Monster Beach Hotel: A Slice of Life Fantasy, page 1
Monster Beach Hotel
A Slice of Life Fantasy
Noah Layton
Copyright 2023 Noah Layton
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. All characters in this book are aged 21 or over.
Contents
Chapter 1 – San Andrica
Chapter 2 – The Goddess Vendara
Chapter 3 – Just Another Job, Right?
Chapter 4 – Renovations
Chapter 5 – Mana Unleashed
Chapter 6 – Opening Day
Chapter 7 – An Unwelcome Guest
Chapter 8 – A Welcome Guest
Chapter 9 – Volleyball Interrupted
Chapter 10 – Griffin Taming For Beginners
Chapter 11 – Storm Surfing
Chapter 12 – Hobgoblins vs Lunch
Chapter 13 – Dessert?
Chapter 14 – At First Sight
Chapter 15 – Nymph By Nature
Chapter 16 – Hollowed Haven
Chapter 17 – Specialty Accommodation
Chapter 18 – Pool Party
Chapter 19 – Vault Shopping
Chapter 20 – Sign of the Apocalypse
Chapter 21 – Counter-Measures
Chapter 22 – Behind Enemy Lines
Chapter 23 – A Way In
Chapter 24 – Retaliation
Chapter 25 – The Takeover Specialists
Chapter 1
San Andrica
There’s a lot to learn about the Bay of San Andrica, but if somebody asked me for the three most important things, I would probably have said the following:
1. It resided on the south-east coast of Thylvaria, a state around the size of Rhode Island that sat 60 miles off the coast of California.
2. Sandy beaches and paradisical forest were in plentiful abundance.
3. Its number one collection of customers by far were magical women.
Up until 1868 nobody had a damn clue that the place even existed – probably because, for all intents and purposes, it didn’t.
Then, on a fateful month over 150 years ago, the governments of the world went wild when a land mass that wasn’t supposed to be there suddenly was.
According to the vast and varied magical beings that resided in Thylvaria, they had lived for many a century on a peaceful planet with an atmosphere similar to Earth’s before suddenly and inexplicably landing here.
No catastrophic tidal waves or major disasters came about; one second a patch of ocean was empty, and the next it simply wasn’t.
I wasn’t around back then, but history told that it caused one hell of a diplomatic nightmare.
Fortunately it was one that was solved, and in 1875 Thylvaria became as much a part of the US as any other state when it was officially recognized as a sister-state via California, becoming a protected territory with special status.
Two decades into the 21st century, Thylvaria possessed a population of a few hundred thousand, a sprawling economy of natural resources, and ranked as one of the most exclusive holiday destinations in the world.
And out of them all, the region of San Andrica was by far the most popular. Sandy beaches, glistening waters, abundant natural resources, tropical fish, surfing, wild monsters, and long days of sunshine.
Did I mention the wild monsters part? Oh, right, yeah.
Oregon had mountain cats, Montana had wolves, and Thylvaria had monsters: griffins, sprites, hobgoblins, unicorns, even manticores if you delved deep enough into the wilds. The people were much more humanoid, of course: fae, goblins, orcs and elves of all kinds, just to name a few.
And then there were the women.
It was nigh-on-impossible to keep them out of San Andrica. All year round, ladies of all different kinds came rocking up from the rest of the state and the mainland to the east to enjoy the beaches, the water, the jungle, the bars, the sun, and some of the finest luxury hotels in the world.
And who could blame them? There was a reason people who came to San Andrica often never went home: once you had a taste, there was nothing quite like it.
And I was no exception.
The name’s Finn Thornfield, twenty-one, and as of almost a year ago, a permanent resident of Thylvaria.
I grew up on the mainland just like any other mortal, just a regular guy with a mind for mending things and not many ties to hold me down.
Thylvaria, San Andrica – none of it was supposed to be my life, but one fine day during my second year of college, I discovered that I was a Hylar.
It’s just another name for a mortal capable of setting foot in a place abundant with mana. There aren’t many folks from the mainland that can do it for more than a couple of days without experiencing serious side effects, but I was one of them.
I had considered finishing off my Comp-Sci degree, but with the ability to actually live in Thylvaria, there was no way that a Hylar like me was going to pass up the chance to make my way to paradise.
So that’s exactly what I did. A year later and I was having the greatest time of my life: sharing an apartment with two of my best friends in the region of San Andrica itself, taking occasional night classes at the college across town and working as many temp gigs as I could find.
A year in paradise and I had a reputation as a jack-of-all-trades willing to take on anything, whether it was bartending, carpentry, plumbing, painting, everything in between and, my most useful skill of all, being able to talk myself out of even the most dangerous situations.
None of those things were skills I had ever been naturally talented at. Hell, I had never been naturally talented at anything besides the act of sheer, stubborn persistence, and having that on my side had allowed me to pick up pretty much everything I needed to out here.
And if life was good, it was about to get even better in the strangest of ways.
This whole story starts on a breezy day at Foxy Knights, a bar in the cozy town of Knightkeep just a little way from San Andrica’s sandy beaches.
‘How’s my favorite bartender?’
That’d be Gabe, joined by Casey – my best friends in the world who both just so happened to be my roommates.
Gabe was a wood-elf standing tall and thin over six-feet, and probably the only elf I had ever met with next-to-zero physical coordination; the only thing that stopped him from scraping the barrel was somehow being a damn good surfer, one of the only places where he knew his feet. He possessed a tenacity for herbs of all kinds, and had worked just about as many odd jobs over the years as I had. He also had a much bigger capacity for getting fired from them, but if there was one thing I couldn’t fault the guy on, it was his sense of loyalty. He would have my back no matter what.
Casey was a moon-fae; lilac-skinned with ears a little longer and more pointed than Gabe’s. She still liked to get into trouble when the opportunity arose, but only insofar that she knew she could slide away from it – she was better at that than anybody I knew, and had the competence, unyielding work-ethic and contacts all across town to match. She was pretty, smart and sarcastically charming, though our relationship had only ever been purely platonic; just how both of us liked it.
‘He lives!’ Gabe smiled, taking a seat at the bar with Casey as he brought his palm in for a slapping handshake. ‘Remind me again: who’s drinking here at 4:30pm on a Monday?’
‘Regulars,’ I smiled, wrenching open the dishwasher and unleashing a torrent of steam over the bar. ‘Besides, if they weren’t in here they would just be inadvertently wandering around in the wilds out there; in here they spend their money.’
‘Did Molly fix the prices yet? There aren’t any more shipping problems from the mainland, you know? It’s all easy weather out there.’
‘I’m right here, douchebag,’ Molly, my cat-eared boss, called from the storage room.
‘Hi, Molly,’ Gabe called out. ‘How are you?’
‘Getting ready for a busy night without your friend here. Best bartender I have and he can’t work a double.’
Best bartender wasn’t exactly high praise considering I was one of only two bartenders working the joint, but I took it.
‘Can’t work a double?’ Gabe repeated, turning to me. ‘You’ve got plans?’
‘Oh, right,’ Casey remembered, her long, pointed ears twitching either side of her pretty face, ‘You’ve got that new gig in the Bay.’
‘Wait,’ Gabe frowned, ‘what new gig in the Bay?’
The new gig in the Bay, as I explained to him, was a temp gig I had picked up the week before.
See, the Bay was the informal name for a very particular spot in San Andrica: a three-mile stretch of beach lined with top-tier luxury hotels. If San Andrica was paradise, then the Bay was the crème de la crème, comprised of the beach resorts, sandy shores, pristine waters and beautiful women that I mentioned before.
The ladies were the exclusive clientele of the Bay for a few specific reasons: they did
I had met all kinds of strange folk during my time pulling random gigs in San Andrica, but no job put the eccentric in a man’s presence as much as bartending did.
Last week, one patron in particular stood out: a grizzled high-elf named Grennan who looked as old as 280 but was likely much younger considering how many double-vodkas he was taking back.
He was hiring for a renovation project in the Bay and needed staff. I knew when guys with too much money and not enough sense hadn’t quite caught onto their screw-ups yet, and while I didn’t feel great taking advantage, the guy was offering $40 an hour.
No way was I passing that up.
‘So the Bay,’ Gabe smiled as I finished my story. ‘Not bad, man.’
‘We’ll see,’ I nodded. ‘Considering how weird the guy seemed, my hopes for something stable aren’t exactly high, if this place he claimed to be renovating even exists at all. But hey, weirder people have kept their promises to me, so I’m gonna give him the benefit of the doubt.’
I said goodbye to my friends, clocked out and made the walk through town to the shore.
Life as a Hylar was pretty decent all things considered, but it came with a few caveats. For one, as a being from the mainland, specialist magic was unavailable to me; while everybody else possessed specific magical knowledge, I didn’t have access to such resources.
As a Hylar I was still technically able to access magic, but the government of Thylvaria was and always had been incredibly reluctant to let magic leave their borders.
It wasn’t like they hadn’t tried. Back in the 50s, the Program for Magical and Mana-Based Cooperation had attempted to introduce magic to the mainland after decades of begging. It began cheerily enough before a bout of explosions and disasters at the hands of irresponsible users caused the program to cease operating altogether.
That didn’t stop spies from the mainland stealing plenty of knowledge during the Cold War, but attempts stopped years ago when they realized that any war magic Thylvaria possessed had been lost centuries ago, and the current iterations of magic could achieve no more damage than your basic firearm.
That said, I still had access to generic base spells, mainly in the form of summoning light, conjuring fires and creating basic protection wards. They were all pages from Base Spells: An Introduction to Thylvaria. I had read the thing a dozen times the first month I was here, and while the spells came in handy, they didn’t offer much in the way of expansion and development – or travel.
Getting around San Andrica was easy enough on-foot, but for longer distances things got slightly trickier. Bicycles were common, but with it being so hot out, I didn’t exactly want to show up looking like I had swum there.
Of course, there were some more creative means of transport.
For those with the cash to spare, there were flight hubs all over San Andrica where anybody could catch a griffin while seeing the beautiful scape of the forests, jungles, towns and rivers that scattered the coastline.
Unfortunately griffins were a costly option for a guy like me, so a cheaper alternative was the only solution.
I had only visited the Bay a handful of times considering the beach and the resorts were generally only permitted for access by monster women and hotel staff, and every time it was via sea serpent. I hated sea serpents, but with how close I was cutting it time-wise, I didn’t have many options.
‘Where to?’ Reginald, the elderly dwarven keeper, asked as I reached the end of the dock.
‘As close to the middle of the Bay as you can get me.’
‘The Bay? Busy time of night, Finn. I ain’t got many around that’ll make the crossing.’
‘Come on, man, you must have something.’
Reginald sighed and searched the sea serpents.
‘I might have one.’
The next thing I knew I was on the back of the rowdiest monster imaginable, a vicious 30-foot-long serpent that took to the water like a fly on manure.
He was fast, I gave him that, but with how much sea spray was kicking up my way, I was starting to think I would have come in drier just by running.
But I had to get there in time.
The sea serpent raced across the water, soon turning the corner and giving me a view onto the Bay.
Paradise on Earth was an understatement. The Bay ran on a long, slow curve for several miles, nothing but sandy beaches beneath the late-afternoon sky.
Even from far-off I could see the women on the beaches in their hundreds upon hundreds sunbathing, frolicking in the ocean, surfing the waves at the more unsettled waters beyond, playing volleyball and enjoying themselves.
‘Woah!’
The sea serpent came in way too hard for landing on the shore, refusing to slow its roll. The goblin keeper at the beach awaiting my arrival waved his hands frantically before diving for cover as my steed arrived.
The serpent abruptly stopped and I went hurtling through the air, thrown clear towards the beach.
I landed roughly on my back, thankful for the sand but not so thankful for the full-body-ache.
Should’ve just taken a bicycle along the pathways…
I blinked against the blue-orange sky. Suddenly it was blocked out by a trio of slender silhouettes.
‘Are you okay?’ A gentle voice spoke.
‘Wait, he’s a guy. What’s he doing here?’
‘Sure, but who cares? He looks hurt… And he’s pretty hot…’
I blinked myself from my daze and sat up, quickly shaking it off.
Three tall, beautiful nymphs looked down at me with careful concern on their pretty faces, their full lips pouting at me with genuine concern.
With their black bikinis wrapping up their slender, supermodel physiques, beads of moisture running over their intensely blue bodies, I could have easily mistaken them for a mirage.
‘What are you doing here?’ One of the nymphs frowned.
‘It’s okay,’ I groaned, quicky brushing myself off. ‘I’m interviewing.’
‘Oh,’ the nymph on the left smiled. ‘Where, exactly?’
‘Just down the beach… Uhh…’ I fished my phone out of my pocket as I staggered to my feet. Fortunately it was still functioning, so I pulled up the name of the hotel. ‘Huntress Lodge. Any of you ladies know where it is?
The trio of nymphs glanced between each other uneasily. One folded her arms beneath her round, perky breasts, another winced and ran a hand through her wet, jet-black hair, while the third bobbed her head from side to side, figuring out what to say.
‘It’s a quarter-mile up the beach,’ one of the nymphs said. ‘You can’t miss it… But not exactly for good reasons…’
‘So it’s a fixer-upper?’
‘It’s a fixer. Whether it’ll ever reach upper status is doubtful.’
I thanked the nymphs and took off up the beach, shaking sand out of my clothes as I went.
Not exactly the first impression I wanted to make in a spot like this, but I would survive.
The beach was as crowded as ever with women of all kinds: in the immediate area alone there was a group of nymphs, half a dozen dryads and several with blonde and grey tails protruding from their lower backs, as well as large furred ears poking out from among their hair.
I had never seen so many staggeringly beautiful twenty-something women in one place. Just this patch of the beach looked like the most exclusive photoshoot on the planet, only without the photographers; the only cameras were on their phones as they recorded themselves dancing, drinking and partying without a man in sight – except for me.
I received more than a few looks as I hurried down the beach, probably more for the state of me after the sea serpent ride than anything.
‘Okay, Huntress Lodge, here you are…’ I glanced left at the property and felt a frown cross my face. ‘Oh, what the hell…?’
The place might have been a luxury retreat at one point. Hell, it might have been a fixer-upper at one point, but the jury was still out on whether the nymph’s categorization of it even being a fixer was right.
The worst part of it all was that I knew this place, only under a plethora of different names; Huntress Lodge was obviously its latest pseudonym.
The hotel was one of the most unique spots in the Bay not because of the questionable state of the place, but because of its location. Occupying a large plot of land right in the center of the shore’s stretch, the patch of jungle behind it was home to a jagged volcano-esque hill that arose to a peak of 200 yards over the beach, the tallest among the long line of hills that ran behind the hotels all around the Bay.
