Monstergirl Quest, page 16
He laughed slowly, pensively, and I got the feeling that this big prick didn’t do anything that he didn’t mean to do. Yeah, he was trying to get me nervous, but it wasn’t working.
“Ah, I’ve just come here to give a welcoming hello to my nemesis, Earthman,” the Necromancer said. “From what I’ve heard thus far, you’ve been a worthy opponent. Slaughtering you will be quite satisfying, I’m sure. But, alas, I do have more pressing business, concerning our vampiric friend here.”
“Speak your piece, Necromancer,” Aegis Winterhollow said. “Then be gone.”
The Necromancer turned to the vampire lord. Though his face wasn’t visible through his demonic helm, I got the feeling that the Necromancer was smiling.
“While I’ve arrived too late to see precisely what sort of aid you’ve rendered to the Champion, it is obvious that you’ve aided him in some way,” the Necromancer said.
“I have,” Aegis Winterhollow answered. “And how I treat guests in my own home is none of your concern, your highness.”
“But it is, Lord Winterhollow, I’m afraid it is,” the Necromancer said. “Someday soon, the Empire, this entire world, will be under my control. If that is to happen, I must make an example out of anyone who would conspire against me or aid my nemesis. If I don’t, I’ll never have a peaceful reign.”
“You’ll never have a reign at all,” Aegis Winterhollow hissed.
The Necromancer let out another unsettling bit of laughter as he strode back to the shadows pooling on the wall. “Either way, you won’t be alive to see it, bloodsucker,” the Necromancer said.
Winterhollow chuckled at the assertion. “Oh? Shall you be coming to visit me in the flesh, Necromancer?”
“Of course not,” the Dark King hissed. “I have an Empire to conquer. I can’t waste my time on the likes of you.”
Winterhollow crossed his arms in defiance. “None of your minions can stand against me, your highness.”
“My minions, no,” the Necromancer repeated. Once more, I got the feeling that he was smiling under that purplish, obsidian helm. “But the Wyvernkin vampire clan of the west could very well slay you.”
“I’ll raise another ten thousand blood ghouls before they ever reach my shore, Necromancer,” Lord Winterhollow countered. “Their little dragons will drown in a flood of my undead.”
“And how long will it take you to summon ten-thousand ghouls, I wonder?” King Darkheart said mockingly.
Just then, out in the distance, came the muted, but nevertheless bloodcurdling shriek from up in the sky.
“I’ve been planning on moving against you for a long time, bloodsucker,” the Necromancer said. “I told the Wyvernkin your whereabouts the moment I heard that the Earthman was en route to your keep.”
At that, Lord Winterhollow said nothing.
The Necromancer paused, then turned back to me. “I’ll be seeing you soon, Champion,” he added, then lumbered back into the shadow, which then disappeared.
Chapter Eighteen
On the balcony, with the raging icy waters bashing the shore a thousand feet below, we saw the single, smallish dragon wheeling through the clouds. On the beast’s back was a single rider clad in a full set of glass armor.
Aegis Winterhollow frowned. The wyvern shrieked that bloodcurdling shriek, blew out a gout of flame that lit up the clouds, then lazily wheeled around and disappeared into the haze again.
“So they’ve already sent an outrider,” Winterhollow grunted. “The rest should arrive within the hour. Perhaps sooner.”
“Who the hell are these assholes?” I asked.
Winterhollow grinned sadly. “A powerful clan from the western continents,” he answered. “With a full army of blood ghouls at my back, this would be a battle that I could win by nightfall.”
“And without a full army?” I asked.
Winterhollow turned to face us, his bright blue eyes glimmering with vampiric rage. “Gamelord, if you would do me one last favor.”
“Anything,” I answered. “We can stay and fight, if you need us.”
“A valiant offer, Earthman, but I must refuse, as I’m not confident I’ll win this battle even with your aid. The numbers are too lopsided. There’ll be at least two thousand of them coming. Besides, the precious Lady Bella requires your aid more than I do.”
Sir Lucien stepped in front of me. “Then at least allow me to fight by your side, old friend,” he said.
He clapped the knight on his shoulder. “If only I could,” Winterhollow said. “But someone in Duke Gladios’ castle got word to the Necromancer that your party was coming here. There’s a traitor among you back in Homehold, and the Duke and the Champion will need you there.”
Sir Lucien’s mouth suddenly tightened into a straight line. It seemed that the old knight was fighting back tears, but his eyes never got the least bit wet. “Very well, Aegis Winterhollow,” Lucien said.
“But there’s still the matter of your favor, Gamelord,” Winterhollow said.
“What do you need me to do?” I asked.
“Though I sense your teleportation amulet is only charged for you and two others, I can give it a temporary overcharge. With it, you could take my blood mistresses with you back to Homehold. They’ll be safe there.”
“Absolutely,” I told the vampire lord, and immediately thrust the amulet into his hands.
“No!” Felaxia said as she pushed me, Pandora, and Sir Lucien aside so she could stand face-to-face with her lord. “My lord, I will not leave you here to fight alone!”
Winterhollow smiled softly, then touched Felaxia’s cheek. “My dear, you’ve long been my most beloved wife. Your presence has warmed this cold, dead heart. I cannot allow you to die for me.”
“Then come with us,” Felaxia said. “If you can charge the amulet to take me and the mistresses, there’s no reason you can’t come as well.”
“Dear, Homehold has enough trouble without me taking residence,” he said. “Their battle is with the Necromancer, not with my rival vampire lords. Even still, Aegis Winterhollow does not flee from his enemies.”
Instantly, tears brimmed in her eyes and trickled down her porcelain cheeks. Though her lips quivered in sadness, the redheaded mage had an iron will.
Quickly, she grabbed a dagger from her hip and held the blade against her throat. “Then I’d just as soon take my own life,” Felaxia said.
“Okay, dear, it’s okay, put the dagger down,” Winterhollow said softly. “You can stay by my side. We’ll fight together.”
“You swear this to me?”
Now, I did see the smallest hints of tears in his icy blue eyes, like water droplets from a melting glacier. “This I swear to you, wife,” Winterhollow said as he wiped the tears from Felaxia’s cheek.
She slipped the dagger back into her hip.
The moment she did, Winterhollow snapped his fingers. Up came a green puff of illusion magic and the blood mistress’ eyes suddenly rolled into the back of her head. She fell, limp, into Pandora’s arms.
A single tear ran down Winterhollow’s cheek. He nodded to me. “She’ll awaken before long,” he said, then his hands glowed bright white and the amulet did, as well. He handed it back to me. “Thank you for this, Earthman.”
In the distance behind the vampire, the clouds were breaking ever so slightly. Just beyond them, we could all make out the darkening shadows of winged creatures, with bright orange flares of wyvern fire blowing behind that gray veil.
“Good luck,” I told the vampire lord, then I gathered everyone in his chamber to head back to Homehold.
The blood mistresses wept. Sir Lucien carried Felaxia in his arms. Me and Pandora held hands and, just before I activated the amulet, I looked back toward the balcony one last time.
The Wyvernkin riders were here, the wyverns shrieking and blowing fire, and as the sky turned red with their flames, Aegis Winterhollow shouted a battle cry then leaped into the sky after them.
********
I was lying on my back, sweat trickling down my brow as I listened to the rhythmic squeak of the bedsprings beneath me. I gripped the blankets tight in my fist with one hand, with my other clutching the small of Sephara’s back.
“OH SHIT!” I cried out as she moaned and giggled on top of me.
I hadn’t seen Sephara when we first arrived back in the duke’s chamber. The duke welcomed us and promised to fill me in on official matters after I had some time to decompress.
She’d been waiting for me by the door of my bed chamber. Sephara, clad in her immaculately white mage robes, hands crossed, smirking devilishly. When she slipped through the door, I followed her, and she hardly made a sound when she shoved me onto the bed.
Now, she’d been pleasing me for longer than I could count, and still she wasn’t tired yet.
“You…” I panted, gasping for breath as she clenched her warm slickness around my erection. “You must have cast a fortify fatigue spell…”
Her mage robes billowed around her waist, pulled down so her small, firm breasts could spill out. She leaned down and kissed me, then thrust herself down on me so deliciously that I was ready to burst.
“I didn’t need any spells at all, Earthman,” she said between passionate kisses. I ran my fingers through her moonlight hair and gasped as I pulled her tighter to me. “I merely missed you, my Champion.”
As she’d done several times already, when I tried to get her on her back to pleasure her, she merely grinned and pinned my wrists over my head.
“No, no, no,” she said, waving her finger in the air. “This is my time to pleasure you, idiot Earthman.”
I was about to laugh at her jibe, but just then she tightened herself on me further, and if the entire castle didn’t hear me crying out, well, it must have been due to the lingering effects of that silence spell I’d been under at vampire’s keep.
I was so close, about to explode, and Sephara shuddered in orgasm, she looked down at me, with her silver hair hanging in her eyes. “Earthman…” she panted, still shuddering. “Control yourself…for just…one more moment…”
I did as she asked, though it was next to impossible, and suddenly she disappeared under the blanket.
At first, I had no idea what she was doing…but then it was obvious.
From under that silk blanket, I heard Sephara let out a muffled little laugh as she took me into her mouth.
That was all I could take. By the time she finished me off, I was so exhausted that someone might assume I’d just fought another god-tier enemy to a standstill.
Sephara purred as she crawled out from under the blanket and lay down next to me. I slipped an arm around her as my chest heaved with every gulp of air. “There are some very interesting books in Therena’s private collection,” Sephara said. “There were a few that I studied extensively.”
She traced her fingertip around my bare chest, pleasantly tickling me. My eyelids were starting to get heavy. Though we’d only been gone for a day or so, the trip to the Island of Frozen Blood seemed to have lasted weeks.
Suddenly, Sephara looked at me sadly, almost mournfully. “Earthman, may I ask you a question?”
I nodded. “Of course,” I said as I tangled my fingers in her silverspun hair. “You can ask me anything you want.”
She rested her chin on my bare chest and stared up at me with those ravishing eyes. “You’ve yet to bind with Pandora,” she said. “Why is this?”
Though I thought it was awkward to talk about Pandora in that regard when we’d just finished making love, I remembered that the Mananymphs didn’t have the same sexual hang-ups that the rest of us had.
“Well, we just haven’t had the right moment yet,” I answered. “We’ve come close…but the timing just wasn’t right.”
“Though she doesn’t say it, she yearns for you quite badly, Champion,” Sephara said. “I can see it in her eyes, I can hear it in her voice.”
“It’ll happen soon, I promise,” I told Sephara. “But something strange happened to Pandora, back at Aegis Winterhollow’s keep.”
I explained everything to Sephara, how Pandora unleashed a hurricane of mysticism magic when we were hopelessly outnumbered. Surely, if Pandora hadn’t knocked the blood ghouls back then constructed that barricade, we would have been overrun.
Hell, without the barricade to assist him, Sir Lucien would have certainly fallen to the rest of the horde after me and Pandora made our escape.
Sephara grinned as I told her this. Her eyes lit up with hope. “Ah, so exciting!” she whispered. “It’s been so very long since Pandora could wield magic.”
“What happened to her?” I asked. “When I tried to ask her, she wouldn’t answer me.”
She was running her forefinger in pleasant circles on my sternum again. “That’s not a tale for me to tell, Earthman,” Sephara answered. “It’s a sad story, and one that only Pandora should tell.”
“I haven’t told her exactly what happened yet,” I said. “Her memory’s pretty hazy, so I don’t know how much she remembers. She claims that she doesn’t remember much at all of what happened.”
“Let me speak to her about it first,” Sephara said. “For Mananymphs, our connection with magic goes far deeper than mortals.”
“Yeah, I guess – ” I stopped. I turned back to her. “Wait, what do you mean about mortals? Are you saying that Mananymphs are immortal?”
Sephara laughed softly and rolled her eyes. She looked up to the ceiling in mock frustration. “Oh these lunk-headed Earthmen!” she said sarcastically, before turning back to me. “I find you so funny, Champion. You come here, you fight so selflessly for us, you even battle a vampiric god to a standstill, yet you still know precious little about us.”
I didn’t understand it, though. Each and every Mananymph I’d glimpsed so far was a young woman. Each looked like your average nineteen-year-old back on Earth. “So you and Pandora have existed since…well, since Mother Gaia created this world?”
“Not quite that long,” Sephara answered. “Some of us, yes. Pandora and I are roughly the same age. Both of us came into being sometime after the Second Age of the Elves.”
“Jesus,” I said in exasperation. “So you two are, like, thousands of years old?”
Sephara nodded. “By the way mortals measure time, yes. But by Mananymph standards, most of us are still quite young. Among those of us who are left, Ciara is the oldest. By mortal standards, you could say she’s around twenty-three years old.”
My head was spinning from this revelation, but I was used to that by now. This world was as confusing as it was exciting, and I quite liked learning the ins and outs of this strange realm.
Because I’d come to a conclusion. I’d made a decision. I wasn’t sure when, exactly, I settled on it, but after battling my way through undead hordes and fighting vampire lords and allying myself with orcs, there was no way I’d ever want to go back to Earth.
This was a big, wide world. There were Mananymphs being oppressed all across the Empire, and God knows how many other injustices going on, as well. No, going back to some failing business in the boring real world was not something I wanted to do.
Sephara got up from the bed. I watched her every sensual step as she pulled her robe back on. She turned to me, cocking her pretty elfin ears, and grinned. “Stop staring, Earthman,” she said.
I laughed. “That’s impossible,” I said. “Where are you going?”
“Well, I should probably find Pandora,” she answered. “If her mysticism magic is returning, I should talk to her about it before she has another episode.”
“Yeah, I was worried about that, too,” I said. “We got lucky with the blood ghouls, but I can’t have Pandora passing out mid-battle again.”
She leaned across the bed and kissed me. “I’ll help her, Earthman,” Sephara said. “Don’t you worry.”
Pandora had been restless when we returned to the duke’s chamber. Instead of taking some time to relax, she’d taken Sir Lucien into town. Though the guards and soldiers had mages with limited life detection spells, Pandora’s goggles were more trustworthy, and she didn’t want any more undead surprise attacks.
Once Sephara was gone, I pulled my pants up then went to the window. It was starting to get late, dusk was approaching, and the sky was turning a lush shade of velvet. The warm evening wind was pleasant against my bare chest and I watched, below, as candle lights flickered to life in the windows as the commoners prepared for the night.
I heard my door creak open behind me. It was Therena, the beautiful, golden-skinned high elf. She smiled as she joined me at the window. “A beautiful evening, isn’t it?” she said.
“Very much,” I answered. “Therena, thank you so much for keeping an eye on Sephara while we were gone.”
Though both Sephara and Pandora seemed distrustful of the haughty high elf, Therena had shown her loyalty when the chips were down. During that undead ambush in front of the castle, Therena had thrown herself in front of a dagger meant for Sephara, saving her life.
I looked. She still had a scar on her shoulder, where the dagger had struck her.
Therena caught me looking at it and grinned. “I could have used my restoration spells to make my skin whole again,” she said. “But I decided to leave the scar. It reminds me of what we’re fighting for, and what we’re willing to do for our cause.”
I leaned against the open window, taking in the beautiful landscape beyond Homehold. “That was selfless, what you did,” I said. “That dagger could have killed you.”
“What defines us most, Gamelord, if not the sacrifices we are willing to make for others?” she asked.
That warm evening wind gusted through the window. It caught Therena’s golden robe, blowing it tight to her golden body. She was like a statue, like a sculpture. No doubt, the men in Homehold must have drooled every time she walked the streets.
She managed to be radiantly beautiful even when she frowned. Her golden skin didn’t have even a single hint of a wrinkle. “The duke and I were discussing the Necromancer, and how he’d received word that you were seeking out Lord Winterhollow,” she said. She sighed in muted frustration. “There is a traitor among us, sadly.”
