Rogan's Monsters 3: Temple, page 10
I had infused a huge area of land with my chi, letting it spread through the sand, the rocks, and everything else, creating a glowing circle of soil one hundred, two hundred, three hundred feet across. I knew that Ecco could have done wonders with that much chi-infused soil. Knew that I could, with time and effort, shape it crudely as well. But really, all that mattered was expanding the circle as much as I could.
And, finally, I felt something.
I had joined chi with Ecco before. I knew what she felt like, knew the shape of her soul.
And I knew that what I had just touched with my chi had to be her.
I breathed out and opened my eyes. “Found her,” I said.
14
I realized three things at once. The first was that while the wind still blew, it didn’t seem to contain as much sleet as before. The second was that the haunch of meat that had been cooking as I entered my trance was now largely eaten, and the sight of the remnants was enough to make my stomach growl for attention. The third was that the daylight, never strong with the layers of cloud in the sky, was already starting to fade.
I had been in a trance, infusing the soil with my chi, for the better part of half a day.
Yet none of that mattered. The only thing I cared about was that I’d found her. Ignoring the expressions of hope from Zera and satisfaction from Gamma, I stood and made my way from the crevice, with Zera leaping to her feet behind me, and even Camille and Gamma both moving to follow. With Ash trailing behind, keeping a close watch on us all, we made our way through the blustery, frigid wind, across earth that still glowed with the power I had fed it.
“Here?” Camille asked. “We’ve checked this way.”
“Yes,” I began. “Perhaps we missed it, or perhaps we didn’t look far enough—”
There wasn’t any point in continuing. Out of nowhere, Ecco had reappeared. She looked as she had done when I’d first seen her, a beautiful woman with the ears and tail of a cat. She was even wearing the same clothing she had appeared in before.
As she had done at the time, she took a moment to study her hands, as if making sure that they were real. As well she might, because she was not as substantial as she had been before.
She was largely translucent, and I knew that she needed a boost in chi.
Ecco turned toward me, her expression a mix of confusion and acceptance. “Rogan,” she said. Then her gaze turned to the others. “Lady Gamma. Zera. Camille. Ash.” She frowned, apparently puzzled. “It feels as if I have been gone for a while.” Then she gave an involuntary shudder, and within a heartbeat, she sprouted fur all over her body.
“What happened?” she asked.
I couldn’t help but smile. “The Wraith drained you,” I said. “You hid in your seed, and it has taken until now for us to find you.” At the mention of the seed, Ecco’s eyes grew wide. She bent down and plucked the object from the ground and held it in her hand.
“But now that we have, how about we head back to the shelter. It’s bitterly cold out here, and not all of us can grow fur.”
Before we could, however, Zera engulfed the insubstantial woman in a spontaneous embrace, and even Gamma and Camille seemed more than pleased to have the cat woman back.
As the women expressed their joy, Ash favored me with a laconic half smile. “That was well done,” she said. “I have never heard of anyone using their chi the way you did. I doubt even the Rogan you were before would have thought to do it.”
I didn’t know what to say to the giant woman. Didn’t want to admit that I’d started to have doubts, not just about the success of the quest, but if I was the right person to be part of it.
Not that I had any choice. I couldn’t give this body back to the original Rogan even if I wanted to. But I’d been beginning to think that maybe the man who had trained all his life in the Divine Steps and the use of chi magic might be a better match for this world and its dangers than I was.
After all, the only reason I was still alive was because of that Rogan’s training and skills. I felt like a rookie in charge of a racecar. Sure, I could figure out the basics, but in a race, wouldn’t a professional driver have the best chance of winning?
But something in Ash’s words gave me hope. Perhaps I wasn’t a bad choice of driver after all, if I could think of different ways to make use of my chi.
It was too late to resume our journey, and still too miserable, so we returned to our incomplete shelter and hunkered down once again.
Ecco was the last to stay standing. “Is this it? Is this where we are making camp for the night?” she asked.
Several of the others all spoke at once, agreeing that it was.
Ecco nodded. “I am in need of an infusion of chi,” she said, glancing my way. “But perhaps I have enough for the moment.”
With that, she focused and made a gesture, and all of a sudden, we were no longer wedged into a tight corner between boulders with a flat rock acting as part of the roof. Instead, we were inside a fully formed structure, complete with walls and a roof, with only a small gap through which we could exit or enter. The fire still burned brightly in the middle of the floor, and Ecco hadn’t forgotten about that either, leaving a small hole in the ceiling for the smoke to escape.
All at once, the wind vanished, and it seemed considerably warmer already.
Gamma and Camille both uttered a sigh of relief, and even Ash, who hadn’t complained about the cold in the least, seemed relieved.
But Ecco was noticeably more translucent. “Rogan?” she said, one eyebrow raised.
Her intention was clear.
She placed a hand on my chest and backed me into the corner. I didn’t hesitate, but began tugging at her clothing. Before she’d managed to pull my robes off my shoulders, Zera appeared at our side, wanting to join in. She was becoming quite the little nymphomaniac, and I certainly had no objection. Smiling, I let the girls help me out of my clothes. Spreading my robes out hastily on the ground, we sat down, with Ecco calling dibs by claiming my mouth with hers.
She was still semi-transparent, and it was interesting to see Zera moving behind her, through her, as Ecco straddled me. Ecco began rubbing her hands along my chest, her lips quirking up in a smile as she reached down and took my erection in hand. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Camille get up from her spot to come join us, and to my surprise, she kissed Zera on the mouth before moving over, pulling my head to the side, and kissing me.
We were still kissing when Ecco lowered herself onto me. In what felt a bit like a repeat of the hot pools, I had one arm around her and one around Camille. But this time, instead of it just being the four of us, Gamma hesitantly left her solitary place by the fire and joined the now-crowded corner.
She smiled shyly as she came around to my other side and put a hand on my chest. Ecco began to move against me while the others found a place to either kiss me or touch me. I took my hand away from Ecco to encourage Gamma to remove her clothes, tugging her collar away from her neck so that I could kiss it. She relaxed a bit more then, and once I released her, she pulled her robes off and threw them on the ground beside mine.
I liked that Ecco and Zera had a non-judgmental attitude about sex. And because they did, it had seemed to put everyone else at ease, as well.
All except Ash. The muscular woman remained by the entrance, keeping watch. I wanted to invite her over, but she wasn’t looking at me, and Ecco was moving against me more insistently, bringing my attention back to her.
Zera had placed her hands on Ecco’s breasts and was kneading them, and Gamma’s eyes went wide when she saw. I pulled the princess toward me for a tender kiss, even though I wanted nothing more than to pound into Ecco. These women had all become important to me, and it was important that they knew. Gamma responded by leaning into the kiss, her hands hesitantly wrapping around my neck and tugging at the ends of my hair.
When we parted, I turned my full attention to Ecco, who was close to her climax. She needed a chi boost more than the others, and so I wrapped my arms around her to meet her, allowing my body to respond. Feeling heady with all the sensations, I watched as Ecco’s expression changed from one of concentration to one of pleasure, and her walls became wetter around me as she continued to ride out her orgasm. I thrust into her a few more times until I came, and the infusion of chi began. We held each other as Ecco got her chi boost, and even if we’d wanted to part at that point, it would have been difficult. It was more pleasurable than ever, and when she finally leaned back to look into my eyes, we were both smiling.
Over the next few hours, I took turns with all the girls at some point. The others weren’t as badly in need of a chi boost as Ecco had been, and I realized that somewhere along the way, we had moved beyond sex for chi and into the realm of increasing casualness. I liked it and hoped it would continue.
When I finally dressed and went to take the watch from Ash. “Thanks for uh… keeping watch,” I said even though she shared the watch duties with me every night.
Ash didn’t say anything but nodded, gave a stifled sigh, and then walked over to the fire to lay down with the others. I didn’t quite know how to interpret it. She didn’t seem in need of chi, and she hadn’t been overt about wanting to join in, or even interested tonight.
As I looked back out into the cold night, I wondered if Ash would ever join us, or if she would ever want something even privately with me. Feeling sated, and more than lucky, I shrugged it off for the time being, thinking that the muscular woman would indicate such a desire in her own time, if at all.
We spent the night in the shelter Ecco had made, and even though many of the clouds seemed to dissipate and the wind faded away in the early hours of the morning, somehow the ominous feel of it all remained.
Yet there was something different about the place we had camped. Something unusual. I was outside the shelter, going through the Divine Steps, practicing as the sun rose. The earth around the camp had lost its chi glow, but it seemed like some evidence of my efforts remained.
Since waking up in this world, I’d known little more than parched, empty lands where life was a constant struggle. Only in the caverns had there been any real sense of fertility and growth.
The barren lands we traveled now were much the same. Empty. Desolate. With only the dried up remains of trees to indicate anything had ever lived here before.
But now, the earth around the camp seemed tinged with green. As if some small plants, algae or moss, were starting to grow.
I couldn’t be sure it hadn’t been there before and that I simply hadn’t noticed, but it even felt different. As if this small evidence of life counteracted the dark feeling that still loomed over everything.
Or maybe it was just me. When the others awoke, they made no comment, and we broke camp as soon as we could, the remains of the carnivorous creature shared among us. It was warm enough that Camille and Zera were happy to return my robes, and then we were off once again, intent on our quest beneath the ominous, broken sky.
We had traveled no more than half an hour, no more than a couple of miles from where Camille and I had bested the Wraith, when we came to the edge of what appeared to be a gigantic crater.
It spread out before us in every direction, and somehow, I knew this was where we had been heading all along.
Gamma confirmed it. “There,” she said, pointing. “In the middle. That is the Temple.”
15
The Temple was still some distance away. I knew without having to ask that it would still take at least a couple of days to get there, more likely three, depending on how difficult the terrain happened to be. But the mere sight of the Temple was enough to cause my heart to beat loudly in my chest and my throat to go dry.
I had begun to doubt we would ever make it. Had even, in my most private moments, begun to doubt that the Temple existed at all. To actually see it glint in the sunshine was enough to kindle a sense of hope deep within me, in a place I had all but forgotten.
And when I toggled the controls of my AC lens, to bring that Temple into sharper focus, it was as if my newfound hope had grown roots and spread throughout my entire body.
The quest for the Temple so far had been nothing short of ongoing misery. I had effectively slaughtered my way across the Wastes, fought a never-ending sequence of monsters in the caverns, and the pattern hadn’t changed since we’d emerged into these barrens. I had been close to death almost more times than I could easily count, and had almost grown used to the feel of gritty sweat at my neck and on my face. And if that wasn’t enough, for most of my time in this new world, I had been drenched with blood.
Sure, we had found plenty of water in which to wash within the caverns, and the hot pools we had bathed in had been an unexpected luxury.
But for the most part, this new, post-apocalyptic world I had found myself in could be summed up as ceaselessly violent, almost impossibly harsh, and grimy beyond words.
The Temple, in some way I couldn’t quite fathom, seemed to be a balm for all the ills of the world. It was a shining place, filled with spires and gold, and matched the image I’d had in my mind since before I first woke up.
I could have spent considerable time just staring at it, even if it wasn’t the answer to one of the questions I’d carried with me for so long.
But I wasn’t the only one to have such a strong reaction to the sight.
Ash was her normal solemn self, and Camille’s expression was unreadable, the fierce woman’s mouth a hard line of unknowable intent. Ecco was no more than curious, as she was with everything else.
But Zera could barely contain her excitement. The butterfly girl bounced up and down into the air, flapping her wings as she flew in short circles, only to touch down on the ground again. At the same time, she beamed at the Temple, at each of us in turn, and clapped her hands together.
“That’s it?” she asked. “It is it, isn’t it? It’s the Temple! We’ve made it!”
From my point of view, the celebrations were a little premature, but as ever, Zera’s enthusiasm was contagious. I felt myself starting to grin in response, and even Ash’s stoic expression seemed to soften.
But Gamma’s response was even more extreme.
For once in her life, Edda said nothing. The monkey simply sat on Gamma’s shoulder, holding a fistful of her hair for support, staring out over the crater with eyes as big as dinner plates.
The monkey creature’s expression mirrored Gamma’s own, and I could see she felt the same mixture of disbelief and hope that I felt, too.
But for her, it was stronger. She had been carrying the dream of finding the Temple far longer than I had, and the weight of her quest seemed to make itself felt.
It was as if her knees couldn’t carry that weight any longer, and all at once, Gamma sagged in place, sinking down so that her robes billowed around her. Both Ecco and Zera moved to offer their support, but Ash was the quickest, stepping in beside the princess, before kneeling to get close to her level.
“Lady Gamma?” the giant rumbled. “Are you okay?”
To my surprise, I saw that tears were starting to run down Gamma’s cheeks. She reached out to Ash and held the woman’s hand, her own disappearing within the giant’s grip.
“I’m fine,” Gamma managed to reply. “It’s just that—it has been so long. I wasn’t sure we would make it.”
By then, Ecco and Zera had both drawn in close, and even Camille had tried to offer her support as well.
“We still have a way to go,” the lizard woman said, and Gamma nodded. She took a deep breath.
“I know. But we are close. For the first time, it feels like we can actually do this. We can get there.”
Despite the princess’ words, it seemed clear that she didn’t intend to charge down into the crater right away. Nor did any of the others suggest it. The initial descent would be steep, and I idly began looking for an easy way down the edge of the crater.
As I was doing so, the wind seemed to pick up once again, as cold and bleak as it had been before. But this time, it came with a prickling sensation at the back of my neck, as if the ominous feeling that had been in the air for the last couple of days had returned in full force.
Nor was I the only one to sense it. Camille shot me a look of alarm, and then the two of us, in unison, spun about, looking back at the way we had come.
Not fifty paces away, there stood a figure clothed in darkness. I knew without the slightest doubt who it was.
As Vesh D’Agon had promised, it was the Queen.
16
The Queen was tall, regal, and had a beautiful face. I toggled my AC lens to show her stats, even though I already knew she would make a formidable enemy.
Class: Wraith hybrid (76%)
Additional DNA: Human + assorted others (44%)
Height: 6’3”
Weight: 185 pounds
Gender: Female
Level: X
Capability: Magic user
In the caverns where we had found Ecco, I had learned that the Wraith had been looking to create a perfect being. Given this creature’s level, the way she looked, and the imperious way she gazed upon us, I couldn’t help but wonder how far off that perfection this woman might be.
I had my sword in my hands before I even knew what I was doing. This woman, Vesh D’Agon’s Queen, was dangerous to an extent I hadn’t come across before.
She stood there, some distance away, her magic flowing about her like an angry cloud of hornets, her fury clear in the smallest of her movements, in the way her eyes seemed to give off darkness the same way the stars gave off light.
I knew that Ash had straightened and unlimbered her club, and that Camille had drawn her daggers scarcely a moment after I had drawn my sword, and that the others were already huddling together in response to this new threat. I found myself stepping forward on reflex, the small hairs standing up on my forearms. It was as if the mere presence of this woman raised the tension in the barren lands as a whole, as if her presence upset the balance of power in the very air.
