Rogan's Monsters 2: Below, page 12
I was an earth bender.
30
With no wagons, breakfast consisted of nothing more than water. Of us all, Gamma seemed to feel the loss the worst. While she had kept a few of her most important potions and powders on her person, the vast majority of them were stored in the wagons. So as well as not being able to finish any bread for breakfast, she also couldn’t repair the damage done to her makeup and hair.
Instead, she spent several minutes with Camille at her side, washing her face and hair in the small trickle of water running through the cave.
When they were done, Gamma looked considerably changed. Less haughty. It was as if she had used her elaborate makeup and hairdo as a mark of her authority, and without it, she was strangely diminished.
To me, she was much improved. Without the makeup to hide her features, she was very attractive, and when her hair was down, it was long, dark, and straight.
She looked more human to me than she had before, but I wasn’t foolish enough to express these thoughts out loud. I was sure she wouldn’t appreciate them, even though they were positive.
Ecco had returned as the others were getting ready, and soon we were ready to go.
A little hungry, perhaps, but with everyone intact.
“So,” Gamma said directly to Ecco. “Lead us, if you would, to this seed. And if you can keep us away from any dangers, that would be also be good.”
Ecco nodded in her otherworldly way, and did as Gamma asked.
Too bad it wasn’t so simple. The route Ecco chose wasn’t as easy as some of the earlier routes. Instead of a pleasant walk through an underground glade, we found ourselves climbing up or down, through narrow spaces, and as often as not moving through circuitous routes rather than those that were straight.
When Camille asked about the apparent randomness, Ecco nodded.
“My sister is wily. She knows we are here, and is aware of our intentions. She sets traps in our way that I seek to avoid. But also, she blocks the routes at her will, forcing me to choose another way.”
After some hours, Ash spoke up after having spent most of the day in silence.
“How big is this cave system?” she asked.
Ecco offered a casual shrug. “It varies,” she said. “But if you are asking how far we must journey, then we are talking days more than hours, but no more than that. If we are still here in a week, likely we will have failed.”
Days.
I should have figured, but in my head I was hoping for hours, and by the collective small sounds of disappointment from the others, so were they.
But we kept going, kept working our way through the tunnels as best we could, with me making a mental note to look out for more bats along the way that I could quickly zap and turn into a meal.
As it turned out, I wasn’t the only one to think of such things. As we walked, I noticed Zera, who seemed to flit about even though she was walking rather than flying. She was gathering from the luminous plants that grew from the walls, and when we took a break in an open space where the trickle had formed a cascading waterfall over a series of boulders, she presented the fruits of her labor to the rest of us.
“Eat,” she said happily, smiling broadly at all of us. The things she had gathered were a combination of what looked like leaves, a few strange-looking fruits, and even a few things that looked like fungi.
I wasn’t the only one to look at her in confusion.
The smile never faltered. She brought a handful of her offerings up to sniff, and nodded once. “They are safe. You can smell it.”
As the others did the same, I reached for one of the fruit-like objects, a round, greenish thing that felt soft in my hands. I inhaled it, seeking any telltale aroma, but all I could sense was that it smelled fresh.
I glanced at Zera once again, and she nodded encouragingly. “Eat,” she repeated.
The fruit was sweet, and I couldn’t prevent the juice from running down my chin. It tasted like a mango with gelatinous seeds, and I was surprised by how good it was. It was the best thing I’d tasted since before the Wraith blew my ass up, and all by itself, it was enough to make me think it had all been worth it.
I looked around at the others, and those who had gone for the fruit all seemed to be sharing the joy. The other food items though–not so much. Ash appeared to have bitten into something she didn’t like all that much, as had Camille.
“Try the fruits. They are delicious!” I said.
Fortunately, there were still a couple of the succulent, fleshy mango things left, although they quickly disappeared.
There was a chance Zera was wrong, and that we had ingested some slow acting poison. From what Ecco had said of her sister, the thought wasn’t so far-fetched.
But at that moment, I didn’t much care. It was a delicious way to go.
And anyway, I didn’t think Zera was wrong. What I thought was that we now had a source of sustenance that would keep us alive even if we failed to catch anymore bats. Or even, come to think of it, one of those oversized, toothy worms. If I’d thought to carry away a slab of the monster’s flesh as we had escaped, we could have dined on it for days.
Despite Ecco’s best efforts, she couldn’t guide us away from every danger the caves processed. We were working our way to the seed, to the source of the caves, or what I was starting to think of as the caves’ beating heart.
It was only natural that we would run into dangers.
31
We ran into the first of those dangers only a few hours after we had started to follow Ecco. We were in a darker chamber, following a small trickle of water, and at first, none of us even began to sense a threat.
We thought the bioluminescent plants and fungi were much the same as the ones we had seen throughout the cave system, if a bit bigger.
As she often did, Zera was playing with the plants, running her fingers through the fronds, and humming to herself as she walked.
I was keeping my eyes open for trouble, as was Ash, both of us skirting a large boulder that bent the chamber into a boomerang shape.
We had both lost sight of Zera completely when her humming stopped, and she made a series of uncertain noises.
“Oh, oh, oh!”
There was a flurry of activity.
“Rogan! Ash!” Camille called.
I turned and hurried back, with Ash close on my tail. It was just a few strides, and when the others came into view, I couldn’t at first figure out what the problem might be.
Zera looked at me. “My butterflies,” she said, gesturing almost randomly about her.
“What butterflies?” Ash asked, voicing the question uppermost in my mind. But I figured it out even before Camille answered.
“That’s the problem,” she said.
For much of the journey, as long as we had known Zera, she had drawn the brightly colored insects to her as if she was their rightful queen. They fluttered about from dawn until dusk, and might well have done the same in the darkness as well. Even in the cave system, she was always surrounded by iridescent motes of beauty. Not hundreds of them, but at least one or two, either flitting about or alighting on her hair and shoulders.
It was just who she was, and the rest of us paid it scant attention, although I secretly found it an odd but strangely adorable curiosity.
But now, there were no butterflies at all.
As if to press home the point, Zera held out her hand. A butterfly sat on her palm, but it wasn’t fluttering. It didn’t take an entomologist to see that the butterfly was dead.
Of all of us, it was clear that Gamma was the slowest to understand. “It is just a butterfly,” she began, not without sympathy for Zera’s loss, but more in an effort to keep the party moving.
“It isn’t just that the butterflies are dead,” I said slowly. “The question is why?”
As if to underscore my words, Zera grew suddenly pale. “I don’t feel so good,” she said.
“Poison?” Ash asked, echoing my own thoughts. I turned to Ecco, and her normally unconcerned face had gained an aspect of alarm. She nodded in agreement.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was wasn’t paying attention. The plants in this passage are not like the others. They are releasing a deadly toxin!”
That was all we needed to know. With Ash and Camille on each side to support Zera, we hurried through the chamber, only to see that the exit was smaller than it had been a few minutes earlier when Ash and I had first seen it.
“Go!” I said to the others. “Hurry!”
As we watched, the exit narrowed even further with a deep grinding noise. Ecco frowned and placed her hands on the rock.
The grinding subsided, leaving an opening so small that Ash would have trouble pushing through.
“I can keep it open for a short while,” Ecco said. “But my sister is stronger than me. If she focuses all her attention this way, then she will win.”
It wasn’t what any of us wanted to hear. “The chamber will fill with the toxin,” Gamma said.
“Go!” I ordered. “Get out of here! I’ll try to keep the poison away.”
With Ecco holding the exit open, the rest of the girls did as I said. I couldn’t see the poison gas or tell where it was, but I knew that it could build up in a sealed area very quickly. And I didn’t want to find out what would happen if it did.
Without conscious thought, my blades were both drawn as if I was about to launch an attack on an invisible, air-born toxin.
I gritted my teeth in anger and sent a burst of chi to my blades, and within very few seconds, I had transformed them into something entirely different, a long, double-bladed weapon with the handle in the middle, wide and flat like the type of thing Thanos might use. Without knowing if it would work, I started spinning the blades hand over hand, until they were like the propeller of an airplane.
Except that instead of pulling the air towards me, I was pushing it away.
I was like an industrial, human powered fan, blowing as much of the toxin away from me and the women.
I had no idea if it was effective, but I didn’t stop. And after a short time, Ecco interrupted my spinning.
“The others are gone. Your turn, and then I will follow.”
It was all I needed. Another burst of chi converted my blades back to the more practical short swords, and then I moved with all the speed and grace I could muster, literally diving through the opening and scampering through as swiftly as I could, to give Ecco as much time as possible to follow.
When I regained my feet, I found the others waiting anxiously. Zera seemed to be recovering from inhaling the toxin, which was fortunate, because I wasn’t sure how much potion Gamma had left. As Ecco climbed out, the passageway sealed behind her, and we all stared grimly at it for a moment.
“At least the toxin is on the other side of it,” Camille said.
32
Toward the end of the day–if it even made sense to think in terms of days inside the darkness of the caverns–we passed through a passageway that was home to a small number of bats. But there were more than enough for me to send up a blast of chi and secure fresh meat to go with any fruits and vegetables Zera found.
We cooked the bat creatures over a fire, courtesy of Gamma’s powders. While the meat was gamey and stringy, it was the first time I had tasted anything more substantial than the fruit since we had entered the caves, and to me, it was divine.
Once again, Ecco disappeared for much of the night, and this time instead of Zera, it was Camille who desired my company.
The cavern was one of the brighter ones we had come across, with luminous plants growing nearly all the way up the walls. This time, none of the plants produced the poison gas. We could tell because Zera’s butterflies were back.
It also had a waterfall. This small one was formed from a small trickle that ran out of the cave wall above, over some boulders as tall as I was, and into a depression at the base. The water was clear and bitterly cold. But after so many days of trudging through the Wastes and then the caves, none of us could resist the temptation to wash our faces, necks, and hands in the pool.
At least, the girls didn’t show much interest in doing more than that, but despite the cold, the idea of jumping in had a certain appeal to me. So after eating, I stripped out of my clothes and did just that. With a deep breath, I took a leap and landed in the very center of the pool, where the water went up to my chest. It took less than a second before I felt the cold.
It nearly froze my balls off.
“Sonofabitch!” I yelled.
I dunked my head under and then scrambled back out again as quickly as possible, to peals of laughter from Camille and Zera. Ash was already on guard duty and wasn’t facing the water, and Gamma had turned her face away quickly, as if she hadn’t wanted to be caught looking.
I would have smirked at Gamma’s reaction, but I was too busy trying to put my clothes back on before my teeth started chattering.
Camille came over to help. She was still smiling when she picked up my cloak from the cave floor and wrapped it around my shoulders. Instead of letting me finish getting dressed, however, she stepped in close and wrapped her arms around my body. She was surprisingly warm, and I welcomed the heat her body offered.
“Hey,” she said, looking up at me in a way that suggested there was only one thing on her mind.
I glanced over at the others. Again, I caught Gamma quickly looking away. Zera was still snickering, but she had begun tending the fire and wasn’t watching.
“Hey,” I said, turning my attention back to Camille. “You wouldn’t know any tricks to help a guy get warm, would you?”
She laughed quietly, her body shaking against mine, and even though she was clothed, I wasn’t, and the feeling was tantalizing.
I was still shivering when Camille leaned forward and kissed me. I wrapped my arms around her, bringing the edges of the cloak with me, and returned the kiss. That tongue of hers with the suction cup at the end still felt as foreign to me as it had the first time, but in a good way.
Wishing for just a bit more privacy, I pulled her farther away from the fire, into a dry corner that was free from the bioluminescent plants.
It didn’t take long to get her clothes off her, and soon Camille was pressing her naked body against mine, the contrast between her skin and scales feeling exotic and sexy. I kissed my way down her neck, over her shoulders, and down to her right breast, where I paused to take her nipple in my mouth.
Camille grabbed my hair and pulled my head back. “I don’t want to go slow tonight.”
Then she kept pulling my hair, bending my neck as far back as possible. When I felt her lips on my throat, I felt vulnerable, exposed. Her teeth scraped over my skin, sending shivers down my chest, stomach, and into my groin.
The lizard woman released my hair and slid down my body, pushing me onto the ground. By now my skin was becoming pleasantly warmed, and when Camille latched onto my dick with her unique tongue, a heady flush spread up my body. I laid back and let her work. And she hadn’t been lying—she didn’t want to take her time. In a few moments, I was writhing and panting, and afraid I would come too early.
But just before the point of no return, Camille released me from her mouth and tongue. Then she moved up to straddle me, sitting down on my length in one smooth motion. I sat up to kiss her, and also to distract her long enough so that I could take a moment to adjust.
Then she began to move, rolling her hips forward and backward, angling them so that I hit her just right. She stared into my eyes as she increased her tempo, and I held her gaze, thrusting to meet her with the same rhythm.
Camille came quickly, and I watched her strange pupils dilate and her lips open in a smile. She continued to ride me until I came as well, and the chi transfer once again made her glow from within, and I could trace the lines of her skeleton.
When she finally moved off to lay beside me, I was panting as if we’d just had a marathon session, when in reality it had only been a few minutes.
She began to move as if she meant to leave, but I took her hand.
“Stay,” I said simply.
Camille turned back to me without saying anything, just looked at me as if trying to decide what to do. Finally, she smiled slightly and settled herself with her head on my chest and my arm around her. We laid like that for a while, until the coolness of the cave forced us to get dressed. Then, after touching my face, she went over to lay near Gamma beside the fire.
33
Ecco had yet to return when a new threat emerged. I was sitting on the top of a boulder that gave me an unimpeded view of the decent-sized cavern we were in.
Gamma’s magic cooking fire was still burning, and my companions were sleeping in a circle around it. A few butterflies flitted around Zera, who was sound asleep.
I had taken over from Ash a couple of hours earlier, and now the big, muscular woman was lying on her back, snoring softly as she slept. I found myself watching her at least as much as the others, the soft snore not putting me off in the least. In fact, I found it endearing, and I admitted to myself that my uncertainty about her was fading.
What did it matter that Ash was sometimes a troll, or ogre? She was still the same person in any guise, and as she was now, she was very attractive. And, since waking up in this strange world, I had slept with a lizard woman, a butterfly girl, and someone who appeared to be a cat girl but who could very well be the conscious, physical manifestation of a cave system.
Why would I draw the line at someone who occasionally looked like a troll? Especially as she had only looked that way on account of one of Gamma’s potions?
Or had she? Was the giant Ash her real form? Or was this smaller version her true self?
And did it matter?
With the loss of the wagons, we no longer had any blankets or bedrolls. We had only the clothes we had been wearing and whatever else we had been carrying.
For me, that meant a water skin, my Soul Blades, and not a lot else. Ash had fared little better, and while Camille still had her knives and a few other items squirreled away, Zera seemed to have next to nothing. Of all of us, Gamma had lost the most, but she still had a few tricks. She might not have access to her wardrobe, but somewhere within her robes, she still had a selection of potions and powders. She slept softly with Edda beside her, and her hair fell about the ground, catching the greenish-blue light of the plants.
