very moment, when her vermillion head was pressed up against the top of my throat, I murmured it into her cock, the words inaudible but hopefully--hopefully?--conveying their message all the same.

I cracked my eyes open again. Her cock led me up, up, up, a scarlet drawbridge back to her body. I'd taken her up to the back of my throat, and there was still so much of her left to go, inches upon inches. Each breath I took, short and stuttering and sweet, tickled the tip of her shaft, made her throb against my tongue and my pink lips, wrapped obediently around the base of her head.

I moaned it into her cock again. Big. Bigger than me. A hand migrated to the top of my head, gave me a loving stroke. I shifted my body, angling myself for her, exactly as I had with the Madam's crystal dildo…

"Ohh~!" Hoodwink's squeal of delight as I slotted her down past the top of my throat filled me with satisfaction. My throat seized up for a moment, gagging sounds slipping past the oodles of her already buried in me, but I pushed my hips back, ignored the spit drooling down her length, managed to suck in a breath through my nose--

and then I was deepthroating her. Swiftly, maybe more swiftly than I should've, as if I was showing off for her, the woman currently fucking my mouth, I pushed my head forward another couple of inches. Her grip on my pigtails tightened. Oh-so-close to her pulsing tip, now miles down my throat, my heartbeat jumped to a dizzying pace as--for the first time--she finally took charge. Of the blowjob, of where her cock was going… of me.

"MfhHh~!!"

"Yesss…"

Gradually, implacably, she eased herself forward, holding my head in place, letting the slobber that swam in my mouth and spilled out past my lips fall where it pleased. Some kind of steely cord wrapped itself around my throat--her tail, I realised dimly. Though my vision swam, and tears pooling in my bespectacled eyes, and my arms wrapped around her thighs squeezed down against her burning flesh, she kept going. Deeper and deeper she filled me, crushing what felt like my heart, my lungs, my stomach, pushing aside everything inside me in order to replace it with even more of her cock.

And then, just like that, my lips met her base.

"You're so tight," Hoodwink breathed, her manhood beating in time with her words, conducting them directly into my bowels. Under my lower lip, forced so easily against her body, her ballsack throbbed. "Ohh my god, I could get used to this…"

She drew her hips back, and her member came with her, peeled free of my deepest depths for a few seconds--and then slammed them forward again.

"MfhH!"

Reproachful though I tried to be, my cry only spurred her on, and she thrusted into my throat again--and again--and again. Each stroke set fireworks off in my mind, and my clitty--long forgotten in my worship of her shaft--made itself known again by throwing itself painfully against the bars of its cage. If it weren't for the Sigil of Courtesy emblazoned on my stomach, I knew that then and there I would have cum, the orgasm wrestled out of me by the force of the cock buried in my throat, by the tail wrapped commandingly around its outside, by the hands clutching my head without any sense of restraint.

"MmfH! MFHH! MmfmhH!" Gagging and spluttering mixed in with my cock-choked cries for mercy. Her balls, unseen but evident by their hefty smacks against my chin, each one clearly massive compared to my own caged-up package, thumped at my brain, driving any semblance of thought of my head as surely as the cock jackhammering away at my insides. Perhaps taking pity on me, or perhaps just bored of slamming herself to the hilt into me, Hoodwink finally pried herself a little further out of me, and settled for a faster cadence, thrusting her red pillar halfway down my throat at the deepest before drawing it back. My cries, though still just as unintelligible, grew sweeter and softer, and the orgasmic fireworks of having my guts rearranged from above gave way to a blurry haze of pleasure.

One final, deep stroke. She buried herself to the hilt in me once again, meaty balls pressed against my lip once more, as if to show me all the heat and pressure that had gathered in them before she released it--and then it surged out, racing down her full length, all the way to the tip nestled deep in my quivering little belly, and exploded into me.

Schluck. Schlurp. Shllrup.

The lewd sounds of my fourth--and, hopefully, final--blowjob echoed through the trees. We were both on the forest floor now, Hoodwink seated with her back against a helpful tree, myself lying on my front, upper body on her lap and lower body trailing off to her side, leaving her free to run a hand tenderly down my back while the other scritched at my pointed ears. Her tail was draped lazily over the back of my neck; its trident tip played gently at my chin, as I wobbled it messily over her towering cock. Though she'd taken care to deposit each steamy, copious load as far down my throat as possible--all the better not to waste a single drop of her mana-giving essence--drips and drabs of it had still made it into my mouth, and the powerful taste of her cock was now accented by the rubbery, almost black-licorice aftertaste of her semen.

"God, you're so fucking good at this," Hoodwink murmured down at me. I whined softly into her cock, still as hard as it had been three orgasms ago, torn between wanting to deny the compliment and mindlessly revelling in it. The cum she'd already ploughed into me roiled hotly in my belly, a meaty stew that still warmed me from within, half an hour after my last helping. This time around, without the added hammering from sneering goblins or rough-and-tumble beastkin bandits, I could feel the effect that it had on my Wisdom attribute, the fogginess of my mind, the pale white willingness to follow along with whatever Hoodwink wanted from me. My mouth, my brain, it was all stained with the perfect, dire flavour of her penis. Her big, round, throbbing penis.

"Sthshoo bighhh," I murmured weakly into her member, lifting my head from it just far enough to get the words out without letting her tip fall free from my lips. I-I was weaker to my own desires, too, in this state. Well, not my own desires--the desires from all my stupid Milestones! Naughty Girl, Size Queen… wh-what did Size Queen even do, b-besides making me humiliate myself even more?

Slurrrp. Shllluck.

"C'mon, cutie." Hoodwink laid a hand possessively on my upturned ass-cheeks. I moaned into her manhood, unable to stop my clitty from praying that she'd slip a long, black nail down my soaked back-door. "Get it down your throat again~~"

"H-hrkk…" I-it was… it would make her cum quicker, I-I reasoned hazily, even knowing that I was more pliable like this, more submissive. It wasn't quite the right angle, but all I had to do was take her by her base, and sort of… curve myself up, up, and around… "Mfhhdkkfhh~~"

"Hahhh…" Hoodwink's hand swept back up my spine, cruelly denying my pussy any chance at being fingered. "God… I didn't really think you could, you know?"

Despite myself, I felt my insides tighten up with anger. Huh?? I'd done it three times already--that she knew of! "HfHH!!"

"Oh, I knew you could that time," she said airily. She gave my head a particularly sensual stroke, and I melted back into mellow ease. Not… not bliss, l-like she was clearly feeling, with this cock h-halfway down my thoroughly explored throat, but… ease. "I meant the first time. I don't mean to brag, but the dickroot makes me pretty big… hahh. You're just full of surprises, Starlight."

Big.

"HfhHnbhggh," I gagged around her enormous red shaft, my clitty twitching eagerly. E-each affirmation of her size came a little easier… came with a little more drooling activity from my debauched little sex.

"Just keep going, hun. You're almost there."

Out of the corner of my eye, the proof of it gleamed in my HUD. My mana bar, three quarters full thanks to all the cum that I'd huffed from her cock so far.

A scarlet hand left my head. I glanced down, and saw it playing at the big, fat globes of her ballsack. My eyes widened, even as I took more of her past the opening to my throat, even as rivulets of my spit ran down her shaft and pooled in the little triangular nook between her base and the two swollen balls beneath it. They were so juicy, and large… and, like her eyes, and the vermillion head of the cock now occupying most of my gullet, they glowed like molten iron, orange giving way to yellow giving way to brilliant white. No wonder her cum was so hot…

"Oh?" Hoodwink picked up one of my hands and, ever so gently, placed it against her burning package. I made a confused squeak into her cock, and she laughed. Sh-she couldn't possibly see my face from that angle! H-how had she known I was… staring at those… big, meaty… Unconsciously, my fingers roved over them. They were… huge. They'd looked it, but now that I had one in my palm, had the ability to wrap my hand as far as it could go around it…

Hoodwink sucked in a tense, blissful breath. "That's it, sissy… stroke it."

With her cock jammed down my throat, with her balls churning hotly under my hand, with one of her perfect hands running through my lavish black hair, I couldn't pretend that she was… w-wrong, exactly, t-to call me a sissy like that… but somewhere deep inside me, beyond the cum still settling in my guts, and the clitty that jumped with joy to be called the name… something in me welled up with just enough sadness for a few pinpricks of moisture to bead at the corners of my eyes.

"Fuck… I think this is it~~"

Reflexively, the hand on my head tightened, and the cock in my mouth and throat shuddered. The balls beneath my hand shifted slightly, juices in them burbling into place before jetting off, up her length, and I instinctively sealed my lips around her, locking myself in place as the steaming ropes of her lust rocketed directly into my stomach. Even after three successive orgasms, her semen burned no less hotter, hammered its way into me no less forcefully.

"Woof! Two Milestones, just from sucking me off," Hoodwink remarked as she helped me totter to my feet. "That was Mana Magnification, yeah?"

I nodded dumbly, not quite trusting myself to speak right after my latest helping of her sperm. On top of the Wisdom drain, and the humiliation, and the sheer heat that her cum radiated inside me, I was feeling intensely bloated now--the last three loads she'd pumped me full of had been just as prodigious. It took me a moment to place the heady rush of warmth into my head and my ears as the work of my new Milestone, extending my ears, and not fluctuations in my body heat caused by all that hot cum.

Hoodwink smiled, though it wasn't the sultry half-kiss she'd given me before. "Lovely. That should help us mill a couple more Infuses outta you--and they'll be stronger, too. Who knows--this might be the only 'pit stop' we have to make before we get to the others!"

Another silent nod. I fervently hoped that she was right, all while fervently hoping that she was wrong.

"Infuse!"

After the first three Infuses to get her to half mana--she hadn't been kidding about Mana Magnification making my Infuses stronger--Hoodwink had me casting the spell whenever she dropped below half, much like I'd been doing for the whole party before.

"Phantom Dance."

Hoodwink disappeared from view; in her place surged a set of phantasmal clones of her, one for each of the towering dryads that we were facing. Though they resembled the Heartwood Husk that Pellasmith had summoned at the start of the dungeon, I couldn't be sure--above their heads glowed only the symbols ???: Level 96 . As the still-invisible Hoodwink and her clones slashed at them with their myriad swords, I tried my best to see if they were taking damage for each other--but by the time they all collapsed, creaking and groaning, into disintegrating piles of sawdust, I hadn't reached a conclusion one way or the other.

"Ah!"

Hoodwink reappeared right next to me, and I lunged away from her--straight into a sheet of vines that suddenly came alive and started trying to strangle me. A few sword slashes later, and that too was dispatched, leaving Hoodwink free to pour a health potion down my throat.

"You good, Starlight?" she asked.

"Y-yeah." And then, because even though she was the one who'd scared me into it, it was still the polite thing to do--"Th-thank you, my lady."

With the horrible splintering noise of a hundred trees getting smashed apart, a hunk of rotting wood hurtled out from the undergrowth. Straight at us!

"Slash." Hoodwink's swords gleamed with white light, and a pair of diaphanous, almost butterfly-like wings sprouted from her back. They blurred, giving off a buzzing sound that set my teeth on edge, and she lunged--leaving the ground entirely--into the giant log. One slash, and it fell into four pieces. Something roared at us in the direction it had flown from, big and growling and echoing, and Hoodwink shot forwards. A series of shrieks later, and she reappeared at my side. I jumped again, though this time not into a trap or monster.

"Think that's the last of them," she said easily. The wings, wherever they'd come from, had vanished. I tried and failed to avert my gaze from her other set of extra appendages; the enormous cock flopping between her thighs, and the balls that drooped behind it. "Hm? You want to go again already?"

"H-huh?"

"You've got plenty of mana, Starlight."

I blanched. "I-I didn't--I mean, I'm not--I know, my lady!!"

"Heh." Hoodwink gave me a condescending pat on the head, then strode onwards. The way her hips moved as she walked hadn't changed since she'd grown that cock--and if anything, the way it swayed in time with her strut, giving me glimpses of it between her vast thighs, made her walk more hypnotic than ever. "You coming?"

"R-right!"

As we continued on through the jungle, Hoodwink making liberal use of the mana I was providing her to eviscerate every last monster we came across, I found my thoughts drifting to the mass of her cum still simmering inside my belly. My robe was loose enough to hide it, but my stomach was bloated with her seed, round enough that I might look like I'd put on some weight if I were stripped naked. Somehow, I couldn't resist running my hands over it, though I tried to limit it to when Hoodwink was distracted dealing with monsters.

The sensation of being full like this wasn't exactly… new to me, it was true, but this was the first time I hadn't been left to lie in a cum-drunk stupor for a while afterwards. Instead, I was running, and jumping, and clambering over the occasional fallen log, all while doing my best to look out for Ambush monsters and stuff like exploding poisonous mushrooms, which had 'killed' me a couple of times on this floor already. All that… activity kept me keenly aware of the sticky goo sloshing around inside me--and with that keen awareness came a constant trembling in my treacherous little clitty. As always, this body--Anne's body, which was not my body!!--found the sensation painfully erotic.

And the sensation alone wasn't the only thing. Even when Hoodwink was invisible or off handling monsters out of sight, her brazenly swinging cock nowhere to be seen, thoughts of it kept invading my mind. Its taste, still seared into my mouth and throat; its weight, which had felt so horribly comforting against my face… even her balls, those steamy, churning engines that she'd had me massage for her! Unlike most of the other sex I'd had in this game, that had all been voluntary! I-I'd--I'd chosen to do it! Sure, there… there'd been external pressures, but… I bit my lip. Thoughts of Hoodwink towering over me, letting her cock simply slap itself against my face… she was hot to begin with, but in that moment… I swallowed thickly. The image in my mind shifted, turned to April standing over me, just like Hoodwink had, slapping a cock of her own against my--

April. Fuck! Wh-what was she going to think? Hoodwink's scent had been strong enough for me to pick up--with her wolfkin nose, she'd know something sexual had happened between us for sure, if not exactly which parts of me Hoodwink had scraped her temporary manhood over. Frantically, I tried to run through what I knew about the limits to her sense of smell. She'd followed day-old tracks before, hadn't she? Shit! Would--would she be mad? She… back in the camp, she'd said she didn't want to… t-take advantage of my new self, w-well, not my new self, exactly, but the self I was trapped in for the time being. Would she think Hoodwink had forced herself on me? Flip out at her?

Though it was assuredly a bad thing, and realistically April wouldn't stand a chance, my pulse shot up a little as I contemplated April wolfing out on Hoodwink for my sake. No… I tried to collect my thoughts. This was like when Percy had set those monsters on me, on our Breachwood run. The tendrils of the Breach, and then… that timber-wolf, a-afterwards. April had noticed, and asked about it… but when I'd said it was fine, she hadn't pried any further, right? She'd respected my… autonomy… and trusted my answer.

W-wait.

Did that mean she thought I'd wanted to have sex with a timber-wolf in front of Percy?

I buried my face in my hands. Why did this have to be so stupidly hard? I-I just wanted April to be my freaking girlfriend!! Now I had to deal with her thinking I might secretly enjoy having sex with wolves, or blowing random high-level players in dungeons??

"You good?" Hoodwink said, popping out of stealth in front of me. "We could take a break--I've still got a couple keepflames left." She glanced up at my dwindling mana bar. "Maybe… top up?"

Two breaks later--both of which I reluctantly allowed her to 'feed' me on, though only once each time--we finally reached the cliff that overlooked the site of Sabre's ruined lair. The tree that sprouted on the death of each boss was there to meet us, though there were no players or tamed dryads in sight. Had they managed to finish Sabre off after he'd flung me away, then? Hoodwink said a word in that garbled, backwards way, and a tiny indigo bottle appeared in her hand. Squat and square, it looked strangely familiar to me--and then she knocked it back. At her crotch, the enormous red python she'd been carting around the whole level melted away, to be replaced by a second glimpse at her perfect red pussy, and then the sheath of her armour closing back up over it. She still had some sense of modesty, then. If only while I wasn't the only one around.

"Message." She held one hand up to her head, pinkie and thumb extended like she was miming a phone. She'd done it a couple of times before, during our 'breaks,' but this was the first time I'd had the clarity of mind to actually pay attention to her doing it. "Yo, Pell. We're here. Come on up." A pause. "Yeah, I have her with me."

"Is th-that a spell?" I said.

"Hm?" Hoodwink lowered her hand. "Oh, yeah. Message. It's pretty handy."

"Is that a, um, is that exclusive to… uh… what are you, anyway?"

"Faeknight-Dreamwalker Soulshape assassin, primarily," Hoodwink said, unfairly satisfied in her nonchalance after all those words that had made no sense to me. "But no, Message is a universal spell."

"Th-then can I learn it?" I said, hope leaping in my chest for once. A way to communicate with April from afar would be a godsend if we were ever separated again--an eventuality that, as fervently as I wanted to avoid it, was all too likely to come to pass again. Why wasn't messaging a default feature of the game??

"Sure." She didn't elaborate for a few seconds. "Oh, you mean, like, right now?"

"Um, yes, my lady."

She shrugged apologetically. "Sorry. Don't have any copies of the spellbook on me. You'll have to go to a spell merchant."

Any further discussion was interrupted by the arrival of the others. First came Pellasmith, who glanced furtively up at the sky and the treetops around us before seeing us. After him trailed the Horde Lord and its dryad lieutenants--visibly battered, but no longer welded together into that wooden barrier Pellasmith had turned them into earlier. After them--

"ANNE!!" April had jumped the queue to be one of the first to see me--and now, she jumped me, barrelling into me in a mess of earthy musk and black hair and rippling muscle. Hoodwink's six loads, still stiflingly warm, lurched worryingly inside me. "Are you okay?? Y-you didn't get--"

"I-I'm fine, my lady!" I babbled as she took a deep sniff of me, even as all the quasi-erotic implications of her sniffing me and possibly--well, almost certainly--picking up what had happened between me and Hoodwink tugged at the twin sexes of my pussy and my clitty. The repeated draining of Hoodwink's hot coals, s-so to speak, hadn't given them any time to settle down.

Silently, and almost so quickly that I might have missed it had I not been specifically looking out for it, April flashed a glare in Hoodwink's direction. Acting on some unspoken urge to caution her back, I put an arm on her shoulder--only to flush red at the realisation that I was touching her bare skin, and at the way her sinews beneath it shifted like continental shelves--but she spun back and yanked me into a bone-crushing hug.

"Don't do that again, okay??"

"I-I, um, I didn't really have a choice," I said, hoping that she'd somehow figure out I was talking about drinking Hoodwink's cum as much as I was getting thrown around by Sabre. It was… getting to be a recurring theme in this game.

"Alright!" Speaking of, Hoodwink had clapped her hands together, calling together the attentions of everyone on the cliff. The whole party had made it up the spiral staircase by now; I caught a glimpse of DolphinGuy, for some reason soaking wet, among the Lifespring players. His blonde hair had been reduced to a miserable mop that lay slicked down over his forehead and one of his eyes, and I couldn't help but smirk slightly at the sight. "Fourth floor! This is the last proper floor before the end--five is basically a glorified arena for Big B."

Behind her, Pellasmith summoned something into his hands. It looked a little like a golden armband, though one that would slip off Pellasmith's spindly gnome twigs--or my elven ones, for that matter--in an instant. He jabbed a finger at it, his lips moving and his eyes briefly flaring green. Some kind of spell?

"You guys did a great job with the Sabre fight. I hear we only lost two Sprigs, which I'm pretty sure is a personal best for us--and with the largest group we've ever taken down here, no less!" She put a red fist to her prodigious chest. "Alas, our good friend Fuckywuckylmao has lost more than just his Sprig, and has respawned in camp to join the waiting list anew."

A cursory glance over the other Lifespring players (which was a little hard, because April had only lowered me when Hoodwink had started talking, not released me) proved her right. The orcish Fuckywuckylmao was missing from the group.

"Anyway, fourth floor. The rules here are basically the same as the last couple floors. Stick with the Husk, try not to get hit. But be really serious about it, okay?" Hoodwink smiled flippantly, undercutting her own point a touch. "The enemies on this floor are scaled to be a serious threat to the five of us, let alone you guys. Treat 'em like mini-Sabres: fast, strong, and smart. You especially, Sidara."

Sidara: 15 , a dark-skinned elf girl who clutched a gnarled wooden staff to her flat chest, nodded frantically. Was she the other person who'd lost their Sprig?

Pellasmith tapped Hoodwink on her prominent hip--about the highest part of her body he could reach--and she turned around to gesture at the armband he was holding.

"Soul Tether."

With that done, Pellasmith handed it to her, apparently satisfied. Hoodwink spun back around, holding the armband without putting it into her inventory, and strutted over to me. I thought briefly of cowering behind April, or somehow burying myself in the loamy soil underfoot--but then she was upon us.

"Here," she said as the other Balladeers and the Horde Lord set off along the river, signalling the Lifespringers (sans April) to totter after them. She held out the armband.

"What is it?" April said suspiciously, not relinquishing her hold on me.

Hoodwink raised a perfect black eyebrow. "Something to stop Anne from getting lost again. Me and Pell enchanted it for her."

The procession continued ahead of us, drawing further away with each step. April worried at her lip with a single fanged tooth. A-as nervous as I was around Hoodwink, I had to admit that a way to avoid getting lost--t-to avoid having to slurp down Hoodwink's monstrous red cock again--seemed rather prudent. Wordlessly, April released me. Allowing--not helping, not encouraging, not exhorting--me to take Hoodwink's offer and equip this mystery magical item.

I swallowed my misgivings and took it.

That was weird. Why was it locked by my Aspiration? An armband wasn't exactly the most feminine thing in the world, even if closer inspection revealed that floral patterns and the shapes of butterflies had been engraved into it all the way around its circumfer--

The moment my finger grazed the 'equip' button, the armband-that-was-actually-a-choker clasped itself shut around my slender throat.

Right. Of course.

"Hey!" April growled, low and husky and intense in a way that frazzled the tiny hairs on the nape of my neck and made my clitty strain in its cage. For a moment, I wasn't sure if she was incensed on my behalf, or just took issue with the sight of another woman putting a collar around my neck… no!! I stumbled forward, the twinging in my chastity cage and the dribbling of my gooey pussy suddenly too much to bear. April swept me back up in her arms. "Anne?!"

"I-it's okay, my lady!" I said feebly, even as my knees knocked together. God I--I needed to cum so badly!! "Let's just--let's just get this over with a-and get out of here!"

"Wiser words were never spoken," Hoodwink said sagely. "C'mon."

"AHHHH!!"

Perfectly rendered twigs and leaves and vines snapped between a haphazard blur and sharp relief as my new golden choker yanked me along in Hoodwink's wake. One second, I was hurtling through the forest, insensate from her blinding speed; the next, Hoodwink had stopped short and stepped to one side, leaving my momentum to hurl me as far in front of her as the Soul Tether would let me go. There, like a panting chihuahua on a leash, I'd have a fraction of a second to catch my breath--and then Hoodwink was in motion again, still dragging me along with her. If this wasn't a video game, my neck would have snapped sixty times in our first fight alone.

"AGHHHHH!!"

Sticks and chips of bark and random greenery were stuck in what felt like every last strand of my silky black hair, and my healthbar was at zero. After the first time that my soaring body had intercepted a missile for her--one of those giant logs, hurled by a vaguely human-shaped figured as tall as the trees around us and built like a pile of mossy boulders--she hadn't shied away from using me as a living shield on purpose, stopping and starting and swinging me around to bludgeon all manner of things out of the air. Exploding pinecones, thorny darts, pellets of dirt, skipping stones; I was dizzily positive that every projectile that existed in the game hit me during our blistering clear of the fourth floor.

"AHHHHHHH!!"

At times, Hoodwink would hurtle well ahead of the group, skipping past the trees and undergrowth that so hampered her ranged teammates and their archery, and dragging me along with her. There, she would uncover pods of spindly-looking twig monsters, and cat-sized emerald scorpions, and all sorts of other frail monsters. Each time, the same pattern played out; they would desperately scuttle away from her, flinging warbling barbs and purple needles and those stupid exploding pinecones in her direction; she would effortlessly duck past or deflect each fusillade, catch up to them, and then obliterate them. Even as we penetrated deeper into the jungle, and their levels climbed to ridiculous numbers, higher than even Hoodwink's 146 Milestones, the fights didn't change--at best, a higher-level version of a monster could expect to absorb one more of Hoodwink's slashes before evaporating. After each assassination, she'd withdraw back to the side of the rest of the group, and aid in dealing with whatever bulky monsters they were having to deal with.

And then, long after my throat felt like it had been torn to shreds by all my screaming, we arrived at the fourth and final waterfall of Dryad Falls.

"Oof. You good, Starlight?" Hoodwink turned in time to watch me slump onto the ground, the invisible tether leashing my throat to her body thankfully slack enough that I could fall all the way to the floor if I was next to her.

"No, my lady," I moaned into the earth. A wave of nausea had overtaken me at some point, my still-full belly not pleased at all with all this swinging around and stopping and starting and spinning, but it had given way to a general ache in my gut before long. Whether that had been down to my frazzled force of will, or just a general inability to vomit on the part of our avatars, was something that someone else was going to have to investigate. I just wanted to sink deep into my bed of dirt and never move again.

"Oh dear," Hoodwink said, her smile audible despite my faceful of dirt. She spoke in the weird language that she used to take things out of her inventory, and strode off; the golden collar didn't tug me along behind her. The Soul Tether she'd cast had been dismissed. Moments later, the thundering footfalls of the rest of the group caught up with us--and one set in particular rushed over to me.

"Anne!! Are you okay?!" April asked me for the second time since we'd reached the fourth floor, as she scooped me up into a firm-yet-tender embrace. "Moonlight!"

The rain around us momentarily intensified as the comforting glow of her healing spell sank into my chest. My healthbar climbed up to halfway.

"Th-thanks, my lady," I croaked weakly. I had enough willpower left in me to muscle my way sort of upright, though most of my weight was still slumped back against the reassuring pillar of April's arms, which gave me enough of a vantage point to actually watch the battle against the fourth and penultimate boss of Dryad Falls. The Balladeers had mostly called her Helluva, but that was a nickname; Hoodwink had given me a bit of a rundown on her during our journey back to the rest of the party. She was a summoner of plant monsters who specifically picked out summons that got stronger in the rain. She had a passive ability that made her stronger whenever any of them died--and she wasn't afraid to use her poisonous breath to trigger that effect herself, especially as the fight wore on.

Together, April and the other Lifespringers and DolphinGuy and I held our breaths as a towering figure strode out from behind a curtain of rain. From nothingness to indistinct shadow to blurry silhouette she went, step by lumbering step; and then Hallivonax Mercator was before us, in all her full-figured glory.

"Hark, villains."

She was strikingly humanoid; two legs, two arms, and a single head, arranged in what was honestly a rather attractive figure, with wide hips and thighs that put even Hoodwink's to shame. Jade green scales covered every inch of her flesh, lightening to a pale yellow on the frontal regions of her torso--though she wore a golden tunic that glinted like metal but had the coarse visual texture of wood, its low-cut top and high-cut bottom revealed much of those yellow scales. Her head was a long, reptilian snout, crested by countless spiny ridges and a pair of dark horns, which glided away from us before swerving back to point at us, sort of like S shapes, or stylized thunderbolts. Beneath them glittered her eyes, two violet islands in two sober seas of black.

"I care not what ends you came upon this search for. Your noble missions, your lofty ideals, all the pretty lies you have told yourself in your search for this lake's power..."

She raised her weapon, a towering wooden staff that reminded me uncannily of Kajagar's, thanks to the forest of trinkets and charms that dangled from it; though rather than tiny skulls and parched beetle-shells, the charms on this staff were braided herbs and drooping stems tipped with brilliant flowers, each one as verdant and vibrant as if they'd never been clipped at all.

"They end here." For a moment, the whole dungeon seemed to hang precariously on the tail of that last word. The Balladeers, massed together, didn't move a muscle, didn't say a word, didn't even start casting any of their spells. A heart-stopping purple eye wandered over the eleven of us on the sidelines--and then wandered off. Even the rain seemed to slow, not quite as cold or as hard or as driving under the shadow of this simple threat. Though the Balladeers had beat this boss countless times before, her power was real. The slightest mistake could still get us all killed.

"Purge!" Her voice echoed ominously as she cast the spell, as overcast as the swirling dark clouds above. "Modify: Horde. Call Seedling."

Around us, the banks of the river came alive. Tiny creatures, any and all mixes between murky and bright and green and brown and golden, burst free from the soil and surged at the massed Balladeers. As they ran, they spat glowing green barbs; individually, one might have been compared to a machine gun. In their horde, the effect was more of a horizontal rainfall of energy.

Various auras and spell particles materialised over the Balladeers, some of which I recognised from earlier full rotations, others that I didn't. Axel's bouncing crossbow bolts ricocheted through the horde of seedlings, trailing behind them rainbows of new effects that I'd never seen before. The inky black bolt of Heartbreak hurtled out and struck Hallivonax. A pair of enormous, rocky roots burst out from beneath her and locked her in place. She and her horde of seedlings were swallowed up in the black-and-white twin bursts of Death Nova. Hoodwink shot forwards, ignoring the seedlings entirely, and used a Phantom Dance to turn herself invisible and generate a single clone of herself, then launched a barrage of attacks on Hallivonax with both sets of swords--hers and her clone's. And then, precisely nine seconds after the Heartbreak, the pouring rain around Hallivonax warped, and she let out a chilling scream.

The first rotation didn't kill her, and neither did the second. Number three made her drop dramatically to her knees, and then explode into the form of a gigantic, sinuous tower of mercurial metal blades sculpted in that same thunderbolt shape as her first form's horns; in this form, she gave up on summoning plant monsters and dryads entirely, and switched to spitting sizzling waves of fast-moving brown gas and lashing out with the blades that comprised her form, which could apparently detach from her and move independently.

There was a long gap between this transformation and the fourth full rotation--for some reason, Pellasmith wasn't casting Rootbind on her. Maybe her blades would just tear the roots up? Was that a thing that could happen? For the first time in the whole dungeon, Galataeus moved up to assist Hoodwink in the melee against Hallivonax; though he was slow and lumbering compared to the flickering form of Hoodwink, and the absurd array of blades that was their foe, each hit against him did barely a thing to his healthbar--and the few hits he managed to land with his steely black mace made Hallivonax's blades rattle and screech discordantly.

Eventually, he landed a blow that made her entire body flash with a creepy black aura--almost like tentacles crawling over her metal scales, though it was visible for only a second. Her blades, which had shifted endlessly since she'd first taken on that form, froze in midair; and then the rotations started up again. Rotation four: Heartbreak, Phantom Dance, Earthshatter, a million random attacks and buffing spells, Quantum Collapse. Somewhere in the midst of it all, the same freaky aura flashed over her body--had one of their attacks or spells reduced her resistance to it somehow?--and so, with her paralysis extended, the fifth and final rotation blasted her to dust.

Another wooden staircase rose from the river, right in front of the fourth and final waterfall. It might have been a trick of the mind, or something to do with the pounding rain and the almost-black sky above us, but its waters seemed to swell before my eyes, tumultuous and dark and furious. The world flashed an electric blue--and then, moments later, a deep crack of thunder rolled out over us.

"Pellasmith was telling me about the lore of this place," April said, eyes wide as saucers as she stared up at the waterfall alongside me. "When we were waiting for you guys. There's a theory that Hallivonax and Bamtha were in love, back when they were both alive."

I gulped. Lightning and thunder. The damage types that the Storm of Taranis boosted. "Then… I-I guess we just made him really mad, huh? My lady."

April let out a chuckle, though it was a little half-hearted. I couldn't blame her, given the circumstances… game or not, we were standing in the middle of a storm-darkened forest, drenched and shivering, and about to proceed even further into the driving rain. The wires in my head still crossed by all the cum in my belly, and my heart still hammering away from being dragged the entire way across this floor by at Hoodwink's lightning pace, I silently clasped her hand in mine… th-though, with our respective sizes, it was more like slipping my hand into hers. A jolt ran through my body, more stunning than any lightning, when I realised what I'd just done--

but April just smiled at me and squeezed back.

Not letting go of each other for even a second, we started up the stairs to the final fight of Dryad Falls.

The fifth floor of Dryad Falls was an enormous lake. Its waters were black and choppy, a perfect churning mirror of the stormy sky above us. Only the thinnest ring of land surrounded it, and 'land' was being generous--the constant rain had driven it into a mulchy paste, barely up to the task of supporting the smattering of trees that sat upon it. Even I, with my light elven frame, sank into the mud with each step. The dryads could scarcely put one foot in front of the other.

Not that they needed to. As soon as we stepped off the wooden bridge that linked the wooden stairs to the banks of the storm-tossed lake, Pellasmith was up and casting, using the same spell he'd used at the beginning of the Sabre fight. This time, though, rather than a solid dome, he sculpted the dryads' wooden bodies into a wooden cage. The bars were far enough apart for even April to step through--and as I watched Bamtha Taranis rise out of the centre of the lake, triggered by our mere existence on his floor, it was fairly obvious why this cage wasn't designed to stave off a physical assault.

What I could only describe as a living bolt of lightning, hanging impossibly in the air between the lake and the sky, loomed over us. Though the lake must have been at least a mile wide, putting this thing at least half a mile away from us, the sterile scent of ozone filled the air, and little tingles of static electricity played at the tiny hairs on my skin. Around it swirled countless distortions in the air, spinning up and down in an endless column.

"H-holy shit." It wasn't just the static that was making my skin crawl. There was something deeply, deeply wrong about this sight, a bolt of lightning held at the moment of impact, still spitting sparks and forking apart as we looked on, but never vanishing. Lightning was meant to be ephemeral, there one instant and then gone the next--but not Bamtha Taranis.

'Blood-curdling tenacity' was right.

"Stay in the cage. Heal it if it takes a hit. Try not to die," Hoodwink said rapidly, once Pellasmith's work was done. "Got it?"

A chorus of uncertain nods greeted her. As sturdy as the cage bars were, and even knowing what little I'd learned about Faraday cages in physics classes before… the imposing column of lightning that was Bamtha Taranis had a way of making our first and only line of defence in this fight look awfully flimsy.

"Spirit Unbound," Hoodwink muttered. Her strange insect wings sprouted from her back, and she took to the air--but when they melted away a couple of seconds later, she didn't drop back to the earth.

"Resistance: Lightning." Galataeus's voice echoed, five times at once, as he waved a hand over the wooden cage around me and the Lifespringers. The scent of ozone intensified for a moment, then faded, until it was almost gone completely.

"Paradigm Shift," murmured Taxel.

"Ox's Will," Pellasmith added, withdrawing from the wooden cage to place a hand on her shoulder. Taxel vanished--and moments later she was sprinting over the surface of the lake, not dipping beneath its choppy waves for even a second. With my still-improved Intellect, I watched her stamina bar drain rapidly, only to shoot back to full before it reached zero, over and over again. My jaw was slack. Was this the kind of thing you could do with maxed-out Dexterity??

"Pinpoint. Footwork. Springtouch. Overbolt," said Axel. Four different auras settled over herself and her two crossbows, overlaying each other in a way that made it hard to look directly at her. As she was casting, Galataeus put a smooth grey hand on her and added to the auras with a spell of his own.

Then the first bolts of lightning fell from the sky.

They didn't so much strike the ground as sunder it, hurling up massive clods of mud and the drier earth that had lain beneath it. One fell so close to us, in our cage, that I was sent reeling backwards, black spots overwhelming my vision--and judging by the screams and cries around me, I wasn't the only one to have that reaction. Even the cage itself groaned and shuddered, having eaten the brunt of the damage that the bolt had been meant to deal to us. Remembering Hoodwink's orders, I drew my wand.

"Cure!"

"Moonlight!"

"Moonlight!"

"Life Well!"

"Cure!"

There were quite a few healers among us--unsurprising, maybe, since most of us were Lifespring players. As the cracks in the cage's bark sealed back up, and charred black fragments fell away to reveal newly restored wood, a black bolt of energy flew out at Bamtha himself.

Full rotation number one.

Five rotations--and what must have been hundreds of lightning bolts--later, the Balladeers' last Quantum Collapse warped the air around Bamtha Taranis, and he collapsed in on himself, having never once wavered from his position at the centre of the lake. The swarm of air and water and lightning spirits that he had called to his side over the course of the fight evaporated. A jet of blue-green light burst into the sky; and just like that, the black clouds of the Storm of Taranis dissipated, parting to reveal a brilliant blue sky.

"Phew." Pellasmith was the first to limp his way back to us, and the pile of soaked coals that was all that remained of the cage he'd built out of the dryads. Accompanying him was the Horde Lord, which tipped its misshapen head with what might have been respect at the burnt-out husk. "What a fuckin' battle."

The others soon followed suit. Their healthbars and mana bars were all close to empty, Galataeus in particular barely clinging to life with a finger's width of red--but there was a glimmer of triumph in their eyes, too. They'd carried us all the way through a three-party clear, three times as hard as the dungeon was originally meant to be. Even to veterans of the game like these guys, who'd cleared this dungeon countless times in the last couple of weeks alone, that had to be a spike of adrenaline.

"I, um," I said, trying my hardest not to look like I was craning my neck even as I tried my hardest to crane my neck for her, "where's m--where's Hoodwink?"

"Dead," Pellasmith said plainly.

"What?!"

Axel let out a snort. "Aww, didja get attached to her?"

"Ax," Pellasmith and Taxel said simultaneously, one warning and the other drained.

"What?" Axel said. "It was a joke! You know, with the Soul Tethers?"

Taxel sighed.

Pellasmith turned back to me. "She'll be fine. She dies most Bamtha runs. It's hard for her to stay alive through the whole thing--she's gotta get right up in Bamtha's face to deal any damage, and she can't dodge lightning with ethereal."

"We have a temple in camp," Galataeus added.

"And it's a free health and mana refresh!" Axel chirped, wagging her crossbows. "I'm gonna kill us all after this!"

A few of the Lifespring players stepped back nervously.

"Not you guys!" Pellasmith was quick to clarify. "You guys are done. Nerea's about to come out of the lake and do her thing."

Silence fell over us as we stared out over the lake. Now that the storm had died, its waters were still and clear. There was no sun in the sky above, but somehow the lake still shone, a glittering turquoise gem that almost seemed to sing in the quiet air; though the battle with Bamtha hadn't left even a single tree standing on the shores of the fifth floor, a gentle breeze wound its way through the forests beneath us, rustling leaves and twigs alike.

"Um," said one of the random Lifespringers. "Is it happening soon?"

Pellasmith shrugged. "Patience. It's… kind of her thing."

"I thought she was the god of the sea," said another Lifespringer.

"And storms and stuff," the first one added.

"She's one of the major deities of the setting. It comes with a lot of territory," Pellasmith elaborated. "She's also the goddess of plants, and the seasons, and rivers, and a billion other things that involve being patient."

"Like… how you have to wait for a seed to grow into a tree?" April asked.

"Right. Or how long it takes a river to carve through rock."

"Or waiting for winter to end?" I suggested.

"Sure as the sky above," chimed a voice, one that was light and airy but at the same time old and deep. It echoed all around us, in the air and in the soil, and it lilted and rolled like a crashing wave, or a windswept tussock, or a sprawling African savannah. "You have done well, little ones."

A figure stepped out from the lake. The goddess Nerea--a glance was enough to see it. Her skin was rich and dark, weatherbeaten wrinkles drawn on it in coarse peaks and valleys, deeper than any I'd ever seen before. A forest of silver hair fell in two gossamer curtains on either side of her face, rolling banks of fog and storm-ridden clouds and snow-touched pine needles all at once. Perched atop it lay a wreath of emerald leaves, speckled a hundred different minuscule variations of blue-green and green-blue, the same as her smiling eyes. Upon her frame--lithe despite her age, and toned with muscle that might have once been the bones of a mountain--slumped a drab tawny tunic, its hem reaching just short of her earthy knees. In one browned hand, she clasped the shaft of the strangest pitchfork I'd ever seen. A dull azure in colour, its prongs numbered four, but they were arranged peculiarly, sprouting asymmetrically from the central shaft in such a way that they resembled branches jutting from the trunk of a tree… or tributaries flowing to join each other in a single river… or four detours forking out from the same road. Each prong ended in a single barb, hooked back so that they were arrowheads pointing to the sky--and the bottom of the shaft, planted firmly against the ground, was barbed too, so that it was a fifth arrow, pointing to the ground.

What happened next was… hard to describe.

Nerea had stepped out of the lake. That much was true; the evidence of it trickled over every inch of her body in countless rivulets, drowning her tunic and making it cling to her well-muscled physique, and splashing freely from her bizarre pitchfork.

But almost as soon as it had been done, and she had planted both her feet and the downwards arrow of her pitchfork on the muddy bank of the lake, the lake stepped into her. Like a shadow she'd cast over the sky, it rose up behind her, a sloshing, senseless body of water in the most literal sense, vast enough to tower over her as it did all the rest of us, and yet somehow never quite seeming to actually reach the point of going over her head, or spreading past her wide-but-definitely-not-as-wide-as-an-entire-floating-lake shoulders. It was… weird. The lake was bigger than her. Be it in width or height or depth, that much was unmistakable. It was just… she was somehow bigger than that, too.

In a matter of seconds, though its waters stayed sedate and crystal-clear and never seemed to move faster than a lazy crawl, the lake had vanished. What it left behind was an immense golden basin--but this gold wasn't metal, or even the rocky lakebed. It wafted gently, moving to the same breeze that still rustled the forests behind and beneath us; a golden hoard of reeds.

"I am Nerea Akhione." She spoke with an interminable accent, faint enough that it might have come from a hundred different places, none of them English-speaking. "The goddess of the sea, and the seasons, and the ocean everflowing, so on and so forth, yadda yadda." She winked, and the lines on her face laughed in that gesture, all the hundreds of centuries' worth of them. "You all got the important ones."

"Lady Nerea," Pellasmith said, standing up as straight and as tall as his tiny gnomish body would allow. "It's good to see you again."

"It has been eleven hours, Pellasmith," Nerea said, and though it was clearly a jab, her cracked lips curled into an indulgent smile. Her hundred-shades-of-green eyes scanned all of us on the shore. "Hm. More than last time. In fact… more than ever before." Her smile deepened. "You're getting stronger, hm?"

Awkwardly, Pellasmith shared a series of glances with the other Balladeers. Eventually, they all nodded.

"Good!" Nerea crowed, thumping her trident emphatically against the ground. "The stronger you become, the better things will be!" Her smile faltered. "Though I wish you would challenge other dungeons."

Pellasmith made a face, and for a moment it was clear that he'd heard this piece of feedback before--but he managed to smooth himself over and go back to his usual diplomatic self first. "Yes, well, we do too. But we still need to find out who your chosen one is."

Nerea sighed and looked out over the crowd again. I might have been imagining things, but for a moment I thought her gaze lingered on me and April--only for her to shrug and throw a hand expressively up in the air. "None of these sprouts, I am afraid."

Pellasmith echoed her sigh, though he added his own, distinctly frustrated spin to it. "Are we at least close?"

"Hah!" Nerea barked, making me and a few of the jumpier Lifespring players jolt on the spot. "Close? You want me to peer at that little signboard in your village, tell you which name most resembles the name of the hero I have nominated to save this world?" She shook her head. "You are smart, Pellasmith. I do not deny it. Your curiosity has long impressed me, and you slake its thirst better and more frequently than many a farmer waters his crops. But there are still gaps in your wisdom. If you truly understood me--truly understood what it means to be Lifespring--then you would be able to pick out my Valkyrie and bring them to me in just one more trip."

"But enough about this." She looked away from Pellasmith again, and this time I definitely wasn't imagining it--she was staring directly at me and April. Concern, warm and grandmotherly, tinged her wrinkled face, bubbling to the surface like a mountain spring. "There is a more pressing matter at hand."

To his credit, Pellasmith didn't let Nerea's cutting words weigh down his quick thinking for even a second. He took one glance at us and said, "The modified soul sigils?"

"Indeed," murmured Nerea Akhione.

April and I exchanged glances. I couldn't even begin to unpack what was happening here, and from April's expression, she was just as lost as I was. I knew that Nerea was supposed to be a god, but identifying a custom spell? How the hell had they even programmed that in? Why had they thought to program that in?

"Your bodies have been tampered with," Nerea said mildly. "Tainted." Her eyes flicked to me, and me alone. "And the medium of choice… hmm." Her focus shifted to April. "I can fix it for you, if you would like."

"Really?" April said.

"What? How?" Pellasmith demanded at the same time.

"The magic that wrought these bodies can also restore them," Nerea said, plain as the oceans unspoken and all the more cryptic for it. "It is an old spell. The oldest, in many respects." She extended her pitchfork and stepped forward, a single, fluid movement that brought the hooked tip of the longest prong directly to April's forehead. "Take the form in your eyes, and hold the Form in your mind--" a gout of water, foamy and green, burst from the ground beneath April and swept over her. With a yelp I leapt away from her, though a salty spray still caught me in the face, and the overpowering stench of the sea bit into my nostrils and my lungs--"and it is done."

The saltwater vanished. April stood stock still, as dry as a bone, shoulders practically bunched up at the side of her head with tension. Not a soul drew a single breath, though most of the people here had no idea what any of this was even about, and even those of us who did could scarcely dare to imagine what was going to happen next. With glacial trepidation, she reached down to the hem of her top and gave it the slightest tug upwards… to reveal her entirely bare navel.

"Oh my gosh."

Nerea flowed back, a maternal twinkle in her once-again smiling eyes.

Suddenly, April grabbed me by the shoulder. "Y-you've gotta fix her, too! She's--she's got the same thing, um, Lady Nerea!"

The twinkle died out.

"Ah… if only I could, little one." She left her pitchfork standing resolutely on the ground--it wasn't mud anymore, the water in it peeled away the same as all the water that had been in the lake--and shook her head. "My apologies. Some disasters should not be courted lightly."

I… wanted to be surprised. To feel some kind of flame stoked inside me, some kind of righteous sense of justice, some sense that this was wrong, that this was unfair… but I couldn't. My heart fell, but it didn't go far. I bit my wobbling lip; even the tears pricking at the corners of my eyes felt faint. Redundant. Of course the game was being unfair to me. Th-that… that had been the case since day one.

"Disasters? Lightly?" April repeated incredulously. "There's--there's nothing light about what this g--girl has been through!"

It was hard to appreciate at that exact moment, but Nerea Akhione looked genuinely contrite as she shook her head again. "I know that if I knew only what you know now, I would feel the same way you do." She held up a weathered finger and thumb. Held them less than a fraction of a millimetre apart. "You were this close to my choice, you know."

"So what?!" April growled. "What do you know that means you're not gonna help my g--my friend?"

"April, please--" Pellasmith started, but the snap of Nerea's fingers interrupted him.

"That, you will have to find out for yourself."

And just like that, the cloudless sky and empty lake of the cleared Dryad Falls melted away, to be replaced by the damp drizzle and log cabins of Camp Dryad.

Chapter 39: Let It All Out

Chapter Text

In light of the revelations that morning, the Balladeers cancelled the rest of the dungeon clears for the day. Instead, after briefly catching Hoodwink up on the situation--she'd been waiting for us--they retreated to their stately guild hall, bringing April and me with them.

"I can't believe it." April was still fuming after her argument with Nerea Akhione, her fluffy white ears low and tense in her hair, her tail flexing and thrashing behind her without a lick of its usual enthusiasm. Her hand, hot and tight, had found mine as soon as we'd left the dungeon, and hadn't let go once. "She just--refused to fix you!! What the hell was that??"

"Mmm," said Pellasmith absently. "That was fairly out-of-character for her." Despite his offhand tone, or perhaps causing it, his brow was furrowed in concentration as he hurried us along the short dirt path to the guild hall. From my short time knowing him, I wouldn't have been surprised if he was taking mental inventory of every piece of lore about Nerea Akhione in the game.

"It is?" April demanded. "Then--then what the heck?"

As we reached the hall's mahogany door, and the dryad Mr. Butler welcomed us in--"An early luncheon, sir?"--Hoodwink spoke up. Her tone, too, was mild, but there was an undercurrent to it that I was learning to recognise, from the last few times she'd leapt to a sudden--and correct--conclusion about me.

"Hm. I'm not too surprised she'd make an exception for you guys. Both ways--fixing you and not fixing her. You both seem pretty exceptional, you know?"

I stumbled a bit. "H-huh?"

"How so?" April hid her nervousness a little better than me--but only a little.

Hoodwink smiled, her heels clacking sensually over the marble floor of the entranceway. This time, the door that Mr. Butler tottered to open for us was much taller and grander than the one we'd gone through the night before--today, we were being hosted in a full banquet hall. A long, rectangular table that looked like (and probably was) a cross-section of a tree trunk lay down the centre of the room. Hoodwink took up the very head of the table, and eyed me as she patted the seat next to her; taking the hint, I perched myself nervously in it, and April immediately sat herself on the one on the other side of me. The other Balladeers quietly clustered themselves around us.

"Well, let's take it from an outsider's point of view. You arrive here, at Camp Dryad, almost a full week after anyone else… and on your very first night here, you're invited to meet with us, to discuss an artifact that only the two of you have ever laid eyes on before." Hoodwink's molten eyes flashed, and though there was certainly some sort of insight in it, there was also something… predatory in there, too. Like she'd just seen the moves leading to a checkmate. "The next morning, you're inexplicably bumped up to the front of the queue to clear Dryad Falls. Members of our first attempt at a three-party clear. And when we finish it, the Goddess of Lifespring interacts with you personally."

"W-wait, hang on!" April said. "That makes us sound like--you were there for all those decisions! You helped us with most of them!"

Hoodwink held out her hands placatingly--and, to my relief, her guildmates didn't seem to have any particular reaction to her line of reasoning, hostile or otherwise. "Like I said--this is an outsider's view of things. A lot of it can be explained by your… situation with the bandit camp. Buuuut…"

"Not everything, huh?" Axelpraxel81 was the first to pick up on Hoodwink's dangling suggestion. "Why did you guys wanna get outta here so quick, anyway?"

For once, April was the one to flush bright red and start babbling. "Th-that's not--that's got nothing to do with Anne!!"

"Huh. Really?" Hoodwink seemed genuinely nonplussed. "Then… what?"

"I-it's… it's personal," April said, finally.

"Hmm." Though nobody pressed any further, all eyes in the room were on April--except for Pellasmith's, which were fixed on some point far above April's head as he mouthed words to himself. She shifted awkwardly in her seat, face still as bright a red as I'd ever seen it. Though some part of me did secretly want to know what she was hiding, too… I cleared my throat, and suddenly all those eyes were on me.

"I-I, umm, i-if we're talking about being ex… e-exceptional…" I started, faltering a bit as I realised I had no idea what I was about to say. There was… the bug where I hadn't been able to change my character at all at the start of the game…? All that stuff with the Lustrous Heart, a-and the cursed chastity cage…? I blanched. I… I-I didn't exactly want to share that stuff with them… even if they all already knew I was a sissy… h-huh. Wait. Why… why didn't I want to talk about that?

"Well?" Taxelpraxel81 prompted me. Her long, hare-like ears twitched impatiently.

"I, umm, I-I met another god before!" I blurted. "The, umm, the scary one, in the Breachwood."

This, unlike everything that had come before, brought Pellasmith back into the conversation. "Ariana?" he said. "How?"

"I, um…" I hesitated. Percy was part of the Escaping VALKYRIE Alliance, right? So they'd recognise her name? "Percy, um, took us through it. B-before the whole conference thing."

"Persephone?" Pellasmith said with some surprise. "Huh. Is that why she was late for the pre-meeting?"

"What did she say?" Taxel asked me. "Ariana, I mean."

I wrung my brain for as much of the answer as it could supply. It was hard, exact thoughts and feelings blurred by that overpowering aura of fear she'd exuded, but… "I, um, it was a bit like, umm, Nerea. She… she wanted to do something… but she said it would be a bad idea, I think?"

"Was this before you were branded?" Pellasmith's interest hadn't just been swayed; he was leaning forward now, intent on nothing else but this conversation with me.

"Um… yes."

"Huh." Hoodwink led the Balladeers in a chorus of 'huhs' that resounded around the table. "What did she say exactly?"

"I, uh, I can't remember, exactly, m-my lady," I said sheepishly. "Um… I think she said something about her sister… being mad? Do… you guys know anything about that? Ariana's sister?"

Pellasmith smiled wryly. "She has eight sisters. Nerea's one of them, actually. They're the main gods of this setting: the Nine Sisters, who 'wove the world from Chaos,' and created, well… everything."

"Well, seeing as Nerea didn't want to fuck with her at all, either, we can rule her out," Taxel pointed out.

"Starlight, right?" Axel asked me. When I nodded, she nodded back. "Wouldn't that just be, uh, Cassiopeia?"

"Cassiopeia Oraia," Pellasmith repeated. "The eldest sister. Goddess of the stars, beauty, and romance. Last time she got mad, she created Cetus Calamitus. That sounds like a disaster, alright."

Axel raised a furry eyebrow. "Wait, legit?"

"Yeah, there's a whole thing about it on one of her drops," Taxel said.

"What's Cetus Calamitus?" April asked.

"World boss," Taxel explained. "Lives way out in the north of the map. Damn near impossible to clear without a whole fleet of fully Prestiged players."

"So," Hoodwink said, nodding back at me. "Fucking with you might just incur the wrath of the god of Starlight. Possibly on par with whatever made her mad enough to make the second-hardest boss in the game. I wonder why that might be."

My eyes might have bulged out of my head; my heart might have skipped a beat; my breath might have caught in my lungs. I clutched the arms of my seat, head suddenly reeling even though I was sitting perfectly still. Me? Seriously? "W-wait, y-you're not--y-you don't think I--"

"She's the chosen one?" Pellasmith said abruptly, leaping to his feet on top of his seat and slamming his hands into the table. Though he was tiny, the impact rippled over its wooden surface.

"Could be," Hoodwink said smoothly, though her smile expressed considerably more certainty. "There's only one way to find out."

Pellasmith began pacing back and forth on his chair. "We've--we've gotta contact Persephone. She can Odyssey here, then Odyssey them back with her--how quickly can she clear the Spire? We could know before sundown!"

"W-wait!" April shouted. Five heads turned towards her in unison.

"What?"

She leaned over and put a gentle hand on my shoulder. "Anne? Are you alright?"

"Huh?" I said faintly. Just fine! I could feel my throat constricting around the words, for once nothing to do with all the compulsions and transformations and Milestones I'd been pressed into by this game. Like the wild strokes of a whirlwind, half-formed thoughts and ideas blasted themselves at the structure of my brain, attempts at making themselves understood that threatened to tear the whole shaking edifice apart. The--the character, the class, the name, the prissy wand, Humbert spanking me, being a sissy--th-that was all--that was all part of the plan?? It--it wasn't just a bug, or a debug character, or anything like that? It was part of the game's plot??

"Alright, hang on, let's give her space." Hoodwink's voice was a world away, faint and warbling across an uncrossable distance. Even my own tight chest, and the little breasts heaving up and down over it, didn't feel like my own. It--it wasn't! My chest was in my bedroom, or a hospital bed somewhere! All because of--all because of this stupid game, and its stupid storyline where I had to be a stupid sissy! And now--and now--!!

A-and now I was supposed to fix it?? To somehow save the day, with my miserable stats and my useless spells, and this dainty body that only seemed to be good for getting trapped a-and fucked?? Wh-what kind of prophecy was this? I--I couldn't--I couldn't even save myself, and now the whole game--every single player trapped in here with me--i-it was all on my shoulders??

I buried my face in my hands, only barely cognizant of April's sharp intake of breath, and the way she suddenly swept me up in her arms. "Don't cry, Anne, please don't cry, i-it's okay--"

"I-I can't," I choked weakly. To my surprise, hot tears were running down my cheeks, and the paroxysms that I'd felt in my distant chest were sobs wracking my body, strangling each word as they struggled out of my lungs--"I-I can't, I-I'm not s-strong enough, p-p-please, d-don't let it be m-m-muh--"

"I-it's okay, it's okay!" April reassured me, cradling me with every inch of her earthy, muscle-bound strength. Her face found the crook in the side of my neck, and she buried herself in it, blanketing me in her shaggy black mane, and all the raw musk that came with it. "Shhh! I'm here, I'm here, it's okay…"

The heady rush of her scent didn't do much to settle my spinning mind, or to slow the pitter-patter of my heart--but, as I instinctively curled further into her, pressing my own face into the nook between her neck and shoulder, I found my centre of gravity shifting. All that helplessness and hopelessness and uselessness--that dark core that my mind kept spiralling back to… somehow, clinging to her made those thoughts start to peel away, comets torn from their orbit around a vast and frightening black hole in the darkest depths of space. Almost forgotten in its metal prison, my clitty stirred at all this sheer and unadulterated and lasting contact with the most beautiful girl in the world. The… the centre of the world, at least… at least to me.

Bit by bit, my sobbing--girly and pathetic even to my own ears, but not loosening April's grip on me by the tiniest bit--slowed… and then… at long last… subsided. I took a single, shaky, lingering breath, crooked and kinked with a hundred invisible threats of bursting into tears again at the slightest provocation--and then exhaled.

When I finally turned my head out of the protective cave of April's body, I found her face looming tenderly over me. Her eyes, soft and warm despite their stormy colour, brimmed with a faint sheen of their own. "You good?" When I bit my lip, throat caught between the truth and a comforting lie, she adjusted the question--"You better?"

I nodded. "B-better. My… m-my lady."

She gave me a relieved smile. "It'll be okay. You--you're not in this alone."

"Yeah." Hoodwink's voice snapped me out of the reverie that April had gently lulled me into--she was still sitting on the other side of me, a similar expression of concern on even her sultry features. "And--hey. Don't sell yourself short. You're still low-level, but your build is already insanely good for what it's meant to do."

Great, I thought, sourness for a moment overpowering my shaky heart. Except what it's meant to do isn't what I want to do.

Above my head, April's breath caught. Had she been about to say the same thing? I frowned. Did… did she just think I should be the one to say it, like when she'd almost outed me as a sissy? It… it wasn't like my character being bugged was that privileged a piece of information… was it?

"Whatever this 'black dawning' event is, if you turn out to be one of the players meant to complete it," Hoodwink went on, uncharacteristically unaware of the way we'd both just hesitated, "we'll do whatever we need to support you. All of us."

I looked around the ornate banquet hall. Besides the three of us, it had been deserted. "U-um… where, um, where are all of you, m-my lady?"

Hoodwink blinked. "Oh, right. Well, uh, we figured you needed some space, so… Taxel went off to contact Percy, and the other three are working on our new plan, going forward."

"Your… new plan, m-my lady?" My voice still felt wobbly, but… l-like a newborn lamb… it was getting stronger every time I used it.

"Mm. I wasn't there to hear it, but apparently Nerea took special interest in April?" She looked quizzically at April as she spoke, and April averted her gaze, almost bashfully.

"I, um, I guess," she admitted.

When she didn't elaborate, Hoodwink shrugged and continued. "Anyway, seems like Pell wants to rethink the whole approach we've been going for now. Said it might be 'a puzzle, not a lottery.'" She sighed. "It's kinda a shame. I mean, we just carried our way through a three-party clear. With Sprigs to spare!"

"A… puzzle, my lady?"

"You'll have to ask him about it," Hoodwink said. "But I wouldn't bother, personally. As far as you guys are concerned, this is about as much as you can contribute to the Lifespring side of things. You went to see if April was the chosen one, and she wasn't. That's just life." She paused, then chuckled slightly. "Life-spring. Heh."

"B-but, hang on," I said quickly, almost desperately, though I wasn't entirely sure why. "She said April was… this close to being the chosen one, my lady." I held up my finger and my thumb. Held them just far enough apart that they weren't quite touching, but looked it. "D-doesn't that… I mean, can't you guys figure out something with that, my lady?"

"I imagine that's what they're doing right now," Hoodwink said… but she looked appraisingly at April. "She really said that, though? Nerea, I mean."

"Um, yeah." April's tail, shoved through the gap between the back of her chair and the seat, flopped awkwardly against the legs splayed beneath it… and I belatedly realised that I was still curled up in her arms. Hurriedly, I sat up and retreated to my own seat.

"Hmm." Hoodwink's own forked tail flicked thoughtfully behind her. "Nah, nevermind."

"What?"

"Wh-what is it, my lady?"

Hoodwink shook her head. "I was gonna say it might be, like, based on who's most like Nerea. Like a personality thing, you know? I'm pretty sure the Vision can do that with all that brain-scanning bullshit." Her gaze shifted lazily over to me. "But if you're really the Starlight champion, there's no way that's true."

"H-huh? What do you mean, my lady?"

"Cassiopeia's the Final Word in quite a few dungeons, and she's… hm. Let's leave it at… not like you," Hoodwink said, diplomatically. "If it's not just random, there's probably some other criteria they're--oop, hang on."

She held up a scarlet hand to her ear, finger and thumb extended. Receiving a Message?

"Damn. The whole team? Okay. Well, things are calm in here, so--okay. Yeah, that's fine. I guess try again in an hour? Bye."

She lowered her hand. "Looks like Perce and her gang aren't picking up."

The knot in my stomach that always appeared whenever Percy came up… d-didn't quite know how to react to that information. There was relief, for sure, that Percy wasn't teleporting here to pick April and I up right this very second… the last time w-we'd been carried through a dungeon by her, it hadn't exactly been… pleasant. But… there was also a touch of worry. Why wasn't she picking up? Was it just a one-off, and she was busy… or had something… happened to her?

Hoodwink, at least, didn't seem too perturbed. "They're probably just fighting or something. We'll get a hold of them sooner or later."

"And… if we don't, my lady…?"

She raised a black eyebrow. "Well, we'll have to figure something out."

"We're gonna have to figure something out," Hoodwink said flatly, a few hours later. After a few more status updates delivered via Message, Taxel had returned in person, bearing several plates of fried fish and garden salads.

"Seems pretty doomed to me," Taxel said through a mouthful of lettuce leaves and mushrooms, her fish already a pile of fleshless skin and bone on one side of her plate. "I went down the whole list of teleporters. Same story. Mana's too precious to drop three global teleports on some no-name who might be the Starlight champ."

"Three?" April said.

"One to get here, one to get to Zenith Spire, one to get back to their own dungeon." Hoodwink numbered them off. "They don't have a fast travel point set up on Mount Zenith like we do here."

"And we can't fast-travel to… Amberlin… because we've never been there before, r-right, my lady?"

"Right."

Despite the general inconsequence of my deduction, the urge to preen rose up from somewhere inside me. A few hours ago, I hadn't even known that fast travel was something possible in this game without a teleport spell like Grand Odyssey--now, I'd picked up the name of the city closest to our destination that we couldn't even fast travel to.

"It's okay!" April cut in, her usual enthusiasm underscored with some urgency. The wait to see if Percy or her team would respond had sapped away more of her patience than I'd expected. "We can just… climb this mountain, right?"

"It's--" Hoodwink grimaced--"it's not that easy. Mount Zenith is… a tough area. It's rated Prestige Two--which means you'll be dealing with level fifty mobs on your way to the dungeon. At the least." I blanched. Level fifty?!

"That's the main reason we have Percy up there," Taxel chimed in.

"Because of Grand Odyssey? M-my lady."

"Yeah."

"I could look to see if anyone's got a flying mount," Taxel said dubiously. "But if nobody's willing to spend the mana to teleport, I doubt they'll want to spend the time to fly all over the place."

Hoodwink nodded grimly.

"Ugh." Taxel scarfed down the last of her salad, and spoke her next few words through a mouthful of buck teeth and green leaves. "I just don't get why none of them are picking up."

"Hmmm." Hoodwink had procured a wine glass, filled with a deep red liquid--when had she even pulled that out?--and she swished its dark contents around thoughtfully. "It kind of reminds me of that thing with the bosses."

"What thing with the bosses?" Taxel sounded as bemused as I felt, which was a rarity.

"Here. You remember our second run?" Hoodwink took a long, lingering sip of her wine. "The fastest run. Mostly because normally, when you kill a boss, it takes an in-game week to respawn."

My thoughts went back to Orias, the giant spider-boss, and the only boss whose room I'd been through multiple times. "W-wait… yeah! My lady."

"Oh, right, yeah." Taxel had finally realised what she was talking about, and nodded along. "She said that shit about it not being so easy, and then bam, they started respawning every single run. Wow. I actually forgot it didn't use to work that way."

"W-wait, but--why, my lady?" I asked. "Doesn't the game want us to figure out who the chosen ones are??"

Hoodwink took another sip. "If they wanted it to be easy, they would've just made it obvious, right?"

"So, what, you think they've blacked out Messages from reaching Zenith Spire?" Taxel asked. "Why not anywhere else, then?"

"As far as we know, no other chosen one has been found yet."

"I, uh," April said, "this is all super interesting, um, and stuff, but… umm, I-I'd like to be excused right now." She was already half-standing, eyes flicking between the two Balladeers sitting with us and the window behind her. The sky outside was darkening, orange fingers cleaving across wispy grey clouds… which meant…

"U-um, my lady's right! You, um, you guys can Message us if Percy shows up, right, um, my ladies?" I said quickly. "Or if you figure out another way up?"

Hoodwink and Taxel exchanged glances.

"Uh, sure?"

"What's got you two in such a hurry all of a sudden?"

As April bundled me under an arm and practically flew out of the banquet hall, almost trampling an approaching Mr. Butler in the process, she yelled the answer over her shoulder.

"It's personaaaaal!"

We'd barely dove into our signature pink tent, right on the outskirts of the player campsite, when the sky darkened by that last degree and April's healthbar glowed with the pink-and-red of her Arousal.

"Fuck," April moaned, tongue loosened and breath heavy from her status condition. "That was… close!"

Tonight, I didn't even wait for her to ask me for her 'favour.' I laid myself out on our bedrolls, silky black hair fanning out beneath me, and sucked in a deep breath. Taking the hint, April simply murmured her thanks and--after removing her panties--buried my face in her steaming, moist muff.

"Anne… Anne~~" Careful not to cry out too loud--even on the edge of the campsite, we were still perilously close to the nearest tents, and there was no telling if they were empty or not--April let me eat her to a deeply muffled orgasm. Her juices running clear over my face, her heat dulling my thoughts to a slow, contented crawl… the last few tingles of anxiety, about maybe possibly being the chosen one, about getting to Zenith Spire, about the prospect of facing Percy again… all melted away.

"Hey," she said when the deed was done. She brushed away a few strands of hair that had fallen over her face, and for a moment all I could think of was how badly I wanted her to brush a strand of hair out of my face. "U-um… thanks, again." Her tone was… halting, hesitant, and though it was hard to tell in the pink half-light of our tent… was that another blush creeping over her face? "I, umm… w-well…" She inhaled sharply. "W-would you like me t-to help you, too?"

"Huh?" For a moment, I had no idea what she was asking me. "Help me, my lady?" She… she'd been helping me this entire time, hadn't she? "Um, you already h-help me."

"Nonono!" April said quickly. "I mean, like, um…" She pointed at her navel. N-not, not her navel… a little further south than that. She had her skirt back down, a-and presumably her cotton panties on underneath it, but…

It was my turn to flush scarlet. "O-oH!!"

"I-it's just, umm, y-you've helped me out so much a-already, and, um, I know you don't have… Arousal l-like I do, but…" She fidgeted with the hem of the skirt, the nervous gesture strangely adorable for such a towering figure, someone I'd watched dominate a whole pack of just-as-intimidating beastkin warriors. "I, um, i-if you're feeling… p-pent up… I-I'd like to… return the favour."

I swallowed thickly. In some ways this… th-this was everything I'd ever wanted. To have April, c-crouching under lurid pink light in front of me, all but… asking me to have sex with her, her pussy already drenched, beads of sweat dotting her flawless skin. I-I was so close!--but a flash of red pain, straight from my crotch, brought me back to reality.

"Hngh… m-my lady… I-I, umm, I-I still have that…" My breathing grew shallow, as my clitty's struggles against its metal cage bars intensified. I wasn't even sure if I could bring it up to her. She'd definitely seen it, i-in our time at the bandit camp, but w-would the Madam's spell or curse or whatever account for that?? "I-I, umm, I-I can't get… hard…"

"It's okay," April murmured. Even though the Arousal symbol had gone from her healthbar, banished by my hard work earlier, she eased herself forward, so that she was on her hands and knees on our bedding, and her face danced dangerously close to mine. Wild black ringlets of her hair spilled over my robes. My breath swam in hers. "You can still… finish, right?"

A… vision flashed across my mind's eye. Sights of the times I'd managed to… finish in front of her, impaled on the end of beastkin cocks, squealing a-and mewling a-and begging for release--

"Y-yes, my lady," I breathed. And then, t-to remove any doubt as to what I was saying yes to--"Please, m-my lady!"

April smiled down at me, wide as the sea and softer than an angel's wings. "Okay. Tell me if I'm being too… rough, o-okay?"

"O-okay, my lady!"

With that, April lifted her upper body, then sank onto her side and swept her legs around so that she was seated, almost horizontally, on her bedroll. Her thighs, hidden though they were beneath the green train of her skirt, came up to form a soft and welcoming pillow, which she patted gently. I scrambled to rest my head on it, found myself curled up in a cradle made by her entire, sumptuous body. One big hand found the top of my head, worked itself along my silky black hair. The other crept up under my own thighs, far more slender and dainty than hers, but… n-no less feminine, beneath the indigo robe I was wearing.

"Are you… a-are you ready?" Under them she lingered, maddeningly close to touching my bare skin, just a willowy sheet of starry thread away. Her meaning was clear. My breath hiccoughed. At this angle, f-facing up, if I took off my robes, revealed the frilly pink panties this body had come with… the tiny, decidedly un-feminine bulge that my caged clitty and tiny bulge made in them would be… v-very visible.

"I-I'd like to… k-keep it on, m-my lady," I said in a small, breathy voice. "B-but… y-yes."

April chuckled softly down at me. And then… slowly, tentatively, like I was a glass figurine she was terrified of shattering… she reached under the hem of my gown and began to feel for the prize within. Instinctively, l-like so many women in porn videos and hentais I'd seen before, in that oh-so-distant past life before my weeks in this game, I curled up my legs, o-opening up my thighs, giving her the access she needed to find my… t-to find my…

"Ahh…!!" A noise that was half squeak, half moan, slipped out from my throat as her fingers grazed my soft ass for the very first time. Her touch was nothing like Caliburn's, nothing like Kajagar's, nothing like the Madam or those goblins o-or any other horrible person who'd reached back there a-against my will. She withdrew for a moment, as if scared she'd hurt me--I hastened to assure her that she hadn't. "N-no, it's fine… k-keep going…"

April bit her lip and tried again. This time, when her fingertips brushed against my bare skin, I managed to hold my gasp in, and just the slightest tremble ran up my spine. She was touching me. April was touching me. In… i-intimately. Slowly, agonisingly, she crept along the passion-warmed curve of my flesh, her hesitant smile deepening as she watched the expressions develop on my face, bated-breath anticipation to thrumming excitement to shivering delight.

"Ah~!"

One curious finger pressed its way up into the underside of my tiny balls, shrivelled-up and useless beneath the metal prison of my clitty. My clitty jumped at the close contact, straining desperately for a touch of its own, though one could never come.

"I-is that okay?"

"Y-y-yes, my lady…!" Better than okay, even as my clitty struggled and shuddered in its cage, writhing with painful want. She was--she was touching my balls! S-stroking them… o-over and over again…!! "Hahh!! P-please…!!"

April blinked in surprise, and a wave of humiliation crashed over me, even as my brand came into effect and caught my incoming orgasm, pinned it in the vessels and tubes that April was gently toying with, even now. I scrunched up my eyes, squeezing little pinprick tears from the corners. Sh-she'd barely been touching me for five minutes, h-hadn't even gone up my pussy a-and into my sweet little sissy spot, and I was already… o-on the verge of…

"P-please, m-my lady…!! D-don't make me… hnghh…"

"You can cum," she said softly. My eyes flew open, e-even as the floodgates in my little clitty finally came loose, a-and a watery trickle spurted free of it. With it came the deep euphoria of release, which clashed horribly with all the shame and embarrassment of just how premature I'd just been, a-and in front of April, n-no less… but as my eyes watered, I-I couldn't find a single hint of derision, or disdain, o-or even disappointment in hers. She… she really was the best person ever. "It's okay, Anne. As… as long as you're happy. Just… let it all out."

As I went to due just that, sighing a-and cooing, l-letting my hips thrust aimlessly in the darkness… a cool, clammy burst of sensation in my crotch wrested my attention away entirely. Th-that was… shrinking! Something was shrinking!

My eyes might have bulged out of my skull entirely. Premature ejaculation? C-consummating a relationship? Even SMALLER??

"Um. Did you just get a new Milestone?"

We might have fallen asleep then and there--between the long dive into Dryad Falls, and the discussion we'd had in the guild hall, and the following hours we'd spent waiting for a reply from Percy, it had been a long day--but, just as I was curling up in April's arms, having switched from my robe (and the little wet spot my… p-prematureness had left in its crotch) to my spats and sweater combo, voices broke out right outside our tent.

"--is that--"

"Does that mean--"

"--Breachwood?--"

In indistinct little snatches of conversation they floated, broken apart and overlapping and all the more incoherent for it. I cracked an eye open. Too quiet to make out everything they were saying, too loud to fall asleep to. Did they really have to do this outside our tent?

April, apparently of the same mind as I was, reluctantly pried herself off me and lumbered to shove her head out through the front flap… but instead of yelling at them, or sternly telling them off, o-or at least nicely asking them to have their conversation somewhere else… she gasped.

"What the heck is that?" With the tent flap open, and most of April's body still in the tent with me, her voice, at least, was still very clear.

"--just randomly appeared--"

"--like ten minutes ago--"

"What is it, my lady?" Unable to make out anything useful from the others' overlapping replies, I rose and poked my head out alongside her.

I'd been wrong to blame the speakers for having their conversation outside our tent, in particular--the entire campsite was littered with players, standing out in the open or just poking their heads out of their tents like April and I were. There wasn't anywhere else to stand. Every last face was turned skyward.

And in the sky, hovering far above the reeds and trees and mountains that made up the horizon, static amid the endless violet rivers of stars that made up the night sky, and dwarfing the silver and copper moons behind it, glowed a brilliant red symbol. Six irregular triangles, each one clinched like a pointed tooth, clustered in a circle… so that they were fangs, closing in on a particularly dark patch of night. A blood-red maw.

Beneath the curious murmurs of the crowd around us, a biting wind whistled eerily through the reeds beyond Camp Dryad's tree-trunk walls. My skin crawled, like nothing had ever made it crawl before. The same symbol had been painted over the entrance to Kajagar's tent, and it had been stark and ominous enough in that context. Now, emblazoned over the sky…

Frantically, I jabbed at the 'accept' button, faster than I'd ever pressed any button in this game before.

"H-Hoodwink? Is that you… my lady?"

Hoodwink's voice suddenly poured into my skull. "Yeah. You sound like you've seen that giant glowing thing in the sky."

"What is it?"

"The Direblood symbol. Came up off the Breachwood about… ten minutes ago?"

I stared up at it. Direblood… Breachwood… s-some part of me knew that there was some conclusion to reach here, that it wasn't that hard… but… the rest of me had been through a long day, a-and my thoughts weren't so much swirling anymore as they were crawling like dazed snakes along the bottom of my skull. "Um… a-and… my lady?"

"Well, seeing as we've found our Direblood champion, Team Direblood's not stuck at the Breachwood anymore." Even though I couldn't see her face, I just knew that Hoodwink's black lips were curled in that sensual, all-knowing smile of hers. "I just got off a Message with 'em. Your ride to Zenith Spire will be here tomorrow morning."

Chapter 40: Interlude III: Kettle's Taters & Turnips

Chapter Text

Dozens of farmhouses and barns dotted the Reedlands south of Lumberg, their fields making full use of the moisture and humidity that came from the tremendous River Samson and the rains it scattered over the region. A series of muddy roads cast a wide net between these farms, conducting carts and wagons and coaches between them and their central meeting-point of Lumberg. Though the Capitol had made attempts in the past to catalogue these muddy tracks and assign officially-recognised names to each one, sign-posts had a way of being knocked apart by monsters or swallowed up in floodplains, and each loose community of farmers in the region remained fiercely loyal to their own idiosyncratic system of names. Outsiders to the region were better off navigating by farm name alone, and to regard each individual route to get to their desired farm as fundamentally nameless.

It was on one of these nameless routes that Sir Pilgrim Took, distinguished knight of the Gilded Guard, custodian of dragons, veteran of the war-ending Kastok Offensive, and the youngest to have ever made the rank of Pilgrim in three hundred years, sighed dourly from between a crate of clucking chickens and a wet pile of potato sacks. A dismal drizzle had dyed the skies grey from the moment that this cart had left Lumberg, and though it was light, the hours they'd spent on the road had given it ample time to soak through the ratty brown cloak of his disguise. Even the chickens' clucking had grown sharp with consternation, the wooden planks of their crate now so saturated with water that it was starting to drool back out, all over their ruffled feathers.

Took thought wistfully of his dragon, Scarlet. The gentle clinking of her rust-tinted grey scales... the warmth of the fire that roared within her chest. If the situation hadn't called for--as his commanding officer had put it--'the utmost discretion, to be upheld indefinitely and without qualification,' he'd be on her back, outfitted in his full set of cold- and weather-repelling armour, soaring through the skies to reach each of the locations that the bandits' victims had dispersed to. But a Pilgrim's dragon was a powerful and dangerous military asset to the Kingdom of Drei Geldreich; to have one flying back and forth over the sleepy Supernum Valley would raise far too many questions, incite far too much worry in the people. Even a simple Sunlight, to banish this infernal rain and warm the bones of the chickens beside him, would draw too many eyes to his activities down here. An unknown enemy was afoot, here in his own country's heartland, and in this matter the goddess Belladonna's doctrine was clear.

"Take the eyes of an enemy yet unknown to be as numerous as the blades of grass in thy meadows; take their ears to be the grains of sand upon thy shores. Show these eyes and ears not the extent of your investigations, your precaution and your deliberation. When at last thine foe dares to strike, thou shalt know it, and blind them with the sudden light of thy gathered secrets; only then may thy hearts and intentions be bared."

Shroud doctrine: the best defence against a hidden foe was allowing them to think they were still hidden. A truly dedicated Gilded Guard would uncover their plots without giving away that they were doing any such thing, so that when time came for them to throw aside their veil and make their play, the uncompromising light of Justice would be prepared to catch their blade and sunder it in twain.

"We're 'ere," grunted the cart-driver, tugging his odorous mule to a halt.

"Thank you kindly, sir." Took handed him a single silver halve, bounded from the back of the cart, and landed with a wet squelch in front of a signpost that, curiously, hadn't sunk into the mud or been smashed to splinters by a passing monster. 'Gladymug & Sons,' it proclaimed.

He smiled, though with his wet hood up and his entire body turned away from the cart-driver, who had spurred his mule on and was already trundling his way back up the muddy road, not a soul saw it.

In the interest of secrecy, he'd asked for a ride to a farm an hour's walk away from Kettle's Taters & Turnips.

Took's smile was short-lived. For one thing, though it wasn't in the direction he was walking and he'd been careful not to angle his head towards it, there were the six jagged fangs of the Scarlet Maw hovering ominously in the sky north of his position. Any knight with a cursory knowledge of this region's geography would be able to identify that it was positioned just over the famous dungeon known as the Breachwood; and any knight with a slightly less cursory knowledge of this region's history knew of the Breachwood's relationship with the Goddess of Blood.

Officially, the appearance of the symbol was nothing to worry about. Heliotropic analysis had given thousand-to-one odds that the phenomenon had been caused by an allogene, rather than a cult of demon-worshipping cultists bent on breaking through the barriers and seals that had been wrought around the Breachwood and unleashing its horrors upon the region of Ilvergeld. It should have been reassuring: as angels, even if they were the very lowest order, heliotropes would have every reason to see a true demonic threat put down. Rationally, there was no cause for one to minimise the possibility, even for the sake of peace of mind. As good and holy as they were, angels took after their mother; and in many of her aspects, Belladonna Praxis was a righteous goddess of war. She would not shy away from doing what had to be done to protect this kingdom.

But for all the reason Took could summon up, this was still a symbol of her most ancient enemy floating flagrantly in the sky, in the heartland of a kingdom that held Belladonna before all eight of her other Sisters, as if it belonged there. It took no special effort for him: Took--the most divine part of him, the one pledged most ardently to Belladonna Praxis--could sense its position from wherever he stood. Belladonna and her sister Ariana were eternal opposites, after all: the Golden Sun that represented Belladonna called upon mortals to protect and honour the meek, while the Scarlet Maw was primarily a symbol that urged its worshippers to slaughter them. Even now, miles away and out of direct sight, it gnawed at the very edges of his awareness. Wrongness. Sin.

And as for the other thing…

"Ah~! Oh~!"

As Took neared the rickety, slanted front gate of Kettle's Taters & Turnips, the only visible component of a fence that was otherwise entirely swallowed up in golden reeds, grunts and moans of another type of wrongness entirely wafted over his ears. Years of studying sun magic had honed his senses beyond a human's normal limits, allowing him to shed the sun's brilliance upon even the faintest of sounds or furthest of sights. In this case, however, part of him did wish that his hearing wasn't quite so good: he hesitated for a few moments on the cracked front step of the Kettles' ramshackle cottage, staring intently at the few muddy shrubs growing in their fields… and hoping that they would finish of their own accord.

"HyahH~!"

But when the dainty voice who'd been making most of the moans let out a particularly loud cry, only for the grunting and squealing to continue on, Took found himself compelled to rap his knuckles smartly against the doorframe. The noises from behind it stopped abruptly, and--following an intense, whispered negotiation that Took easily followed every word of--a series of floorboard creaks hobbled their way to open the door for him.

"Ah! Mister, er, Sir Guard!" babbled the hunched figure of Mr. Belwurs Kettle, farmer of root vegetables. His wispy, pale figure, replete with cloud-like masses of chest and back hair, was on unpleasantly full display: the only article of 'clothing' he had on was a scratchy potato sack, which he had cunningly managed to tug over his lower body and tied into a pair of improvised breeches.

"S-sir!" Behind him, in the window-short darkness of the cottage's kitchen, trembled his transformed son Alther Kettle, knees knocking together with embarrassment. He was in a similar state of undress to his father, clad only in a thin cotton apron that clung intimately to the gentle swell of his budding breasts, and did nothing to draw even Took's staunchly celibate eyes away from his ridiculously wide hips. The patchwork black-and-white fur that covered his skin entirely showed no sign of receding, and nor did the miniscule horns that poked free from his girlish mop of blonde hair, or the soft pink snout that his mouth had become. Three wet splotches glistened in the beige fabric over his… unmentionables.

"By her grace." Took bowed his head deferentially. Whatever… unnatural things were going on in this household, he was still first and foremost a servant of the people, and if poor Alther had certain… urges, now, it was due to the failure of the Gilded Guard to protect him.

"By her grace!" Belwurs agreed, nodding his head faster than Took would have thought possible for a man of his years. "You're, er, you're back faster than we thought!"

"Providence has shone upon us," Took said evenly. "Our alchemists were already working on an antidote to a similar effect when I brought this… matter to them. They agreed to supply me with a stable iteration, on the condition that I record its effects for them."

Took reached into the depths of his cloak and visualised the bottle of roiling almost-indigo that the alchemists had given him. In truth, concealing the existence of his Inventory--a fairly complex bit of magic, though unlike many spells one that could theoretically be learnt by anyone--was unnecessary at this point: the two known witnesses already knew that he was a Gilded Guard, and any unknown witnesses would have doubtless just heard them address him as Sir Guard. Belladonna Praxis taught that good practice was the backbone of a good army, however, and by this point in his career, obfuscating the nature of Inventory except when absolutely necessary was a habit that had been thoroughly ingrained in him.

The bottle appeared in his hand. He held it out for Belwurs' and Alther's inspection.

"I, erm, I see," Belwurs muttered, regarding the roiling, inky liquid within with suspicion scarcely less naked than he was. "Effects, you say?"

"Primarily whether it reverses your d--son's transformation or not," Took said, stumbling only slightly over what to call Alther at the moment. "The suspicion currently is that this dose isn't strong enough to negate whatever those beastkin did, but if it can temporarily reverse them… that would be promising."

Still standing a generous distance away from Took, Alther eyed the bottle too. His soft, brown eyes shone less with suspicion, and more with… agitation? Anxiety?

"There's no risk of side effects," Took elaborated for his benefit, wondering at the same time whether this was more information than necessary. Shroud doctrine could be… ambiguous. What if any bandits' confederates currently watching him could use this information to interrupt their efforts to develop this cure, somehow? "The… active ingredient acts on… enchantments," he said, finally, hoping that his pauses to assess how much information he could get away with holding back weren't being interpreted as pauses to come up with plausible aspects for a lie. "It won't change you in any way that doesn't involve negating some kind of magic."

All true, and all without giving away that this active ingredient were the petals of the rather elusive Death's Crown asphodel--a plant that only bloomed under a coat of fresh snow, a rarity in Ilvergeld outside of the Winter Mountains. Being based in Amberlin, it was easy enough for the Guard's alchemists to find samples of at the moment… but there were any number of spells, many of which the Guard themselves practised, that could draw the snow line slightly further up the mountains and turn collecting these flowers into a deadly mission into monster-infested territory.

"O… oh," said Alther, far less heartened by this reassurance than Took had intended.

"Er, enough about that!" Belwurs hobbled over to the countertop, and for the first time Took noted that the interior of this cottage was far cleaner than its reed-ridden and mudstained exterior had led him to expect. "You must've worked up quite the lion's thirst, comin' all this way, Sir Guard! Would you like some milk, good man?"

Took's eyes flicked to the jug of milk he'd scooped up. There hadn't been a single hint of a cow on Belwurs' tiny patch of land, and to Took's sharp nose, the contents of that jug smelled fresher than some buckets he'd personally milked from the cows on his parents' farmstead. He glanced back at Alther, and the… stains he'd noticed over his breasts, earlier.

"No, thank you."

"I-it's fresh!" Belwurs assured him. "We're, heh, we're thinking of selling it at the Silverfest. Just, er, gotta work out a way of keeping it cool on the way…"

Took's eye twitched. Belladonna taught her warriors to extend their mercy and compassion wherever possible, seeing the best in even the most wormlike of knaves, but even the sun's mercy had its limits. Here this man's son was, having been taken and used as a plaything by bandits, left perhaps irrevocably transformed by the ordeal--could he really bring himself to think of somehow profiting from this situation?

"Master Alther," Took said, and even he felt the temperature in the room rise by a few degrees, "if this man is compelling you into… companionship against your will, I'm willing to testify on your behalf."

Belwurs' eyes bulged out from beneath his shaggy white eyebrows. "W-wait, Sir Pilgrim, I'm no--m-my good sir, 'twas only--she's my only child, sir, I-I'd do naught to hurt her--"

"He's not, s-sir!" Alther blurted, patchy-furred hands thrown out in front of her, as if trying to physically ward away any suspicion. "I-I--it was my idea!

His big brown eyes brimmed with uncertainty, and confusion, and more than a tinge of open humiliation… but he drew closer to his father. If there was fear between them, it was that Alther didn't want to see his father taken away, and nothing more.

"My apologies," Took said, dipping his head. "I fear I have overstepped."

"Not to worry, S-Sir Guard! Honest mistake, a-and all that!" Belwurs wheezed with awkward laughter, and a few seconds later Alther joined in. They hadn't quite relaxed--but then, they'd been on guard since Took had knocked on their rusty-hinged door and… interrupted them.

"Very well," Took said stiffly. He glanced back at Alther. "You needn't take the potion if you truly don't wish to… but, if it pleases you, I'd prefer to leave it with you all the same. Just touch my sunstone if you change your mind, and I'll be along to record its effects." Though Guards with the ability to invest a sunstone with their charge--their duty to uphold the laws of Drei Geldreich to the very limits of their ability, and to protect the life and liberty of all her people even at the cost of their own--were advised to give out their sunstones sparingly, so as to avoid spreading the fullest extent of their protection too thinly… the sensitive nature of this case meant that Took had given a sunstone to all six of the freed humans-turned-beastkin that the Guard had discovered so far. He could only hope that they would not fall into crisis all at once.

"O-of course, Sir Guard!" Alther chirped, his whole curvaceous body jiggling in time with his rapid nodding. Took tried to ignore the very obvious splut of some kind of viscous liquid splattering on the wooden floor behind her--him.

Belwurs, perhaps spurred on by the same sound to try and draw everyone's attention away from it, piped up. "By the by, er, Sir Guard, have you any clue about that giant red whatsit hovering over them woods?"

Took almost sighed. That the common folk would have questions about the terrifying symbol of Ariana glowering in the sky at that very moment was a matter of course--even if it wasn't visible through this cottage's tiny, primarily west-facing windows.

"Just the result of an adventurer's quest, I believe. Nothing for you to worry about--it should be gone by the morrow." The simple, sanitised message that had been prepared for the public and sent out via the Gilded Guard's internal communications that morning. Sigils of gods appearing in the sky was nothing new, at least on a historical scale.

That each such occasion had preceded a world-ending cataclysm of some kind was another one of those things that had to be omitted for the greater good, under a doctrine far older--and kinder--than the Gilded Guard and their warrior goddess's occasional Shroud. An ageing farmer and his son/daughter-turned-cowkin could hardly be expected to do anything about the end of the world. Why worry them with the finer details?

Chapter 41: The Crown Jewel of the Winter Mountains

Chapter Text

The flight to Amberlin had taken a few hours, but it hadn't felt that way. Soaring through the skies on the back of Century--the enormous four-winged, six-eyed raven mount of Darquin_Mauve, 144 --had been a thrilling experience, and even the abject terror of being miles in the air, one false move from plummeting to the earth below, had quickly died down the longer I'd spent up there, drinking in all the sights and scenery that the world of VALKYRIE had to offer. They radiated out in all directions, vistas upon vistas, storybook canvases that never would've been possible in the real world. Sapphire seas and golden shores; the sands of a vast desert, scorched a rusted red and carved in half by a bleeding red scar of a canyon; twisting rivers and glittering lakes; forests in a wondrous variety of colours, leaves and branches a hundred unearthly tones and hues; rolling hills and plunging valleys and rugged ranges of snow-capped mountains. Even the sight of an ominous black fang of a volcano, standing alone in the very centre of the red desert and spewing a thicket of smog that hovered over it and blotted everything for miles around it in inky darkness, couldn't bring my mood down. What was it? Did it, too, have a backstory, monsters that crawled upon it, a dungeon buried beneath it?

And, as always, the reassuring form of April behind me hadn't hurt either. Clinging to my slender waist with both her arms, she pelted Darquin with question after question. His mount, mounts in general, his experience running clears in the Breachwood, every aspect of his build; no topic was safe. Despite his menacing suit of armour, though, and the way he towered over us both--I hadn't been able to shake the branded-in compulsion to call him 'sir' after he dismounted from Century for the very first time and I realised he was quite literally twice my height--he was rather easy to talk to, and seemed to take April's relentless curiosity well in stride. Even after our hours in the sky, fielding her questions, he was just as cheery and chipper as he had been when we'd first taken off.

"Right," he said, when at last the snowy peaks of the Winter Mountains loomed tall over us, no longer shrunken by distance to an appealing piece of scenery. Dark cliffs hemmed us in on every side, broken only by leering ravines that threatened to draw us down a hundred different dead ends--but Darquin steered us confidently onwards, navigating them like he'd flown these airways a thousand times. "You girls wanna land straightaway, or take the scenic route?"

"The scenic route!" April declared, and though I didn't want to risk unsteadying myself by turning around just to see it, I knew her tail was wagging madly behind her.

"Y-yeah, sir!"

"Coming right up!" With a sharp tug on Century's reins, Darquin angled us up, up, up--and then, just like that, we burst back into open air, now in the very midst of the Winter Mountains. In all their majesty they rose up around us, still the same cold grey, still soaring all the way to the very limits of the sky, but further away now, no longer twisting aerial corridors but a wintry, world-spanning backdrop. And there, right in the middle of it all, straddling the cliffs that hung between the two tallest mountains in the range--"I give you: Amberlin!"

Hundreds, maybe thousands, of buildings were splayed over that shared mountainside. Sprawling over each of the cliffs in turn, they shone in a hundred different colours and styles, no two quite alike, vibrant in spite of the darkness of the mountainside cleft they sat in. Between them, gushing with a size and majesty that dwarfed all the falls of Dryad Falls together, flowed an absolutely titanic waterfall. For a moment I tried to follow its course down, down, down, all the way down the vertiginous abyss that lay between the mountains… but my bravery failed me all too soon, and my eyes shot back to the city itself. The way it hung upon the mountainside, perched precariously between life and death, was scary enough for me.

Amberlin. On Century's back, we drew closer. More and more details resolved themselves, thrown into sharp relief by this game's phenomenal graphics. The waterfall was fed by a vast lake, right at the very gilded crown of the city, ringed by a golden road and all of its highest-up buildings. Below it, I found that some of the 'cliffs' I'd seen weren't even cliffs at all--they were enormous plates of unbroken stone that clung seamlessly to the faces of the real cliffs, supported from below by dozens of thick stone columns and iron girders that jutted from the mountainside in dense forests, and to which smatterings of much smaller houses were anchored like limpets. One plate was dominated by an enormous white cathedral of a building, lined with firmly regimented spires of marble and gold; along its sides saluted rows of much smaller buildings in a similar style. In front of it, right at the centre of the plate, stood a massive golden statue of a woman in a knight's helmet, holding a shield to her chest and a sword pointed triumphantly towards the sky. Her golden hair flowed out from beneath the helmet in a lion's mane across her back, and for a moment I thought it was shifting in the breeze, the likeness of threads lifelike even from this distance.

"Holy wow," April breathed.

"This is just… incredible… sir!"

Closer and closer we drew. A hundred different architectural styles defined the buildings that popped out the most; fluted marble columns, church-like spires and stained-glass windows, castle turrets from which a sea of unrecognisable flags and banners flew, even a Japanese-style pagoda a level down from the lake that towered over everything around it. And then, just as we reached the very fringes of the city, close enough that I could make out the individual faces of passing NPCs as they stopped to glance up at us, we banked to the left. They seemed strangely unbothered by the sight of a four-winged raven streaking through the sky above them; but then, this was a fantasy game, and I didn't really see any other way to get up here besides flying. Maybe flying monster mounts were commonplace in Amberlin.

We reached an enormous bridge. It hung fearlessly over the mountainous void between two clifftops; though the bulk of it was corrugated iron and the blue-green patina of copper, golden threads had been woven through those metal beams, and the gossamer cables that trailed from the iron poles that flanked it shone a cold, unearthly white. One end rested on the clifftop immediately beneath the lake, nestled between dozens of ridiculous, crooked buildings, each one more garish and outlandish than the last. The other end…

"Coming up next: Sunnhilde University!" Though Darquin's beam was clear as he spoke, I suddenly found it hard to summon up the enthusiasm from moments ago. The cliff that this beautiful bridge ended on was far barer than the ones we'd just passed over. Only a few drab, stony edifices crouched before us, mounted with stubby parapets and hunched low against the mountainside, as if scared they'd be blown off. Their colours ranged from greys to blacks to muddy and faded browns; somehow, even the frigid mountain stone around them had more life and colour. In front of the central building, a dismal, scraggly carpet of white-tinged grass clung grimly onto life.

"Uni…versity?" April said, awkwardly. In the real world, our college hadn't exactly been Harvard or Yale, but it had at least soaked up some sense of community and education from its decades of students. As Century alighted on the sad rectangle of grass that was apparently Sunnhilde's main quad, the only gravitas I could pick out was in the crude, almost brutal stonework of the enormous bricks that the university was built of; it was the grizzled vigilance of a veteran soldier, not anything like the poise of a professor. Etched between their weathered edges were a thousand scars, some of them spanning the terrifying distance from the ground to some point just over Century's cruel beak. What could have even left a mark like that? An avalanche? Some huge monster?

"That's right!" Darquin hopped from the front of Century's saddle, and held up an armoured arm to help me down. Before I could accept it, though, April snatched me up from behind and bounced down after him. "They get nervous about players landing dragons and shit in the city, so we normally land out here. Mount."

The towering, multi-ton column of black feathers and muscle that was Century vanished into thin air--and almost immediately was replaced by a wintry blast of air. My teeth chattering, I squeezed the hem of my suddenly all-too-thin Lustregown between two shivering fingers. Cold. Cold cold cold cold. Desperately, I fumbled through my inventory for the sweater April had lent me--but April, still clutching me under one arm, had come up with her own solution. "Wild Aspect!" she chanted. A thick, fluffy coat of silver fur sprouted from her olive skin, and above me her face elongated into a lupine snout, and her ears darkened from their normal white. It wasn't quite the dire transformation she'd taken on to defeat the Chief--she probably wasn't overcasting it to get the wolf's Strength or Dexterity and so on--but it was enough to keep her warm… a-and me, by extension.

"Oh, damn, hang on." Darquin tapped at the air a couple of times, and a shapeless black jacket appeared in his hand. Thick and bulky, it looked big enough to swallow me up, more like a gown than a jacket on my tiny frame--but a warm gown. He held it out for me. "Sorry. I always forget how cold it is up here."

"Oh, um, thank you, sir!" Though I wasn't exactly in a hurry to be put down, having April carry me around everywhere while we were up here was probably not feasible in the long term. Gratefully, I took hold of the jacket and--

For all his knowledge about the game, for a moment, Darquin was well and truly thrown. "What just happened?"

"A-ah," I said, clinging with intent that wasn't my own to the puffy white coat that had just been transformed into my hands. Pastel pink fluff filled its interior, as if to reaffirm that yes, this was made for a girl to wear; it grew particularly long and pronounced in the hood region, flowering outwards to frame its wearer's face. "That's, um, a-a thing that happens, sir. To… me." As I trailed off, I jabbed at the equip button. At… a-at least it had turned into another article of winter-wear, and not another microkini…

The parka appeared over the top of my gown. April set me down on my feet, and I zipped the parka up and tugged its hood over my head, letting its pink fluff tickle my cold-stung cheeks and burning red ears. My ludicrously long pigtails bunched up uncomfortably behind my head, and after a bit of internal debate, I finally tugged them out the front of the hood, so that they spilled out over my shoulders, c-creating an effect that I knew I'd find heart-stoppingly adorable if it was on any girl but me--n-no, just any girl! I-I wasn't a--w-well, I was, but--

"Huh. Is that a curse or something?"

D-did he not know much about sissies, for once? "O-or something, sir."

"Starlight Milestone…?"

"L-let's just go!"

Sunnhilde Bridge was just as spell-binding from eye level as it had been from the air, and my fit of pique didn't last long in its face. On top of the bridge's ornate construction itself, the NPCs that passed us by were a sea of strange features and fashions. Humans, dwarves, lizard-people, grey-skinned men and women who rivalled Darquin in height, gnomes who barely scraped by my knees--all sorts passed between Sunnhilde University and the city of Amberlin. One man strutted our way with a column of smoke pouring from the tip of his wide-brimmed wizard's hat; when he caught Darquin's eye and briefly doffed it, dipping his head in a tiny bow, I found that its source was a pile of candles, half-melted and fully lit, seated on his bald head.

He was far from the only one to notice Darquin, too. A pair of dwarven… women, I decided, their full, braided beards not quite thick enough to conceal the curves beneath their robes… were quick to wave cheerfully at him when they saw him coming, and a gangly human man in an ill-fitting pinstriped suit nodded frantically at him, an awkward smile on his freckled face.

"Are you, like, famous here or something?" April asked, after the gangly man narrowly managed to avoid stumbling over the side of the bridge in the midst of all his nodding.

"Hm?" Darquin glanced down at her. Thankfully, he'd been quick to let the matter of my transformed parka drop, and had dropped back into 'helpful mentor' mode. "Kinda, I guess. It's a game thing. Prestige." He waved idly at yet another friendly NPC face. "Basically, the higher your Prestige gets, the more stuff about your quests and shit gets acknowledged by more and more people. Stuff like, 'Oh, are you the paladin who slew that dragon?' and so on. 'I heard about a knight who wears black and red armour like yours.'"

"Oh, wow," April said. "That's really cool!"

"Yeah, I guess so," Darquin said noncommittally. "It's--hm. You hear anything, April?"

April cast her eyes about the bridge nervously. "Um, no?

"Wh-what're you asking for, sir?" I asked.

Darquin turned his visor skyward. It almost looked like he was staring directly at the two peaks that soared above Amberlin. "Danger Sense went off." Turning back to us and seeing our matching looks of incomprehension, he elaborated. "It's a Direblood Milestone. Gives me, hmm, a hunch when things aren't exactly right."

Now it was my turn to glance around the bridge, eyeing the NPCs passing by us warily. I bit my lip. Was it one of them? Wh-what did 'not exactly right' even mean?

"I wouldn't worry about it," Darquin said smoothly, striding onwards. "It's just the lowest level of Danger Sense. Just means there's someone watching us that I don't know about."

"Like… scrying, sir?" I suggested, following along in his wake.

Darquin considered this. "Hmm. I like where your head's at, but I don't think that'd count. There's a max range that Danger Sense is effective at. Whatever I'm sensing here has to be within that."

We continued on down the bridge in relative silence, April's and my awe from earlier dampened by new suspicions, and attempts to covertly surveil our surroundings for this unseen watcher. Darquin, at least, seemed unbothered by the whole situation… and as I thought about it, my nervousness eased a bit. How many times had a seasoned player like Darquin touched down in a city and found himself being watched by some random bad guy? It was probably a pickpocket, or something. Someone who didn't really pose a threat to him at all, and who he'd easily be able to protect me--us!--from.

"Right," he said as we stepped off the bridge. "Here we are: Adventurer's Flat. Where first?"

The Adventurer's Flat was mounted on one of those enormous stone plates--the highest one in the city, just a short cliff face down from the cliff with the shimmering, gold-lined lake. Here, many of the buildings reminded me a lot of Lumberg, with high, peaked roofs and an eclectic range of storefronts crowded beneath them; and, just like the fashion district back in Lumberg, many of these storefronts had outlandish orange kiosks stationed in front of them, giving adventurers a quick way to get at merchandise without having to interact with an NPC. There was a little square further down the road, in the centre of which burbled a stone fountain; its four spouts were sculpted in the shapes of snarling dragons, each one a touch different from the others. Unlike the bridge, there were plenty of players here, to the point that it was hard to find a person without a player's nameplate hovering over their head. Most had Milestones in the low forties to high fifties, with a few absurdly high counts; April and I were by far the weakest ones that I could make out.

"The Adventurer's Guild!" April said, consulting a little checklist she'd drawn up during the flight. Paper and ink had been in copious supply at Camp Dryad. Not a huge surprise, between all the trees and Pellasmith's map-making.

The walk to the Guild was short--it was right in the square with the little fountain I'd spied, squeezed between a marble building lined with pillars that reminded me of a Greek temple and a blocky grey store covered in a nest of chimneys, all coughing out copious amounts of smoke. The Guild itself was the same creamy orange as the one in Lumberg, though rather than a charmingly crooked tower, this was a bulky beast of a building, almost fortress-like with stocky buttresses and a pair of gold-crested parapets. A violet flag emblazoned with an ornate compass rose fluttered between them; it looked vaguely familiar. The Guild's symbol, maybe?

Inside, the layout was about what I remembered from Lumberg, though scaled up to match the much larger building. Corkboards bearing quest listings and requests dominated one corner of the hallway, while a series of red rope barriers guided adventurers to a line of counters where NPC receptionists were available to give more specific advice. It was to one of these that Darquin led us; the queue of players ahead of us moved swiftly enough, and soon it was our turn.

"Hello!" beamed the receptionist, a stocky dwarven woman who, despite the stepping stool she was standing on and the way she had to incline her head just to lock eyes with me, still looked like she could pick me up and hurl me across the room without any effort at all. "How can I help you?" Her accent was very faintly German.

"These two're looking to register with the Guild," Darquin said.

"Ah! Very good!" The dwarven lady popped open a drawer beneath her countertop and rummaged around in it for a moment, then clapped two coppery medallions down in front of us. "There you are. Take one each, please, and then select 'accept' on the prompt that appears for you."

Raising an eyebrow a bit at the outright mention of prompts--didn't that go a bit too far against VALKRYIE's near-total commitment to realism?--I nonetheless picked up one of the medallions.

"There we go!" April beamed at me. She'd immediately equipped her own medallion, and it gleamed against the green of her sweater, embossed with the same compass design that flew on the flag I'd seen outside. "Officially adventurers!"

I hastily copied her; the fluffy fabric of my parka over my left breast sagged slightly, tugged down by the weight of my newly equipped badge. I fingered it tentatively. Each groove in the metal, each lovingly forged spike of the compass upon it… somehow, even after weeks in this game, I was still finding new ways to be astounded by just how real it all felt.

"You wanna try out fast-travelling before we leave?" Darquin suggested. "There's no cooldown or anything."

"Yeah!"

He led us to the other end of the main hall, to a section of the wall with five evenly spaced orange doors set into it. Like the receptionists' desks, rope barriers directed approaching adventurers into orderly queues, and though each one was quite long, they moved at a rapid clip--when they reached the front, each player simply said a single name, tugged their door open, and then stepped straight through it.

"Sammouth!"

"Rhodeia Polis!"

"Tortoum!"

"Pretty easy, yeah?" Darquin said, as we joined the nearest line, behind a human-looking guy decked out in a gem-encrusted suit of armour. "Just say 'Lumberg'--or, hell, 'Camp Dryad'--and you'll be there."

April perked up suddenly. "Wait, you can fast travel to player guilds, too?"

Darquin nodded. "If they've set up an Adventurer's Guild branch, yeah. It'll come with an Adventurer's Door, same as these ones."

"Huh."

Soon enough, it was our turn with the door.

"Lumberg!" April chanted confidently. She yanked the door open--and, sure enough, through its empty frame was the rather less crowded interior of Lumberg's Adventurer's Guild branch. "Ohh!"

She hurried through ahead of me, tail wagging, and the door slammed itself shut behind her. I bit my lip. L-logically, I should just go to the same place as her. I-it was what she'd expect, and Darquin, too… but the tightness around my clitty s-served as a reminder of the Lustrous Heart that awaited me there. I'd… f-finished the Madam's quest, of… showing April that I was a girl… a-and I was pretty sure that the wording of it now meant that visiting Lumberg would mean… submitting myself to her attention again. Covertly, I thumbed through my menus until I found an icon that looked like a compass rose--not unlike the symbol on the badge I was now wearing on my chest. A quest log?

Next time you enter Lumberg. I swallowed thickly. I had a feeling that this was an order I couldn't refuse, n-not without having my clitty cage go into punishment mode again--

"Go ahead," Darquin prodded me. "You're holding up the line." I gave a start--h-had I really been lost in thought for that long?--and reached for the door automatically.

"C-Camp Dryad!" I said. The door opened, to reveal the lush, wooded outdoors of the campsite that had been built around Dryad Falls--and a surprisingly pleasant blast of warm, balmy air. I hurried through. Slam.

I blinked and looked around. April and I hadn't exactly spent a long time here, but this area of the camp was familiar enough--I was right next to the vine-wreathed manor of their Guild Hall! Dryads and Lifespring players ambled past me, a few of the latter eyeing me with mild confusion as I gaped at them, still wearing my very unseasonal white parka. I'd fast-travelled in videogames before, of course, but there was something strangely magical about doing it in person. Somehow, I could feel the full weight of all those miles that I'd just stepped through in the blink of an eye--and it was staggering.

"Anne?!" Something shaggy stumbled heavily into my back. I almost pitched headfirst into the muddy Reedlands floor, but a powerful arm caught me by my waist and yanked me back to my feet.

"A-April, my lady!" I yelped. "Wh-what are you doing here?!"

"That's my question," she said reproachfully. "I got worried when you didn't show up in Lumberg, so I went to see if you came here, instead."

"O-oh. Right… my lady," I said awkwardly, suddenly thoroughly chastened. I-in my rush to get out of everyone's way, I'd forgotten entirely about worrying April. "Sorry."

To my surprise, she clapped her other arm on my shoulder. I looked up at her (still currently very wolfish) face, and found her stormy green eyes boring directly into mine. "Hey. Is everything okay?"

"H-huh?!" My heart jumped in my chest. I--w-was she asking about--"Wh-what do you mean, my lady?"

She let the question stew for a few seconds, as if not entirely sure what she meant, either. "I… I don't mean to… assume anything, but you've been a bit… jumpy whenever anyone mentions Lumberg, ever since we left. Is… did something… happen to you there…?"

I gulped. She'd… she'd noticed. Stupid, brilliant, amazing, loyal, protective April--!! Th-the one thing I needed to keep secret from her, th-the biggest thing that the cage around my clitty was meant to keep me quiet about--s-slowly, she was piecing it together!! My heart hammered in my chest. Th-the cage wasn't responding for now, b-but I knew from experience that it could leap to full strength in a heartbeat. What I didn't know was wh-what counted as telling April. Could I hint at it? L-let my silence, and red flush, a-and terrified facial expressions speak for me? My gaze flicked to the door we'd both just come through--unlike the ones back in Amberlin, this one was split vertically in half, one slice orange, one blue. If the worst-case scenario came to pass, a-and I managed to trigger the curse, w-would I be able to get myself to Lumberg and struggle my way to the Lustrous Heart before the pain grew totally unbearable? A-and if I did, w-would the Madam even take mercy on me, o-or would she just smirk that heartless smirk a-and leave me to writhe on the floor of her horrible basement…?

A grimace flitted over my heart. I hoped it hadn't crossed my face, too.

"U-um, no, my lady!" I chirped, contorting my face into a painfully fake smile that I could only pray had the slightest chance of fooling her. D-did an honest effort to lie about it even count if I knew that my effort was entirely in vain? "I-I just, umm, I think we should p-prioti--prorit--prioritise going to new places, um, over going back to the same old one, my lady! And, uh, with you testing the door to Lumberg, I-I figured I should see if coming here worked, my lady--"

For a long time, April was still. She kept her arms on me, as if holding me in place; her eyes had taken on a strangely misty texture, and she couldn't seem to stop blinking. I gazed up at her, my own eyes o-on the verge of… welling up, too. Was she… w-was she going to…

"Okay," she said, finally, the single word measured with the composition of a sonnet. "Okay. When you… need it… I… I'll be there for you, okay?"

And with that, she let go of me, spun around, grabbed the door, and muttered, "Amberlin."

When I followed her back through the two-coloured door, a few seconds later, and we emerged from a row of blue doors opposite the orange doors in the Amberlin Adventurer's Guild, the air between us was considerably more dour. Darquin, sensing that something was amiss, tried to buoy it back up by starting a conversation about April's potential Lifespring tracks… but through all the guilt and shame and misery swirling around in my head, a-and everything that was going through April's, he couldn't draw out much more than the occasional monosyllabic grunt or one-word response from either of us.

I was such an idiot. Such a--such a coward! It was--it was just a little pain! Th-the Madam had claimed that my cage's punishment w-would eventually pinch my little cl--m-my tiny cl--m-my minuscule clitty clean off, but after our experience w-with the bandits, I could now be… fairly sure that that'd just been an exaggerated threat. Allogene bodies couldn't be harmed by mortal means, a-at least according to the tigerkin former Chief, and even if the cage was horrible, i-it didn't strike me as an artifact on par with those hacked Soul Brands. It was just pain. And I knew, deep down, that April w-wouldn't even think twice before shouldering that level of pain for me.

But… e-even as I stared miserably at April, watching her pad sullenly on the other side of Darquin from me, stolidly averting her gaze, I… I-I couldn't bring myself to say it. To reach down i-into my choked-up throat and… and tell her the words that would give her the closure she so desperately needed, th-the inroad to supporting me that she wanted so badly to have. Every time I tried, the--the sheer memory of the pain reared its head inside me, a-a haunting spectre of jagged red agony, and--and my feeble courage withered away. I-I couldn't. Not again.

"H-hey!" Darquin said awkwardly. Despite the… conditions we were in, there was something almost comical about this towering figure in menacing armour trapped between us, trying feebly to get our energy back up. "You guys wanted to get, um, class spells, right?"

"Yeah," April said lifelessly.

"Well, this is the best store in the game for that!" Darquin declared. "C'mon!"

He took a hard left, straight into a storefront made almost entirely of glass that had been stained a deep, mystical purple; only a few gossamer thin strands of icy white metal delineated its panes. Through it, shelves stuffed to the brim with books were just scarcely visible--and as we followed Darquin into the store's dimly lit interior, those shelves only got the slightest tinge more visible, even without the windows separating them from us.

The store's seemingly sole proprietor was a wizened old man whose back was hunched three times over, and who comported himself with the sibilant hiss and deeply suspect aura of every treacherous vizier, genie, and wizard I'd ever seen in a TV show or movie combined. He kept his arms folded, praying-mantis style, beneath his wispy white goatee as Darquin explained what spellbooks we were looking for, extending them only to send his knobbly, spider-like hands out on missions to dance over the spines of the books nearest to him and occasionally withdraw one from its shelf.

"Two Messages, one Light, one Bless, one Purge… one Smite, one Taunt, a Stalk, a Mount… oh, and a Shield. Did you get all that?"

"I hear alllll things," leered the spidery, hunch-backed old man, bushy white eyebrows teetering between a menacing furrow and a scornful sneer. Without interfacing with any of the books he'd reached for during Darquin's order, he suddenly produced a stack of books, and--a touch shakily--extended it towards him. "That will be sixteen thousand, four hundred and seventeen noughts… o curséd warrior of darkness…"

"Huh?!" April's head snapped up as Darquin jabbed at the air, accepting the prompt for the purchase. The stack of books vanished from the old man's arms, and they retreated back to their place lurking under his chin, a new gap-toothed smile hovering sinisterly over them. "O-oh my gosh, you didn't have to--"

"Ahh, it's fine," Darquin said airily, clearly pleased to have stirred some kind of emotion other than glum acceptance out of her. "I made a ton of cash on all those Breachwood runs." He glanced over his shoulder. The shopkeeper had resumed his swaying, almost sensual ministrations of the books behind us. "Let's, uh, let's figure this out outside. I kinda forgot how… creepy this guy was."

As I accepted the trade offer, a collection of popups spawned in front of me, and I spent a few seconds tapping through them all.

Besides Message, the 'universal' spell that let players communicate over long distances, my new pickups were all Priest spells that served the class's focus on supporting teammates. Purge was basically an aggressive version of Purify, meant to cleanse positive conditions from enemies instead of negative conditions from allies. Light was a utility spell that, well, created a tiny, floating ball of light (perfect for lighting up dark caves and dungeons!) and Bless was a spell that let me give a small boost to any one attribute. Like Purge and Purify, it could be overcast in a pinch--and I could keep a different Blessing up on both myself and April at the same time. Darquin's advice had been to Bless my Charisma first, then April's Strength; the increase to my Charisma would increase the bonus I gave to April. It was the same trick he used when Blessing multiple party members, as a Paladin, though his casting stat was Intellect rather than Charisma.

"Don't you just have spells that are stronger than Bless at this point?" April asked as we followed Darquin through the bustling streets of the Adventurer's Flat. She hadn't come all the way back to her usual bubbly self, her questions underscored with a certain brusqueness that made it clear she was deliberately trying to distract herself from our brief… c-confrontation… but I couldn't stop myself from taking some heart. A-at least she hadn't lost her dogged interest in the game!

"Hmm… I have spells that boost my stats by more than Bless at this point, yeah," Darquin conceded, "but spells are pretty balanced, on the whole. At least when it comes to mana costs. Like, if there was a spell that boosted my Int twice as much as Bless, it would cost about twice as much as Bless itself. Heck, that's what overcasting basically is. Plus there's stacking to think of--most spells don't stack with themselves, but I can stack Bless: Strength on top of Muscle and get a bit more Strength than just casting Muscle--and for a very low mana cost."

"Huh."

On April's end, besides her copy of Message, the spells that Darquin had bought her… weren't ones that she could actually learn at the moment. Taunt, Smite, Stalk, Mount and Shield were all Warrior spells--ones that Darquin had been able to learn, and already knew, but that were restricted from Druids like April until she unlocked an upgrade to Druid called 'Sentinel,' in the same way that Darquin had once gone from a simple Warrior to a Paladin. Nevertheless, she still spent some time tapping at the air in front of her, staring intently at unseen tooltips as we walked… flipping through the flavour texts for all those unusable skill books, maybe?

"So, um, where are we going next, sir?" I chirped.

"Tree of Caduceus," April said stiffly.

E-even with the distance in her voice, my heart jumped just to have her addressing me directly once again--"O-oh."

Amberlin's Tree of Caduceus was rather unlike Lumberg's in several ways. For one thing, rather than an idyllic church garden, this tree sat in a squat cobblestone turret, tucked away in a terraced corner on the very outskirts of the Adventurer's Flat, near the ramps and staircases that led down to the teeming cliffs below. For another…

"U-um, why does it look all… metallic, sir?" I asked hesitantly. Lumberg's Tree of Caduceus might have radiated a faint, otherworldly majesty, but it was still wooden, and lush with leaves, and, well, a tree. This tree's twisted boughs were coated in dense, sagging layers of gold and silver and copper, twined together like threads in a rope, parting only to layer its hanging branches as they grasped at the sky in a leafless, clutching claw.

"Because it's metal," Darquin said. "This is actually a player's creation, you know. A super high-level arcanist from way back."

"An arcanist?" April said, her interest suddenly piqued. "Like Pellasmith?"

"This guy was, like, Pellasmith's mentor," Darquin said. "Practically wrote the bible on the class, back when everyone still thought it was troll."

"Wh-what was his name, sir?"

Darquin thought for a while. "Can't remember. Don't think he's been online in ages. It was some kind of reference to Everwatch… a spell or Milestone or something, I think?"

"So he was an Everwatch arcanist?" April said sharply.

"Yeah, that I know for sure," Darquin said. "It's why he could make this thing." He rapped his gauntlet-sheathed knuckles against the tree's metal 'bark,' making a clanging noise. "Everwatch is the magic of Tesel Caduceus."

"One of the… Sisters, sir?"

"That's right," Darquin said, and though I'd never seen his face I could imagine the grin he was wearing under his helmet. "Man, look at you girls go. I didn't know shit about this game's lore until Pellasmith sent me his eighty-page dossier on it."

Warm crept over my cheeks, and I wasn't sure if it was from his genuine praise o-or the casual way he'd included me in 'girls.' I-I wasn't ever going to get used to hearing that…

"Now, are you guys gonna learn your spells or what?"

"O-oh, right!" Hastily, I pressed my hand to the cold metal of the tree's false bark--on a gold vein, because why not--and the familiar interface of VALKRYIE's skill 'tree' appeared in front of me.

My eyes went wide. I'd known that it had been quite a while since we'd last had a chance to spend our Milestone points--a while that we'd spent industriously earning new Milestones, n-not entirely with my own consent--but to have twelve at once gave me an almost heady rush of power. Had I ever even had four at once before?

Quickly, I scrolled past the dross closest to the tree trunk. The good spells were the ones locked behind 'extracurricular' Milestones--they all cost multiple points each, meaning that they were stronger than the ones that only cost one, and (more importantly, a-at least to me) they didn't come with humiliating transformations like humongous breasts or a giant ass. Those transformations had already been applied with the Milestones that unlocked them!

I checked out the spells that branched out of Star Passage first. The… Bimbo tree, i-if I remembered correctly.

Spotlight, with its two effects, seemed like a great way to add some versatility to my repertoire. Casting it on a single enemy, like a boss, would make April even more of a threat to it than she already was, and although I wasn't exactly enthused by the idea of specifically making monsters more likely to attack her instead of me (no matter how tactically advantageous it probably was, with her high health and defensive Milestones), casting it on her if we ever got swarmed would come with the bonus of boosting her already-high defences.

Power Graft, I was less sure about. It cost more Milestone points, which I was pretty sure meant it was a better spell, but I wasn't entirely certain what an 'item tag' even was, or if I had any items with them. My shielding dagger probably counted--but that was with April now. But if I got it back from her… the spell didn't specify that the thing I cast the spell on had to be a weapon or piece of armour I had on me. Did that mean I could apply the shielding effect to her club? Or, if I found (or created) some other enchanted weapons, the enchantments from those weapons…? Was that even good? If we had the gear to get those enchantments from, didn't that just mean we could use that gear directly? Or was the idea to combine enchantments, by applying the tag from one item to one that had a different tag?

I sighed and scrolled down to the spells that blossomed out from Angel Down. M-maybe the Ingenue ones would be a bit easier to wrap my head around.

Here, there were three spells unlocked by my two Milestones: Sincerity had apparently unlocked two spells! True Strike and True Shield pretty much seemed like exactly what I'd expected from their names--a straightforward offensive buff, and a straightforward defensive buff, meant to deal and deflect a single big hit respectively. Angel Kiss was a bit more interesting… a-and the thought of touching my lips to April's warm olive skin, j-just to heal her and bring back her stamina, made my clitty positively throb… b-but were we really running into that many enemies that tried to slow her down and stun her? If I could even gather up the courage to--to plant a kiss on her--would it even be worth giving up one of the other spells for?

Wait. I paused. Added their costs all up in my head. Three twos and two threes… that made exactly twelve! With my twelve points, I could learn them all! It'd mean that I didn't have a head start on saving up for the other spells in these Milestone tracks… but a cursory glance over them didn't tell me much about whether this was an acceptable loss or not.

My new glasses didn't give me any extra information about spells, it seemed: I probably needed even more Intellect for that. All I had to go on was the spells' names, and the information about unlocking the Milestones they required from my Milestone tracks. Bombshell hadn't seemed very hard to unlock, if I remembered correctly, and I had to admit that I liked the sound of Blast Ward a lot more than Angel Kiss or Power Graft.

"Gah," I murmured to myself. Decisions, decisions…

By the time April and I had finished selecting our spells, and Darquin offered to show us to his favourite inn in the city, the sky had darkened to a deep orange. In the end, I'd gone with Spotlight and the two 'True' spells, which cost a total of seven Milestone points between them--and let me hold onto five, in case I didn't get many more Milestones by the next time we reached a Tree of Caduceus. The other two spells had just seemed a bit too… niche to commit to, in the end, and if I ever changed my mind, they'd still be available to pick up at the next Tree of Caduceus I found. In any case, I had other problems to contend with now.

Infertile. O-on an objective scale, it--it shouldn't have bothered me as much as it did. My clitty was locked away in a cursed cage, s-so it wasn't like I was going be using it on a girl anytime soon, a-and in any case I didn't actually want to impregnate anyone in this game… but the description still rankled me, a-and even after I closed the original textbox announcing it, I found myself pulling it back up just to stare at it again. Infertile. D-did that--did that mean I'd been… fertile, before? That… f-fertility, and pregnancy, and stuff like that--that all actually existed in this game?? Part of me wanted to quietly ask Darquin about it--but April's hearing was just too good, and thinking of April just made my face flush. B-back in the bandits' cave, both during and… after our captivity, she'd--she'd had a lot of… th-thoroughly unprotected sex. Did that… i-if that was the case, d-did that mean…

My brain twisted and shuddered as I tried to banish the thought from my mind, drawn perversely to that dark, noxious possibility. Images of April, her olive belly gravid with motherhood, that spiked collar secure around her throat--th-there was--there was no way! She wasn't--A-April, pregnant--? W-with a--a beastkin baby?? It just--it didn't make sense!

The same way April letting those thugs gangbang her didn't make sense?

"Um, a-actually," the real April said suddenly. I whirled around, teeth locked tight against each other, heart pounding and lungs just short of openly panting for breath. We were in the square with the dragon-spouted fountain. Around us, a crowd that was mostly adventurers. Before us, the orange bricks of Amberlin's Adventurer's Guild. "I, um, I might go do some… stuff, first. On my own."

"You sure?" Darquin said. "I'm fine with helping. This is kinda like a vacation for me, you know?"

"N-no!" April said quickly, shoving at the air. "That's, um, that's fine! I-it's not gonna be tricky or anything! I, um, I just wanna test some stuff!"

My heart fell still. A dark chasm yawned beneath it, stomach and guts gone in an instant. She… sh-she wasn't, right? We'd spent a while picking our spells, i-it was true, but she couldn't possibly have already had an Adventurer's Guild branch built in her--our--her own guild already… right?

"Oh. You meeting up with us later, then?"

"I… y-yeah," April said. "I, um, I can find you."

Unable to choose between staring at her in heartbreak or pointedly keeping my gaze away from her, I settled for glancing at her in longing, miserable bursts, drinking in the sight of her b-before it got too painful and then yanking my head away. Sh-she was--she was really doing it. She was going to spend th-the evening at the camp! Not Camp Dryad--the beastkin camp! Memories of her shamelessly bucking her hips against those five f-fat-dicked beastkin studs.

"Bye."

Part of me wanted to spin around and tackle her to the ground. To cry out against this, t-to beg for her forgiveness, t-to come clean about my cage and the sordid experiences I'd gone through thanks to it, t-to confess that I'd always been in love with her and that--even though the thought of her b-breeding with those horrible bandits made my clitty squirm like nothing else--I couldn't bear the thought of her with them instead of me--

but by the time I turned around, she was gone.

"Damn," said Darquin, as the closest thing to an outright act of rejection April had ever given me made my useless, impotent clitty thrash wildly in its prison. "I guess it's just the two of us tonight."

I didn't say anything. Didn't trust myself to say anything.

Darquin shifted awkwardly by my side. "Did, er, did something happen before?"

Wordlessly, I gave him a single nod. 'Something' didn't even begin to approach the magnitude of what had just passed between us. The… the bleeding rift that it had left in--in my heart, in hers, in the chance that we'd ever be anything more than friends--if friendship was even still on the table! I-I managed to choke down a sob. 'Something…!' I-it was just… inadequate.

Like me.

"Hey." Darquin prodded at the air in front of him, then pointed at himself. "Bless: Intellect." The wickedly flared curves and inky black recesses of his helmet vanished, revealing a grey-skinned face with a mop of icy blonde hair. There was… something about the contour of his lips, the chiselling of his cheekbones, the misty silver of his pupil-less eyes… that gave him a profoundly solemn air. Like there was a funeral he was meant to be attending, but that he'd willingly given up in order to stand with me, and help me fight through my grief. A lost love he'd once resolved to do anything to meet again, now left by the wayside to help me accept mine.

I blinked. "U-umm… sir, did you just… do something?"

That impossibly solemn face pulled a wry, but still intensely sad, smile. "Sorry. I don't really like doing this, but… I used one of my Milestones on you. I'm still using it, in fact. Fleeting Solace. One of my wight Milestones."

"What's it… doing, sir?" I asked faintly. I was… still sad about April leaving me to go… sleep with those bandits, but… that grief didn't seem quite so… urgent, anymore. It was still big, an icy monster still lurking in my chest, still tightening every breath… but a torpor had settled over it, and nothing seemed to be able to… shake it.

"While I'm holding onto a spell, anything that can see me directly has their emotions calmed," Darquin said, his tone still apologetic. "It's… meant to be used against stuff like Rage and Charm, but… it works on regular emotions, too." He flexed his great red gauntlets. "It's why I try to stay covered up in cities. NPCs don't really like having their minds messed with. Well--players, too."

I felt my face slowly, gently, ease into a thoughtful frown. "Don't they just… stay calm, sir?"

The wry, sad smile returned. "That's not exactly how it works. They might not be able to get angry, but they can still logically deduce that I'm the source of the effect--and decide, without any emotions involved, that they don't want to be under it anymore."

"Oh." Did I want to keep feeling like this…? My emotions stilled, slumbering under a coat of sweet nothing, consigned safely to the backdrop of my mind? "I don't mind it, sir…"

Darquin exhaled. Relief, though it too was tinged with a strange grief. Was that really what he was feeling, or was it… my own sadness, fighting through the magic suppressing it, keeping itself on the edge of my awareness, in whatever small ways it could manage…? "Good. C'mon. I'm not really… good with this feeling stuff. Or… relationship stuff. Or--whatever's going on between you two, I dunno. But I've got a friend here who is."

"Who's that… sir?" I said languidly.

"Her name's Tazuki Otonashi. She's an elf who runs this, er, place we're going to." Darquin's smile became a touch crooked, and even the repressed grief that coloured my eyes had trouble painting this as anything but roguish. "Did those Balladeers ever tell you about The Glitz and Glam?"

Chapter 42: Glitz and Glamour

Chapter Text

The Glitz and Glam soared up before us, a lush violet pagoda almost as tall as the cliff face behind it. Dark eaves crowned each of its nine layers, radiating from the central tower over balconies of dark wood; from their corners dangled constellations of flawless white diamonds--was that string or magic holding them aloft? An eight-sided wall around the lowest level divided the tower from the cobbled streets outside, and as Darquin and I came to the slatted gate in it, and a pair of burly humans with blocky faces crossed their spears to bar us, I gasped as a wave of warmth washed over me from between the gate's slats.

"Right of entry?" grumbled one of the human guards. If he'd noticed the calming effect Darquin's unmasked face had on him, it hadn't changed his stodgy expression one bit.

A glittering disc appeared in Darquin's hand, and he held it out for the guards'--and my--inspection. Flat and round, it gleamed with pale iridescence in the orange light of the streetlamps behind us. There was an etching on it--the Adventurer's Guild compass! Was this Darquin's Adventurer's Medallion? Its colour was certainly far more impressive than the copper badge attached to the front of my fluff-filled jacket.

The two guards nodded wordlessly at the medallion, if that was what it was, and stepped aside to let us proceed through the gate. I hesitated for a moment--did they want me to give them some kind of ID too?--but the guards hadn't even glanced my way once during their whole exchange with Darquin, and did not move to stop me as I followed him through. Vaguely, I wondered if I'd be feeling more of… something, if I didn't still have Darquin's Fleeting Solace on me.

The rolling warmth only grew thicker within the Glitz and Glam's courtyard walls; and in it, sustained by it, there teemed a veritable garden of greenery. Rosy bushes guided us down a charmingly crooked path of alabaster bricks; around us, the sweeping branches of a dozen willowy trees billowed outwards as they curved, tear-like, down to the earth below; webs of climbing ivy dotted with waxy white flowers draped themselves over the walls from within. A pair of peacocks strutted regally past us, trailing their emerald trains behind them. My jacket, so warm in the wintry air outside, quickly became stuffy in this new heat, and I soon unequipped it.

"Wh-what is this place, sir?" I asked, enchanted by our new surroundings. Ahead of us, at the end of the alabaster path, glowed the entrance to the pagoda itself; a buttery cone of golden light, squared off from the violet walls around it by a peculiar white arch. From the light drifted sounds--the chatter of what must have been dozens of voices, and over them a lilting, fluttering song that twined and untwined itself around the dulcet tones of what might have been a violin or cello. As much as I strained my long ears, and as clarion clear as they were, I couldn't make out the words; a foreign language?

"Just stick with me," Darquin said. "Tazuki's a good… friend of mine."

Through the white arch, the enchanting sights only deepened. The interior walls of the Glitz and Glam were made of paper panels stretched taut in wooden frames, a style I'd seen countless times in anime (a-and hentai). These were a lavish lilac, strewn with pastel-colour paintings of otherworldly vistas and nature scenes, and brassy torch sconces that burned with a smokeless amber light. Between them were the place's patrons, cupped in plush purple loveseats and clinking their glasses against low tables of a dark wood that bordered on ebony, and a few potted trees clipped into a variety of shapes. The word bonsai appeared on the tip of my tongue, though I wasn't sure it applied in a virtual world without a Japan to speak of.

In the centre of the room was an oval bar, made of the same dark wood as the low tables. A solitary bartender manned it, a… person with knifelike ears to match my own, dressed in a sharp mauve vest and with a pale cast to their features. Beside them was a towering harp; the woman plucking at its strings (dressed in a glimmering lilac ball-gown that clung to her petite upper body before puffing out, cloud-like, from her waist) sung as she played, the source of the ethereal song we'd heard from outside and the music it intertwined with at once. She, too, had the long ears of an elf, though her skin was the palest shade of green in the Glitz and Glam's buttery light. As we reached the bar, and Darquin gallantly offered me a stool before taking one of his own, I realised that all the staff--everyone in the same mauve uniform as the bartender, floating across the vast room bearing glasses and plates--were elves, though there didn't seem to be many commonalities between them besides their ears and their thick black hair. There was a stout, short elf, built more like the dwarves I'd seen here in Amberlin, hovering near a door that I guessed led to the kitchen… there was one with deep blue skin and a pair of twisted horns that almost reminded me of Hoodwink, whose curvaceous figure kept fighting free of the top three buttons of her vest and the white dress shirt beneath it… and even a towering, gaunt elf with grey skin who resembled the uncovered Darquin more than anything, though I decided not to point it out.

"Dar Dar!" We'd scarcely sat down when a perfectly poised voice rang out from behind me; I turned around, momentarily breaking my eye contact with Darquin's reassuring-but-melancholy figure to find an entirely different elf sashaying along the dark floor to greet us.

"Taz!"

Like the singing elf at the harp, Tazuki Otonashi wore a ballgown; but where the singer's gown was a pale glimmer that merely drew the eye, Taz's was a bold starburst that demanded it. A sumptuous, royal purple served as the baseline, and over it trickled all the other colours of the rainbow in the spiralling arms of a multicoloured galaxy. Behind her, trailing from her waist in a fantastic, billowing display, diaphanous streams of pink swept easily over the floor, barely seeming to touch it as she strode on.

Taz, for her part, was no less striking. Her narrow features and liquor-brown eyes were accentuated by an exorbitant black updo, coiffed expertly about her face. There was a wry cast to her mauve lipstick, even as she beamed Darquin's way, and perched herself eagerly at the barstool next to us. And as gorgeous as her face was, I couldn't keep my gaze from being dragged down the valley of her plunging neckline, where two phenomenal breasts invited me. For once, my cage didn't tighten, and my pussy didn't slicken with desperate need; Fleeting Solace really blunted all emotion.

"I thought you'd left us for good!" Taz remarked. Her voice was musical and lilting; deep, but at the same time airy and playful. I found myself hanging intently onto every word. "What's it been, three weeks?"

"There was a dungeon we had to clear. Prophecy stuff," Darquin explained.

"Must've been a tough one, if it kept Amberlin's finest away for three weeks," Taz purred. Her smokey eyes fell upon me, and even through my melancholy-tinted numbness I felt a flicker of anticipation. She really was so very gorgeous… "And who's this darling? I always thought you preferred a… fuller figure."

Wh-what? Th-this time, it was more than just a flicker--th-the thought that I could possibly be this tall, powerful man's type, th-that she was examining my figure--th-that drew a definite twitch in my cage. It only lasted for a moment, but… it really had happened. Was she… breaking through the Fleeting Solace? Was that something that could happen?

Darquin coughed into his fist. "Wh-what? Oh, no, this is--she's just a friend. I'm--I'm taking her up the mountain."

Taz's expression shifted, and a new light entered her eyes. "Oh? How lovely." She dipped into a curtsey, bringing up her gown around her in a brief bouquet. "Tazuki Otonashi, my dear. Singer, enchantress, and proprietor of this bawdy den of iniquity! It's a pleasure to meet you."

I bowed my head stiffly. "I'm… Anne, my… miss. It's, um, it's nice to meet you, too."

"Ah, you're so well-mannered! How very cute." For a moment, it almost looked like Taz was going to sweep me up in a hug and p-pinch my cheeks, or something--but she turned to Darquin instead. "Speaking of, Dar Dar, would you be a doll and drop that little aura effect for me?" Her voice dropped to a furtive murmur. "Between you and me, helping my other customers keep a cool head in here is just the teeniest bit bad for business."

"Ah! That's actually, well, I was actually hoping you'd be able to help me out with this," Darquin said quickly. "Anne, um, she's feeling… down, and I know you're good with feeling stuff…"

"Oh?" Taz's gaze dropped back to me, and she planted a reassuring hand on my shoulder. "What's got you so glum, dearie?"

Here, normally, a flush of embarrassment would have come over me. The gorgeous woman staring intently into my eyes, the fact that the topic of discussion wasn't just April herself, but the way I felt about her… but the stillness from Darquin's Fleeting Solace was enough to steady my voice as I answered her. "I… I think I messed things up with this girl I like, my lady. Like… really badly. My lady."

"A girl?" Taz said softly. "Well, you've certainly come to the right place, darling. Relationships are my specialty."

"R-really, my lady?" I squeaked.

"Oh, yeah," Darquin said, a roguish look coming over his rugged features. "Taz is only--"

"Dar Dar, dear." Though she hadn't stopped using her cutesy nickname for him, and her voice was still gorgeously lyrical, something cutting had slipped into it, for just a moment. "Would you mind giving us ladies some privacy?" She beckoned to me, and I nervously slipped down from my barstool.

"U-uh, sure," Darquin said quickly, plainly bewildered. "Um, are you sure she won't need my aura? She was pretty, um, inconsolable earlier…"

Tazuki Otonashi smiled sweetly at him. "Oh, don't you fret, darling. I'm sure we'll manage somehow. Jun! Sakemi!"

The bartender snapped to attention. The statuesque, grey-skinned waitress I'd noticed earlier appeared at Taz's side, dark lips pursed in a stoic line.

"Make sure our dear town hero has a proper adventurer's welcome tonight, will you, sweeties?" She leaned forward, right between me and Darquin, and planted a sultry, lingering kiss directly on his cheek. Wh-what?! Just watching it was enough to make my clitty squirm in its tiny cage, even through the Solace. I couldn't stop myself from glancing down at his groin. I-if he hadn't been dressed in a full suit of armour--"I'll be along once I've settled this little cutie down, alright~?"

The elves were the first to nod in response, followed shortly by Darquin, and then--haltingly, uncertainly--me.

Taz offered me her hand. I took it.

"Now, sweetie, why don't you start by telling me about this girl of yours?"

The room she'd bustled me into upstairs was a rather homely little affair. The paper walls and furnishings were still the same lilacs and dark browns of the hall below, but their colours were broken up by various small ornaments and tidbits; an orange lantern, a set of matching paper fans, a tiny sculpture of a fat bird that might have been a quail--and, dominating the centre of the room, a queen-sized bed, draped in a silky purple cover. It was here that Tazuki ushered me, fussing with my long pigtails and the hem of my Lustregown, as I slowly began to unpick my thoughts on the subject of April.

"Well, um, she's… amazing, m-miss," I said. "She's… super smart, like, a-at this game, and she's super strong, and she--and she always sticks up for me!"

She plonked herself down on the edge of the bed, and patted the space beside her. Th-the Fleeting Solace must have well and truly worn off, because suddenly a heady rush of heat stopped me in my tracks. This woman was gorgeous--a-and she wanted me to sit down on the bed with her? April, and her newfound frustration and unhappiness with me, glowered in the forefront of my mind. She hadn't liked the thought of me… b-blowing Hoodwink. Would this be… worse? Better? It wasn't nearly as absurdly sexual, but… Tazuki was all woman, as far as I could tell. I didn't want to… I couldn't just… n-not when April was already upset with me…

Tazuki sighed, but there was something indulgent about it. She reached under the folds of her magnificent violet gown… and withdrew a steaming green cup, complete with a matching saucer. The crockery was worn and irregular, but the overall impression was charming and quaint, not ugly.

"Here, darling," she said. "This should bring that confidence up for a spell."

Hesitantly, I accepted it. The cup was hot to the touch, and the liquid that sloshed inside it was a pale green, a few shades paler than the cup itself. The steam that rose up off it was remarkably pleasant; there was a fullness and a sweetness to its scent, one that I found hard to resist. I glanced back at Tazuki, smiling guilelessly up at me. Other NPCs had whipped things out of nowhere before, but they were usually a bit more subtle than a steaming hot cup of tea.

"Wh-what is this, miss?" I said, just managing to resist it after all. Darquin might have trusted her, but I was learning that--April aside--a pretty face easily portended a turn for the worse in this game, more often than not. With its effects unknown, this… potion could do anything to me! Give me the Aroused status, put me to sleep, make me randomly grow giant breasts, sh-shrink my infertile, premature clitty e-even further…

"Ah, just a spot of Springwater Tea," Tazuki reassured me. "It's an old elven recipe~! My mother taught me how to make it… quite a long while ago."

Well… as far as names went, Springwater Tea didn't sound too bad… and if she'd learned this from her own mother… I took another subtle whiff. Putting aside the more magical options, if this was supposed to make me more 'confident,' it could have been spiked with alcohol… but I couldn't make out any telltale sting of liquor. And what kind of mother would teach her daughter how to brew alcoholic tea? Aware that Tazuki was waiting for me to take a sip, I finally tipped it to my lips.

"Oh!"

"It's lovely, isn't it~?" Tazuki said, as I downed the drink faster than anything I'd had in this game yet… n-not that I'd drunk much besides water, potions, and… y-yeah. Tazuki patted the spot on the bed beside her again, and although I wasn't exactly feeling the 'confidence' she'd purported yet, I finally set myself primly beside her--making sure that there was a wide enough gap between us to stave off any, w-well, unseemly possibilities. She promptly shifted to fill it, bringing our thighs temerously close, though not quite to the point of touching. "Now, do go on, dear. Smart, strong, and valiant, yes?"

"Yeah! And she…" My clitty twitched intensely, thoughts of her curves and beauty and mane and musk and sheer size and furry pussy taking my mind on a careening joyride into a full-faced blush--"Sh-she's really pretty, miss."

"She sounds like the full package," Tazuki said with a tinkling laugh.

"She is, miss!" I said fervently, nodding vigorously--but, as I nodded, I noticed the world lagging the slightest… bit… behind me…

I almost dropped the cup. "W-wait, you said it was tea, miss!!" I turned my head experimentally. I wasn't exactly a regular drinker in the real world--I was, much to my chagrin, something of a lightweight--but I had the distinct suspicion that Anne was even more of a lightweight than I was. I was--she was shorter, and lighter, and… a s-sissy, if that meant anything for alcohol tolerance… and, sure enough, just one drink in, a light buzz had settled over my thoughts. It wasn't enough to make me… lose control, exactly, but…

"It is, dear." Tazuki giggled again. "Fresh leaves taken from the chai tree, brewed in the purest spring water… and infused with just a dash of fine rice wine~! Brewing is about more than boring old potions, and we were the first to learn about it, you know." Her long ears fluttered pointedly on either side of her head.

I frowned. A new icon, a couple of pale brown bubbles on a grey background next to a silver 1, had appeared next to my healthbar--and if I thought about it, I was pretty sure that a couple of the players we'd passed by in the main hall downstairs had been sporting this condition too. Drunk. My Dexterity and Intellect both going down by one was a bit of a blow… but probably not that much of one, right? My Dexterity was already ridiculously low, and losing one point of Intellect probably wasn't enough to take me below the threshold at which I could see the 'extra' text on Milestone and Monster entries. Besides that, getting a point in Charisma was actually a buff! I just… had to make sure I didn't drink anymore. It didn't exactly say what Blackout entailed, as a status condition, but… well, a g--girl could guess.

"Shall we get back to April, then?" Tazuki went on. "I'm curious--what race is she, exactly? A fellow elf? A human?"

"Sh-she's a beastkin, miss," I said, dropping the… tea situation. She'd… probably meant no harm by it, right? I just had to refuse the next one. Politely, of course! "A wolf…kin? Is that how you say it, miss…?"

Tazuki's eyes gleamed, and her perfect lips parted into a perfect smile. "Oohh, how positively feral! She must be a rather aggressive lover, then? Nine Above, she must leave you aching in the mornings."

My pussy slobbered over my panties, and my clitty thrashed in its cage--I very nearly let out a pathetic whine, the jolt of my member throwing itself against the bars of its prison enough to bring a tear to my eye. Was she--was she teasing me?? Making me think of April… pushing herself down on my face… staining me with her juices, her scent--"N-no, miss! I-I mean… w-we're not officially… lovers, yet…"

"Oh! Well, colour me surprised~!" To her credit, Tazuki did seem genuinely shocked at this development. She… sh-she didn't have a crazy enough sense of smell to pick up April's scent all over me, did she? She was an elf, not a beastkin, after all… "I would've thought she'd be all over such a dear little munchkin, a powerful warrior like her."

… Munchkin?

She took my silence for a prompt to go on. "Well then, sweetie, if it's her heart you're after, that's all the more reason for this to be the right place for you. My only specialty better than my relationship talks is my matchmaking!"

"Y-you can have more than one specialty, miss?"

"Certainly, dearie. Now, before we get lost in each others' eyes, discussing all the myriad ways in which I specialise--" H-huh?!! Who was getting l-lost in whose eyes?--"we should really return to the topic of April." She set a hand down on mine, and though it was dainty, and lily-white, and perfectly feminine in every way… it was just the tiniest bit bigger than mine. "Earlier, you said you… messed things up with her?"

My breath caught in my throat. I braced myself for a wave of sorrow, for sobs to wrack my little frame, for my lungs to close up and make me fight them for every breath--but instead, I exhaled. A bit gingerly, maybe, but otherwise… normally. Trying not to give anything away, I glanced sidelong at Tazuki. Darquin's Fleeting Solace should definitely have worn off by now, right? And… I was pretty sure this had nothing to do with being drunk… Tazuki smiled innocently back at me. She was still holding onto my hand, and though my face flushed red, I didn't tug it back.

"Um… well…" I gave her a quick rundown of what had transpired between me and April. It was still fresh enough in my mind, even if the… pain of it had been dulled. I had to dance around the topic of my… cage, and why I couldn't tell April what she'd wanted to know, but Tazuki tactfully chose not to inquire any further.

"Ah," she said at last, when I'd finished with my story. "A woe that has dashed all too many a blossoming romance; miscommunication."

"H-how can I fix it, miss?" I asked. "I can't… I mean, there'll be… c-consequences… if I tell her a-about the reason…"

Tazuki's perfect brow creased for a moment. "A cursed item, yes?" Though I'd taken pains not to mention… e-exactly what it was, her smokey gaze flickered down to my crotch for a fraction of a second. My clitty stirred as if stung by the momentary attention. She--she hadn't sniffed me out, had she?? "What you've described is out of my league, I'm afraid. And it's not often I have to admit that, you know."

Hope leapt in my heart. "W-wait, so, is there someone who--I, uh, I mean, if your league isn't--"

She breezed through my stumbling words with another giggle. "I'm sorry, darling, but whoever wove this spell most likely resides beyond this plane of existence entirely. It would take more than a mere mortal to unweave it." Outside… this plane of existence? Was that NPC-speak for… in the real world? Was this a bullshit hack like the soul brands?? My face fell--only for it to jolt back up as Tazuki snatched up both my hands, and held them tight against her precariously wobbling cleavage. I-I could practically feel the warmth radiating off her bare skin--"The good news is that we don't need to take that nasty curse off to solve your problems with April~!"

"We… don't, miss?"

"Nope~! You see, the reason why a gap in communication like this can do so much harm to a relationship is that it erodes the trust you girls have in each other. Because of this little curse, April thinks you don't trust her enough to tell her all your secrets!" Tazuki gestured animatedly as she spoke, and with my hands still in hers I found myself being jerked back and forth on the side of the bed, almost like we were engaged in an awkward (w-well, for me) dance. My heart hammered in my chest, and my face hadn't stopped glowing for a while. W-we were talking about April!! Th-this was all for April!! Why was she being so--so hot?? "And it's not just this incident, either, is it~?" She pursed her lips thoughtfully. "April's not the only beastkin you've been with, is she?"

"H-huh?! H-how did you--" I squeaked, before clamping my mouth shut. H-had that just been a guess, meant to make me give away the truth with my reaction--?

Tazuki preened, finally letting my hands drop to my lap. "Just a hunch, darling." She tilted her head as I wilted away from her, flushing furiously. "Oh, dearie, I'm not judging you~! The Twins know I could hardly be satisfied with a single mate." I almost spoke up, about to make it very clear that this had nothing to do with being s-satisfied at all--but Tazuki glided on. "I just think you'd go a long way by reassuring April that she's your priority." She paused, and there was definitely a bit of a smirk curling at the corner of her wine-red lips. "Beastkin can get very possessive, after all."

I thought back to the old Chief, and the way he'd curled his mighty arms around Cotton, his personal bunny-girl… "I-I see, miss…"

"Which is why…" Tazuki snapped her fingers, and the sliding door into the room ground open. "I've enlisted a specialist to help you out."

The woman that had appeared in the doorway curtsied deeply, flicking apart the hems of her blazing orange dress in a single, well-practised motion. Though it was about as long as Tazuki's trailing ballgown, this dress was far less modest; risque valleys had been scored into its sides, all the way up to her waist, exposing her wide hips and tantalising, smooth swathes of her thighs. Its grip on her upper body was similarly abbreviated; rather than over her shoulders, its two straps met at her throat, slipping beneath an elegant golden choker. Between them plunged a window that lay between her breasts, reaching all the way down to her belly-button, luring the eye to her flat belly and the gentle mounds of her petite breasts. Almost unconsciously, I reached for the similar dip in my own gown; mine was much smaller, far more conservative, but my breasts w-were really only a little bit subtler than hers…

"Mother," murmured the woman huskily, rising from her sweeping dip to the floor and lifting her head. I blinked. While there was a… family resemblance, between the hips and thighs and the woman's flashing bourbon eyes, and ears as long and knifelike as Tazuki's and my own, there was a lot that didn't match up between them. Their… breasts were one thing, a-and the first that my mind leapt to, but there was more besides that. Though the new arrival's face was every bit as pretty as her mother's, there was something tighter about her features, narrow and angular and swept forward, so that she seemed more focused, almost wary to meet me. Her hair was a frizzy, scorching red to her mother's raven black (though, yes, it was bundled up behind her head in a glamorous up-do just like her mother's)... and from beneath it peeked a second pair of ears, these ones fluffy and auburn and pointed like a fox's. Behind her, as if to confirm it, jittered the bushy, white-tipped brush of a matching fox's tail.

A… a hybrid between an elf and a fox-kin…?

"Anne, this is my darling daughter Akako. Aka, this is my adorable new friend Anne. We'll be helping her tonight."

"Of course, mother," breathed Akako. She danced forward, unbothered by the silky lengths of her skirt or the strappy heels that she wore beneath it; behind her, the room's door slid shut of its own accord. In moments, she was on the bed beside me, her shoes kicked off, on all fours with her button nose practically buried in the side of my head.

"H-hey!" I squeaked, flinching away from her--but Akako simply took a deep breath, and then let out a whining, almost longing sigh, and nodded fervently to her mother.

"Her scent is amazing, mother… it's almost as intense as yours." She swung back to me, amber eyes pooling with what I immediately recognised as desire--and more than that, desire as pure and naked as I'd ever seen it. My clitty shivered eagerly in its prison.

"Well," Tazuki purred. A-as I turned to stare into her eyes, my heart hammering madly, I found her gaze was almost identical, but… compared side-by-side like this… there was just a hint of cunning in there. A sense that… she had me where she wanted me. The room seemed to warm. My mind went to Kajagar, to the Chief, to the Madam… o-oh. Oh no. "Are you, perhaps, a tiny bit more experienced with these additional mates than you've perhaps let on~?"

Even though she wasn't the one being spoken to, Akako nodded intently, gnawing on her lower lip with a pair of cute fangs. "Yes, mother, she must be~! Hahh~!! It's amazing, th-that wolf is so so so lucky to be taking her, please--"

Tazuki held up a finger imperiously, and at once Akako abated. She shrank back on the bed, still on all fours, bushy tail wagging and bourbon eyes flicking desperately between us. The only sound that escaped her was her breath, which had deepened into heavy, almost laboured panting.

The heat in the room had only grown. Desperately, I started trying to talk myself out of dwelling on the predatory glimmer I'd just seen in Tazuki's gaze. Th-they couldn't also be secretly packing giant penises, right? O-or that root that made girls grow penises. That wouldn't--that couldn't be that common in this world, right?? Kajagar had been in a tribe that traded sex slaves, and Hoodwink was a kinda perverted player--th-this was just a very pretty socialite in a big city and her daughter!

"I-I, umm, miss, um, I-I'm very flattered, b-but I can't, um," I stuttered, torn between using the romantic barrier of my hopes to date April or the physical barrier of my chastity cage as my basis for refusing to--to go any further with this. "I-I can't have sex with her!"

I clapped my hands over my mouth. That last part had come out much more loudly than I'd intended--if there were any rooms next to us, anybody in them had definitely heard it. Akako's narrow features had dipped into a pouty frown; she was still panting, but her tail's swishing had slowed considerably.

"Oh~?" Tazuki, by contrast, seemed almost amused. "Isn't it quite the opposite?"

"H… huh?"

"Let's see…" With the tinkling of a dozen bracelets, Tazuki Otonashi gestured at the air in front of her. Despite myself… I frowned. If I didn't know for a fact that there was no healthbar or nameplate or Milestone count hovering over her head… it almost looked like she was… "Ah. Here we are." One last jab, and…

"'No longer resist their advances,'" she said mildly. No, not said--my eyes went wide. Read. "To me, that sounds almost like you couldn't possibly not have sex with her. Aka?"

Akako's bobbing and bouncing and panting halted. Her body quivered with anticipation. "Y-yes, mother?"

"Go on, dear."

The force that Akako shot to her feet with rocked the bed. Her clothes vanished--and, just like that, I found myself spurred into action. I dove off the bed, my wand appearing in my hand. "Glitterdust!" I cried, casting the first spell that came to mind. A rainbow of sparks shot out at Akako, but she darted deftly out of the way, closing the gap to me in the same motion, and a pale hand appeared around my wrist. I blinked. On some level, I'd been starting to wonder if everyone in this stupid game, player or NPC, had the Strength to overpower me easily… but Akako's grip was even flimsier than mine. If I just… twisted my arm, I felt certain that I could break her hold and worm out from underneath her, then maybe blanket them both in an Angel Down for long enough to get to the door…

"Get back on the bed, please," Akako breathed into my ear. "Ahhh, you smell so good…"

"G-get off me!" I snapped, even as I stumbled back to the bed, letting Akako keep her feeble grip on my arm. She let me go as I sat myself on it, but before I could shove her away, she shoved me first--pressing me back into the sheets and covers. Again, there wasn't enough force to keep me down at all. I-if I tried, I knew I'd be able to push back against her and scramble back to my feet again… but, instead, I held back, let her push me, back and shoulders and flowing pigtails and all into the bedding. A rosy scent wafted up around me. It was probably meant to be relaxing--but as Akako bounced after me, straddling my flat tummy and gripping my narrow waist with her fat, milky thighs, I found my heart thundering faster than ever.

"Oh, Aka. You're fit to burst." Tazuki sidled up behind her daughter, placing her arms dotingly on her shoulders. I followed her gaze down Akako's naked body--and almost gasped out loud. Between Akako's thighs, nuzzling intently against my still-clothed stomach, was a bulging ballsack, glowering an angry, repressed red… above which sat a stubby golden dome with a single dark hole in it. She was a sissy!

My face must have given away some small sign of my heart-pounding, clitty-twitching realisation, because Tazuki laughed her tinkling laugh and gave her daughter--her son--a loving, sensual stroke, all the way along both sides of her lithe upper body. Akako rolled herself along with her mother's touch, hips and all, white tip at the end of her tail twitching back and forth.

"You don't mind if my daughter relieves all that pent-up heat inside you, do you, my dear~?" Tazuki murmured, looking down at me now.

"Wh-why are you… t-treating her like this, miss…?" F-for some reason, any outright rejection refused to come to my lips--was that effect of Beastkin Buffet r-really that strong??--s-so I settled for trying to distract them. NPCs l-liked giving me lore dumps, right…?

"Oh~?" Tazuki swept her hands through the air again, moving invisible tooltips--and then my gown vanished, leaving me in nothing but my flimsy, and oft-repaired, frilly pink lingerie. Sh-she could get into my inventory?!! She dipped down behind Akako (who hadn't stopped rolling her hips since Tazuki had given her that appreciative stroke); I gave a start as she gave a matching, though much shorter, stroke to my own exposed package. "Rich talk for the sissy girl who agreed to this cursed cage."

"I-I didn't--I-I mean, she was gonna--"

"Please, mother!!" Akako was practically humping my stomach at this point, pistoning her hips against me like a sissy possessed. Little trickles of her stickiness trailed over my bare skin.

"In a moment, pet," Tazuki soothed her, running a hand through her fiery mane. Akako chewed furiously at her lip, pausing in her thrusts with one last stab in the very centre of my navel--a pitiful simulation of the way that dozens of m-men and monsters had hilted in me since I'd entered this game. "You like being caged, don't you~?"

"Yes, mother," Akako moaned, leaning back into her touch. The motion pushed her balls forwards again; I whimpered at the way they shifted and stirred beneath the golden dome holding her clitty--her cock!!--captive. Was that how m-mine looked?

"It's the elf in you, dear," Tazuki murmured. Her smokey brown eyes met mine. "The elf in all of us, hm~? Haven't you felt it, darling? That urge to be adored, to be lavished, to be claimed…?"

I met her gaze with watery, quivering eyes. I-I couldn't… quite bring myself to say no… lying was just so rude… b-but… maybe, if I just stayed silent… that would be defiance enough to tell myself I'd really fought against this. Against…

A whimper escaped my throat. It… i-it wasn't really the word 'yes,' but...

Tazuki beamed brilliantly down at me. A golden key appeared in her hand, and with a flourish, she bent down over Akako's front. Click.

The cock that flopped out onto my naked stomach was… small. I fought to ignore the twinge of disappointment in the back of my head, but, well, after all that buildup, all the heat and the thrusting and Tazuki's stroking--it was disappointing! Though it was a lurid red, and rocket-shaped, and even had a slightly thicker knot at its base… it was just tiny! At its straining, eager full mast, it wasn't even the size of my pinky finger, barely a sliver of scarlet sin--and my hands, Anne's hands, were positively dainty! W-would I even feel it going in?

"Aka, dear… she doesn't look very impressed," Tazuki teased the owner of this tiny dicklet. Akako just buried the lower half of her face in her hands, and peered bashfully over them at me. A… a strange feeling stirred in me. She looked… sh-she looked cute like this. Getting… teased over her tiny clitty… "Would you like mama to help out~?"

Still hiding behind her hands, Akako nodded fervently.

"Let's see… she won't want you too loose, I think, so how about… Enhance Aspect." Tazuki gestured gently at Akako's tiny member; and immediately, it began to swell. From sliver to stick to slug it grew, lengthening and fattening, until it was a searing-hot, throbbing manhood, lolling complacently in the sticky mess she'd already leaked over me. A cock. N-not even close to the biggest one that I'd been forced to accommodate… but a cock, all the same.

"Ahhh… th-thank you, mother…"

Tazuki quieted her with a peck on the cheek. "You can take care of that after we've tamed this sweet thing, darling."

"Yes, mother!" As her mother stepped away, Akako locked eyes with me, and I swallowed thickly. Any embarrassment or cuteness had been swallowed up in a fervid blaze, and that fire spat sparks at me as she eased herself forward, u-until her hot red tip was right at my lips.

"P-please, m-mistress--" I'd barely gotten out the title that I suddenly felt compelled to give her when she managed to force herself into my mouth, drowning out anything else I could say in a mess of gagging and choking. Her member burned in my mouth, not nearly as hot as Hoodwink's fiendling cock, but tinged with a new, deeper layer of humiliation. Th-this girl was weaker than me. Sh-she was another sissy. But, b-because she was a beastkin--b-because a horde of other beastkin had captured me a week ago, b-bent me over and gangraped me, I-I couldn't even--I couldn't even say no to her!!

"MfhH!! MfhHH!! NfhfH!!" Her tip just barely managed to scrape against the back of my throat--smaller, again, than Hoodwink, who'd easily managed to get herself halfway to my stomach once sh-she'd made it past my gag reflex--but, humiliatingly, the urge to tell her how big she was reared up inside me, desperate to work itself past my fluttering tongue and my straining lips. Her knot shuddered on the tip of my tongue, and I thought dazedly about biting down on it--b-but that was resisting her!

Mercifully, it wasn't long before she drew herself back out of my mouth, and I was allowed to fall to one side, gasping and moaning and panting for breath. Sticky strings of my spit spilled out over the bed and my chin a-and my tiny, naked breasts; and through it all, I couldn't stop myself from catching up on all the thoughts I'd had about her size, e-especially in relation to mine--

"S-so big, m-mistress, hahh, sissy, hahh, I-I'm s-sorry, I-I'm so much small--aHH!!"

The sensation of Akako slapping her magically-engorged cock down the cleft of my ass interrupted me, a-and I jerked my head back to find her kneeling over me. My legs were squeezed together, hips perpendicular to hers--but at her gentle touch, I-I parted them slightly, just enough for her to… hahh… g-get at… the prize that lay within.

"Ohh--ohHH!!" Akako squealed to the ceiling, as she forced herself into my pussy, discovering for the first time just how sticky and tight and humiliatingly easy to please that it was. I writhed on the bed beneath her, still unable to muster any effort to crawl out from under her, t-to kick back at her, to do anything to stop her--

"Hahh!! P-please, please, mistress~!!" Again and again I stalled on that first word. Stop? Don't? N-not even slow down would come to my lips--not that she was going very fast to begin with. The sheer delight of being buried inside me had blunted much of her desperation; she ground herself almost sedately in and out of my gushing pussy, as if savouring the sensation.

"She's sooo wet, mother~! Oh, wow, gosh, she's gushing~!!"

"I suppose there was no need to lubricate with her mouth, hm~?"

"Hahh~!! I-is this what a real pussy feels like??"

I whimpered into the bed. Tazuki's beauty had made my clitty stir… and all of her flirting and teasing and taunting had made it shudder. W-with a cock, e-even a smaller one, pumping in and out of me, e-even at Akako's relaxed pace… all while she and her mother were singing the lewd praises of my sopping wet, apparently-heavenly little sex-hole--

"Stars above, just look at that. She's pouring like Mirror Falls."

"Hahh!! Sh-she's squelching, mother~!! I-I can hear her squelch~!!"

--my clitty was convulsing. If it weren't for my branding, f-for my compelled Courtesy, I-I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I already would have expelled a-a shameful, p-pathetic load all over my latest rapist--b-but--hnghghh--I-I, I needed permission!! Moving faster th-than I could think, I twisted my hips around, but not to try and work Akako's cock out from inside of me; no, I corkscrewed her deeper into me, as I swung my clitty skyward and let my legs fall to either side of her. Unconsciously, my hands drifted to my mouth.

"P-please… please!!" I whined. This time… the force that kept me from finishing my wanton pleas wasn't any kind of magic. It was my own bubbling, roiling shame, spiking and seething in time with the cock cruising in and out of my churning pussy, begging me not to give in, not to squeal t-to these two heartless, hopelessly perverse women that this--that I--that they--

"Sooo good~!! She's soooo good, mother!!"

"I think she's trying to tell us something, dear." Tazuki loomed down over me, her enormous breasts swinging pendulously under her colour-streaked gown, bathing me in her curvaceous shadow. In her liquor-brown eyes, gazing down at me, there swirled a dizzying cocktail of emotions. I expected, and saw, a sardonic tinge of amusement, intertwined with a deep stroke of triumph; my gasping, moaning predicament, it was something she'd planned in advance, the thing she'd lured me up here for, with fleeting promises of somehow m-mending my relationship with April. Of course she was laughing, triumphant on the inside. Sh-she had me at her mercy, squealing and tossing a-and spreading my legs beneath her own sissy daughter…!!

"P… p-please…"

But as I weakly pleaded for nothing, just barely managing to cling on to that one last scrap of my dignity, even as my will wavered and I drew nearer and nearer to finishing this final, pathetic wish…

"Yes, darling~?"

I thought I caught a glimmer of pride in that swirling, smokey cocktail. Th-the slightest hint that… there was something more she wanted from me… and that… I-I was on the verge of giving it to her, and making that… pride, if that was what it was, rise to the very forefront of everything in those beautiful eyes. She wasn't a beastkin. I-I could resist her. Didn't have to… part my lips… a-and say…

"P-please… c-can I cum, mistress…?"

Tazuki bobbed her head in surprise, her slanted eyes the widest they could possibly go. The dire, choking wells of humiliation inside me deepened further still--th-that hadn't been what she'd been hoping for, a-and now I'd just--hnghhh--b-begged her for permission to show her, f-firsthand, e-exactly how much I was enjoying her a-and her daughter's treatment of me--

She finally settled on a brilliant, warm smile. "That's a good girl."

W-was she still… taunting me? T-teasing me?? Tears brimmed in my eyes, unbidden and pathetic and--just maybe--e-enough to tempt her to have mercy…? "Please… mistress…"

"Clitty sealed up tight, a cock buried in your sweet elven pussy…" she murmured, still wearing that proud smile. I squirmed uncertainly beneath it. "And you're begging to be allowed to cum like a proper girl. You're beautiful, darling."

"I… I-I am, mistress…?" My clitty buzzed away in its cage, straining and tormented, swamping all my other thoughts. Sh-she was… humiliating me, bullying me… b-but in the spiralling warmth of my lust, a-and in that gorgeous voice of hers, the words were almost… encouraging.

"Oh, yes. I haven't seen a more natural believer in six thousand years~! Why, it almost feels wrong to be the one teaching you… you have our faith written all over you."

"H-huh?"

Her smile deepened. "You may not know it yet, but you're destined for great things, sweetie. All of us are. Her virtues are engraved in our very spirits, in the blood that flows beneath our skin. To exemplify her innocence; to receive her adoration; to inhabit her most feminine aspect. Her diamonds are born under the crushing weight of the world; and, being hers, they shine with beauty more true than any other."

She stroked me, hair and skin and all, as she spoke; and when she was finished, that final word dangling in the air between us, a promise in senses and the past, not words and future… even my own forestalled orgasm had slipped from my mind. "Wh-what?"

"That is to say… yes, dearie. You may cum for me."

Pleasure rocked my body as--a-at long, screaming last--my clitty found its release. Watery white goo spurted out over Akako's bare tummy, and a squealing, girly cry spilled from my aching throat. My pussy clamped down on Akako's still-shifting cock, and she took this as her cue to release a fat load of her own, plunging herself d-down to her knotted hilt inside me so that I could feel her balls against my entrance, as they disgorged every last drop of her pent-up cum directly into my greedy little hole. I whined and whimpered, the sensation of a knot buried inside me now disconcertingly familiar… b-but, before I could drift off into an exhausted, troubled sleep, my clitty wrung dry and pussy knotted b-by yet another rapist… Akako deflated and eased herself out of me.

"H-huh? M-mistress?"

"Goodness, darling. Did you think we were done here~?" Tazuki sang.

I bit my lip. Judging by her purring as she slotted her golden cage back on, and the contented twitching of her tail, Akako seemed p-pretty satisfied with what she'd done to me… b-but if Tazuki had a-a cock of her own hidden under that gown of hers… "O-okay," I said softly, m-my clitty already stirred in its cage again. She… she was probably too powerful to resist, a-anyway. She could access my Milestones and inventory! I was better off just… giving in and…

"You'd better get cleaned up before April gets here." Beside the bed, one of the walls slid open, revealing a cosy little bathroom; sink, shower stall, weird VALKYRIE toilet and all. "You won't be able to get Aka's scent off without her help, but… cleaning out that nasty mess in your pussy for her is just common courtesy, don't you think?"

I flushed at the idea of doing anything with my pussy as a 'courtesy' for April--but then confusion took over. "W-wait, m-mistress, y-you're still… helping me? I… I thought…"

Tazuki curled her mauve lips at me. "That this was all a pretence to have my daughter satisfy herself with you~? I'm wounded, darling." The door out slid open, and she sashayed easily to her feet. "No, sweetie. I simply happen to have an uncommon genius in the matter of relationships between elves and beastkin--" she nodded at Akako, who had gotten back into her skimpy orange dress-- "and decided that you just needed a little reminder of how to conduct yourself around your true mistress."

I swallowed thickly, thinking of how Akako had made me squeal and writhe on that very bed. Sh… sh-she didn't seriously expect me to… 'conduct' myself like that around April, d-did she…?

"Now, clean yourself off, dear, and remember: show her you trust her. Alright~?"

I nodded weakly, dazed thoughts still stumbling through my head. Scent… A-Akako's scent was all over me, and j-judging from the last time April had had anything to say about that… c-cum in my pussy… "R-right… mistress…"

"Good luck!" Akako gave me a tiny wave as she and her mother waltzed out of the room. Faintly, I returned it. The screen door slid shut behind them… and though a part of me thought about waiting for a few minutes, and then sneaking out of this building entirely… in the end, the oozing, gooey mess l-leaking from my pussy was a more compelling argument than anything anyone had said or thought. I moaned, in disgust a-and nothing else, a-as a particularly thick knot of our churned-together juices slithered down the crevice between my cheeks. Y… yeah. Cleanup first. Escape later.

Gingerly, I stepped down from the bed and tottered into the waiting bathroom.