Author's note:

Once more, the following chapter was commissioned. If you'd like to commission a story of your own (or the chapter to an existing story), details are on my profile.

Responses:

to Guest on Feb 24, 2025: You know, you might just be onto something there. Let us see where Echidna's lusts take her in the near future, eh?

to Thunder Dragon: More Pathfinder elements will appear as the story goes on and more of what Rowin brought to the setting of Queen's Blade has time to trickle in. Might even see another character from Wrath of the Righteous down the line.

At the heart of her lair, the visage of the Swamp Witch flared. Her fire blazed, but none saw it. Instead, on the other side a jagged gap in the air, as if looking through a broken window, a deep, raspy voice boomed back as the fires dimmed.

"The raaaaiiid went exactly as it was meant to," said the voice. "The Knight-Commander has been drawn out, and the weakness of your opposition exposed by a handful of demonic rabble."

The flames cracked and popped around the Swamp Witch.

"Everythinnnng," the voice insisted. "The Commander's power lies not in his swords or his magic. He can share his hidden power with others; give them guidance; make them strongerrr. He and those who grow close to him may challenge even the Demon Princes, if allowed to fester. You must submit to my power and use it to destroy him, if you are to succeed."

Oh, the Witch didn't like that at all. Her fire blazed, filling the room and leaving scorch marks on the stone ceiling.

"And youuu need meee to destroy it," the voice spat. "The Commander will no doubt cultivate his companions' power as he did before. Your power alone will stand no chance against them. Ignore them, for now. Keep to our bargain. Thinnnn the veil and spread the undeath of your swamp."

None saw the Witch's fire waver, because the eavesdropper was listening from behind a pillar, cloaking herself in dark magic to keep her from standing out amongst the ambient power that saturated the air. Menace counted herself an ally of the Swamp Witch, not a servant. She'd been intrigued when her "mistress" had ordered privacy for herself. Menace couldn't gather who the voice belonged to, or what the Abyss was, but she knew her future consort was the topic at hand.

So, Rowin could make her stronger, strong enough to worry the Swamp Witch's mysterious partner. If it was really so simple as to "grow close", then Menace would start reaping the rewards the instant he agreed to be her consort.

Menace smiled. She congratulated herself on her talent to spot talent, just as she'd done with Setra and Sekmeti.

XXXXXXXXXX

Rowin was in a bit of a daze by the time he made it back to his room at the inn. As tough as he was and as well-fed as he'd been for someone foraging on the road, the near-constant wear from traveling and fighting made the siren call of a warm bed all the sweeter. It was all he could think about.

He was pleased to see that the minor rampage he'd led had kept the brimoraks from burning down the place. He was also pleased to see a general lack of corpses in the common room upon re-entry, though it took a bit of angry shouting from Laila to get the front door unbarred. Even then, Laila had to fly through the window of Rowin's room, go downstairs, and present herself before the owner believed her.

He didn't bother locking the door after he stumbled inside his room. He didn't think about saying good night to anyone or telling anyone not to go rummaging inside his pack. He didn't even think about how the babau they'd killed had mysteriously vanished, along with any stench a demon corpse might've left behind. No, all he was thinking about was how good it felt to abandon his cloak and chainmail, and how soft that bed felt when he flopped back and instantly fell asleep.

His next thought, groggy though he was from sleep, was how heavy the weight on his body felt. A leg had slung itself around his, hooking it like a wrestler would, and a pair of huge, unbelievably soft, definitely naked breasts were pressed to his left pectoral. He could feel the woman's breath against his face and, especially, against his torso as her lungs pressed and unpressed her nipples against him. It had to be Echidna, because the long, leathery thing he felt between his ribs and her midriff could only have been a second slumbering serpent.

She wasn't alone, though. Another equally soft, equally huge, and equally naked breast was warming his right arm, about at the elbow. A soft, gentile hand had laced its fingers into his. He felt her breath on his face, too, that caused her bosom to caress the flesh of his arm. He remembered, now: Leina had asked to room with him and, even after the battle, he hadn't turned her away. She must've been as worn-down as him, because he felt the tempered metal of her greave against his other leg.

But that left the mystery of who was on top on his other side, trying to wedge between Leina and himself. He opened his right eye and was surprised to see Laila, her slightly smaller but no less pliable chest resting between him and herself, even as her head tried to rest between his and Leina's shoulders. Her blonde curls spilled over his naked torso; she hadn't gone to bed in her beret, or her white breastplate. Her feathery wing was unfolded, draped across the bodies of her, him, and Echidna like a down blanket. It was surprisingly warm. Her metal wing, to Rowin's curiosity, was absent, not even a metal nub to show where it… Come to think of it, he wasn't sure how it attached to her.

Rowin opened his left eye to find Echidna was already awake, staring at him. He caught the briefest glimpse of her serene, curious expression, before sultry seduction took its place.

"I just love the way you think," she whispered suggestively. "Body heat is the best blanket." She drew closer to his face, dragging her bosom along his skin. "You hungry? I was thinking of something meaty for breakfast."

Her hand was sliding up his pants. He gently caught it before it could pass his mid-thigh.

"If you want meat," Rowin said, his wit resharpened, "go swallow a field mouse."

"Mmm, I'd prefer a songbird," Echidna replied, licking her lips.

He lolled his head over to look her in the eye. "Real talk: what's your interest in Leina?"

"She's my adorable little quarry," Echidna said earnestly. "Someday, I'll have to bring her back to her father; it's what I've been paid for. Until then, I plan to have all the fun in the world with her."

"And you're really interested in a wandering vagrant like me?"

She put her lips to his shoulder. "You're not wandering, you're traveling. I could travel with you, if you like..." She kissed him in earnest on that shoulder. "Who knows where we'd end up?"

"I hate to burst your bubble, but you've got yourself a conflict of interest," Rowin said. "In that, your interest and my interest in Leina conflict. So, do us both a favor and give the count a refund."

She chuckled. "And if I don't?"

"Then get used to frustration."

She buried her mouth against him so her laugh wouldn't wake the others. "Aaaah, you… You're funny."

She drew close. "Part of being a thousand years old? You learn to be patient. You see all kinds of people come and go. You're cute, Rowin, but you're not as special as you think."

Now it was Rowin's turn to chuckle. "Speak for yourself." He shifted away a little, causing Leina and Laila to stir. "Now, if you don't mind, I'm looking to start my day."

Echidna squeezed his leg tighter and pressed herself harder against him. "I'm a mercenary, remember? You can't get something for nothing."

"Yeah? What's your price for letting me up?"

She grinned and opened her mouth. "Tongue."

"...And if'n I don't?"

She laid her head beside his and practically clawed him against herself, so much that her pet snake slithered out from her warm, sun-kissed cleavage and coiled around her neck.

"Then get used to frustration."

After that, Rowin must've been at least another hour beneath the three women. Only then did he have the will required to shimmy and shove his way out from underneath them. Echidna clung to him like a leech, laughing while they rolled right off the bed and landed on the floor, Echidna's bare legs spread beneath him. The image of her nubile, hourglass body and hairless, flawless skin was one that made Rowin kick himself for being so principled. She wanted him and he wanted to, but not enough for either to compromise on Leina.

Laila began to awaken, which was enough for Rowin to leave Echidna in the same room as a topless Leina. He wandered around the village, prowling the ruins of destroyed homes and shops, looking for anything he might salvage from this mess. He stuck to homes with skeletons inside; the dead wouldn't miss any of their belongings.

Better us than some other scavenger, Finnean commented.

"Yeah," Rowin replied.

"Yes what?"

Rowin found Leina had caught up to him.

"I mean 'Yeah, no harm in putting some of this to good use, if the owners are all dead.'"

"But that's stealing!" Leina said, shocked. "You can't!"

"Salvaging," Rowin corrected her. "I'm not looking for heirlooms or coin, just little things like some flint or kitchenware, plus anything that might've drawn those demons here."

So much for loot, Finnean bemoaned. Leina's too lawful for our own good.

He did manage to find a set of metal spoons, forks, and table knives amidst a couple houses. He even palmed a few coins he found in the ashes of what used to be purses. The trick was to only take from places that had a lockbox or the like, something for Leina to keep watch on while Rowin went about the grim business of scavenging from corpses. In the end, he found enough coin to at least cover their room fee.

After they returned to the inn, Rowin invited Leina to join him for breakfast. The coins he'd made from the previous day's busking were enough to pay for some porridge and salted venison and still leave a good amount left for the next leg of the journey. Rowin made sure to use unburned coin, both so Leina wouldn't see and so the innkeeper wouldn't get all huffy about whose body he might've found them on.

Laila came down soon after and "sampled" some of their food, needing less due to her angelic heritage. Echidna had already left, apparently.

Once they finished eating, Rowin wiped his face off with his sleeve and stood up. "So, care to join me?"

Leina and Laila both blushed a little.

"For what?" Leina asked.

"For finding out what parts are still hurting," Rowin replied. He stretched and winced a little before rolling out his shoulder. "There's one right now."

Leina stood. "If I do, could you spar with me some more? I need to keep improving."

Rowin shrugged. "Why not? Best time to learn is when you're tired and sore."

Laila frowned, floating out of her seat. "Why's that?"

"Makes the good habits stick."

Soon enough, they were out in the street, with a broken piece of wood each. With the village freshly raided, it was easy to find discarded refuse to use for improvised blunt weapons.

Leina charged in, raising her "sword" high before snapping it to a hanging guard as Rowin struck at her arm. Leina pushed him back and spun around, only to be slapped on her back by Rowin's follow-up attack.

"If you're going to spin," Rowin said, "either keep clear or keep yourself guarded. Sure, spinning's a way to wind up, but-"

Rowin spun and swung at Leina's leg. Leina darted back but Rowin thrusted like a scorpion at the underside of her arm, just behind her breastplate.

"-it really all depends on who's ready for it."

Leina rubbed her stinging skin while Rowin rubbed his wrist. They were both still recovering, despite the help from the angels.

Leina kept her next few attacks quick, taking the cue from Rowin and using her wrists to guide her blade instead of her arms. Rowin caught her final one with the strong of his weapon, then dropped his block to a downward angle and slid forward, smacking Leina's exposed thigh.

"Better," Rowin said, "but I think that shield of yours has got you limited in how you think to swing. See this?"

He imitated his previous block: hilt high, tip low. "This is called a 'hanging guard'. Lets you counter in ways a normal block wouldn't."

"But isn't that a weaker block?" Leina asked. "What if someone's more powerful than you?"

Rowin beckoned her to try it. Leina swung with both hands in a downward chop. Rowin took it on the medium of his "sword", before dropping his hands (and the rest of himself) and letting her attack slide off his weapon and down beside him. Just like that, he was inside her guard, standing next to her, with his "blade" at her throat.

"Then you don't try to out-power them, if you can help it." He tapped her shield. "Same with this. Those prongs are made for tangling up swords. Use them."

On their next exchange, Leina caught Rowin's weapon in her shield and twisted it, ripping it out of his hands. In response, Rowin slid low and forward, lacing his arm around her leg and shoulder-blocking the back of her knee. Down she went, her weapon flying from her hand. She got back to her knees but found Rowin sitting on her ankle, his leg hooked on it. Then she felt two arms lock around her neck in a strange chokehold she'd never seen.

"I thought we were sparring," Leina grumbled.

"I'm not choking you out, am I?" Rowin released her and they stood up.

"Where did you learn that?" Leina asked, retrieving her "sword".

"Same guy I learned those songs from," Rowin replied. "I whooped him good when we first sparred, but then I made the mistake of making fun of him. In exchange, on our next go-round, he jumped me like that and gave me a busted lip. Helped me realize there's more to fighting than what the swordlords taught me."

Leina sighed. "'Swordlords'. That's who I'm competing against."

"Nah, you're competing against a mercenary, a priestess, a glorified game warden, your sister, and my wife," Rowin corrected her. "I got no more skin in this than you do, Leina."

Nevertheless, they took a break to scavenge some supplies from the burnt village. No one seemed to have an interest in the burnt clothes of likely dead peasants, so Leina and Rowin helped themselves to makeshift bindings for their sore joints and beaten bones. It was on their way back to the inn that they came across a familiar pale face.

"Afternoon," Rowin said with a nod. Leina gave one as well.

Shizuka smiled. "Glad you're doing better. You sleep well?"

Rowin thought back to the squishy, bouncy blanket he'd awoken beneath. "Yeah…"

Shizuka grinned. "Oh ho, you had enough left in you to fool around?"

"What? No!" Laila protested. "We were just… The other bed got wrecked in a fight, okay?"

"Sure it did," Shizuka said sarcastically. "Can I get you for a little while, Rowin? It's, well… It's about Lady Tomoe."

Rowin shrugged. "Don't see why not." He passed a pair of coins to Leina. "Be sure to save some lunch for me."

A minute after parting, Shizuka told him the rest. "Lady Tomoe's had a rough night. Something about what that demon-"

"Incubus."

"Whatever. Something it did really has her shaken."

"Well, you felt what it did, right?"

"I felt like I was genuinely going to fuck him," Shizuka said casually. "Is that normal?"

"Yes, incubi have that effect on women," Rowin explained, "but I think that one put a little more gusto in its compulsion, if none of you were bothered before then."

Shizuka chuckled. "Maybe you had something to do with it," she suggested. "Still, Lady Tomoe was tossing and turning all night, and moaning in her sleep, and now she's insisting that she's fine when she's not."

"So, how am I supposed to help?" Rowin asked.

"I teased her about dreaming about you, and she got really defensive." Shizuka led him out of the village and close to the woodline, where Tomoe sat in a meditative position beneath a tree. "Talk to her, please. You know about those demons. Maybe you can help her with whatever she's feeling."

Rowin shrugged and approached, leaving Shizuka behind. Tomoe opened one eye and flinched when she saw him.

"R-Rowin," she said, blushing and standing up. She closed her robe despite it not being open. "Is something the matter?"

"You tell me." Rowin sat down next to her. "Heard you had a rough night."

"We-"

"After you went to bed," Rowin finished. "Something about that incubus have you shook? You weren't your usual confident self while he had his grubby demon claws on you."

"It… I'm fine." Tomoe's face was beet red, so much that she tried to hide it in her sleeve.

"The color in those cheeks says otherwise. Come on, I won't tell anyone."

"I was…" Tomoe took a deep breath. "I wanted to… do unseemly, inappropriate things."

"With the incubus?"

"With you."

Rowin didn't react. "After the incubus turned on the compulsion?"

"The-... Yes, that's the right term. 'Compulsion'." She knelt next to him, sighing when she saw Shizuka flash a double thumbs-up at her. "I am a warrior-priestess of Hinamoto. I've spent my entire life learning the discipline of both aspects: combat and ritual. Yet, what I nearly did, what I was about to do before you took my hand-"

"You're plenty disciplined."

She looked at him. "What?"

"The incubus didn't get to you because you're not disciplined. It got to you because you're a woman, you'd never felt one before, and it was stronger than normal. That compulsion was there from the start. You just didn't notice it until the incubus powered up, because it was so weak that it didn't even register."

Tomoe stared at the grass, processing this new insight. "From the start?"

"Weak-willed women can't help but fawn over them; same goes for men with succubi," Rowin explained. "If not for the raid, every woman in the village would've mobbed the two bastards like moths to a light. The only one I know to ever stop doing it was a succubus who wanted to be good. Didn't like to be touched, wolf-whistled, not even given the eye; too afraid of giving in and hurting someone."

"...I see..."

"Point is," Rowin continued, laying a hand on her shoulder, "it's nothing to be ashamed of if an incubus cranked up its aura and had you feeling things about it that you shouldn't have, or having nightmares about it. Incubi are scary sons of scary things. Nightmares about them aren't unheard of, either."

Tomoe's face was hidden by her hair, and the fact she looked away from him. "The nightmares…"

"Yeah?"

"They were, um…" Rowin could practically taste the heat coming from Tomoe's bashfulness. "About you. About what I thought about doing, and very nearly did, in the throes of compulsion."

Rowin tilted his head, said nothing, then decided to put one hand on Tomoe's far shoulder and the other on her far hip, completing the hug with a gentle pull.

"What about now? Still having to hold yourself back?"

"N-... No?"

Rowin let her go. "See? Nothing to worry about."

Suddenly, Shizuka.

"Great to hear!" said the ninja, popping out from behind their tree. "So, how about that song, Rowin?"

"What song?"

"The song you promised to play on this," Shizuka replied, poking the instrument sticking out of his pack, both of which he'd somehow forgotten he'd brought with him.

"I don't remember promising that."

"Well I do," Shizuka insisted. She knelt next to him and threaded her fingers atop his shoulder. "Would I lie?"

"Yes."

"About this."

"Would you?"

"What if…" She ignored the disapproving look from Tomoe and leaned on him; her moon-colored cleavage smothered his arm. "You made an honest girl out of me and played us something?"

Rowin rolled his eyes but smiled.

She's got you there, Finnean said from his waist.

"Yup," Rowin said, which made Shizuka raise an eyebrow.

"Interesting sword you have there," she said, none-too-stingy with the implication in her voice.

"Which one?"

"Not just the one that's attached," Shizuka replied.

"Shizuka, please!" Tomoe cried. Her tormentors laughed and both hugged her again.

XXXXXXXXXX

"So, when would he be taking too long?" Laila asked, floating in front of Leina as she led her towards the forest.

"That's why we're going to get him," Leina replied. "It's still a long way to the capitol, and I need to catch Risty before she gets there."

"Why's that?" Laila asked.

Leina produced a double-faced gold coin. "Risty gave this to me. She said to give it back once I became a good fighter."

Laila's wings drooped, as did her expression. "Um, Leina? Not to sound rude, but-"

"I know, I know," Leina sighed. "I'll be strong by the time we get there."

They heard Rowin before they saw him. As they left the village, his voice carried over the air. This new song was much gentler than the last they'd heard from him: calm like a gentle breeze, one they could see themselves dozing off to.

Roads go ever, ever ooooon…

Over rock and unnnder treeeeee…

By caves where never sun has shooooown,

By streams that never find the seeeeea.

"Speaking of ways to go…" Leina commented. She was surprised when Alleyne and Nowa joined them in the grass, drawn to listen to tranquil yet novel music.

Roads go ever, ever ooooon…

Under cloud and under staaaarr…

Yet feet that wannndering have gone…

Will turn at last to home, afaaaaar.

They spotted Echidna in the village. She leaned against a cabin with her arms folded, watching, her face unreadable but for the small shifts in her hazel-colored eyes.

Over snow by winter sooooown!

And through the merry flowers of Juuuuune.

Over grass and over stooooone!

Under the mounnntains in the moon…

By the time the four reached him and sat down to listen, even Echidna had joined them, laying down and closing her eyes in the sunlight.

Roads go ever, ever ooooon,

Over rock and under treeeeee,

By caves where never sun has shooooown,

By streams that never fiiiind… the seeeeeea.

Author's note:

That song at the end is an actual song called "Roads", from the 1977 Rankin-Bass Hobbit movie. Look it up some time; that whole movie's soundtrack was great, like a darker, more folksy version of old Disney songs.