by Prax Venter
Abby wrapped her tentacles around her slender stomach. “Maliah is indeed the true liar.”
Jezebel let out a huge sigh. “Yes. I seriously hope more people on the outside world feel the same way. But what was all that about a script?”
Sasha answered in an uncharacteristically monotone voice. “She’s telling him things she cannot possibly know to prove that he is within a time loop. A script that’s been honed to perfection over time.” The succubus turned to Detrious, hope glistening in her stunning blue eyes. “You believe this man holds the answer to the curse?”
The dark-haired man reevaluated Sasha with a quiet glance before responding.
“Not directly, no. But he is a gifted scholar with a unique outside perspective on the fields of magic. Any mystical force that I’ve applied to the problem has failed yet his mundane talents might hold some key I’ve been missing. With his wound healed, the Doc may be more… focused than he ever has been. Either way, I only have a little over eight hours to catch him up and discuss any possible solutions before needing to start again.
“You four stepping into our looping existence excites me beyond words. I do hope you stay and rest for a while. Meegon is correct, the being that spoke to us all has power on her side, yet her words held an air of spitefulness rather than a position of justice. Despite this, there must be countless individuals or even whole groups of people outside the safety of Sanctuary that would risk much on the chance to obtain this promised godhood.”
With that, Detrious looked each of them in the eye and bowed slightly before calmly walking off after Chorra and the Doc.
Meegon crossed his arms. “I understand his position, but I disagree with the ramifications. This is a… sacred place, and I just feel it in my nose bones. Sanctuary was created for a purpose.”
Mark glanced over at the balding man and felt a strong fear of his own death pour out of him as would a bank of warm fog roll in over a cold sea. A counter wave of disgust hit him from Sasha, and he felt her unwavering desire to break this time loop.
That was it. It was time for a heart-to-heart with the women who he cherished more than anything in this world or any other.
“If the tour is over,” Mark began, “we would like to embrace the time and safety Sanctuary has to offer. I’m a Collector with three Enthralled to satisfy after all.”
Meegon puffed out a sigh and nodded.
“There is one more Repeater called Xetron who never leaves his splintered quarters within the Breeze. He’s a bit odd though and not much of a conversationalist. You’re not missing much.”
“And we have nine hours before the day resets?” Jezebel asked.
“That’s correct,” the balding man confirmed. “Nine hours, nine minutes and nine seconds. We have no reliable way to measure the time as every device that could measure it stopped functioning the moment of the crash, but countless experiments with sand contraptions and sun position have left us fairly confident about the length of the cycle. Here, let me set you up with some meals for the day and then I’ll leave you four to your… business.”
Their guide led them to a section of wreckage where the teenager was currently rummaging through smashed crates and barrels and immediately retrieved the bag of dried flies the bellhop was after. He tossed it to Jelwin who thanked him profusely and sprinted off back to the fish-woman in the red dress.
He then grabbed a rough cloth sack off the ground and filled it with a huge wheel of white cheese, a few apples, two lengths of crusty bread, and several fruit-laden muffins.
“Here,” he said, handing the bag to Mark. “A welcoming gift from Sanctuary.”
Jezebel stepped forward and took the bag as she asked one final question.
“What happens if we simply walk straight away from this place for the full nine hours? Will we encounter a barrier or other impasse?”
The kind-hearted Meegon smiled and shook his head.
“Not at all. There is nothing stopping you from exploring the land, but you will find it devoid of all life- er, except plant life. There are towns, farms, and other structures, but you will find no other people or animals. Chorra has spent many cycles soaring out as far as she can, exploring, but always wakes by my side and always reports a lack of inhabitants in every direction.”
“Fascinating…” Jezebel said as she stuffed the sack of food into her backpack.
Mark extended his hand to the balding man and matched his warm grin.
“Thanks for everything, Meegon. Sanctuary is nothing like I expected it to be, but I’m glad it’s here.”
They parted ways and Mark led his team along the flowing river while he considered how to approach the conversation about partially erased memories and his previously bonded Enthralled.
- 3 -
When they were far enough away from the Repeaters and other Visitors of Sanctuary, Jezebel shifted to her centaur form and carried everyone up above the multi-hued trees. It was a beautiful warm day and a pleasant one to have as the base for an infinite loop.
They didn’t speak much, lost in their own thoughts as they soared over the landscape. The higher cliffs that Mark had tumbled off still existed in this past, but the jade-green jungle trees up there were denser than he remembered from the previous night. Countless decades of rain must have washed more and more of the fertile dirt needed to support such leafy vegetation down into the river-sliced valley below them.
Their goal was to find someplace private to talk, rest, plan, and fuck each other’s brains out- not necessarily in that order.
About ten minutes passed before Abby pointed one of her tentacles down to the glittering river.
“He runs.”
Mark had to squint, but after a few seconds he picked up movement and spotted the gray skin and huge head of Kiv, the dickish hippo man.
Sasha squeezed her arms around Mark from behind while they rode on Jezebel’s back.
“Every day he struggles to find help, eternally...”
No one had anything else to say as the doe centaur took them higher and banked left over the jungle. If he was truly a Repeater and lost his memory every cycle, it wouldn’t matter if he spotted them. But there was no reason to risk it.
A short while later, the cliffs that framed the valley began to slope downward, and The Serpent began to split apart into smaller streams. With the land beginning to level out, it was easier to see the wide river delta further ahead and then the dark sea far beyond.
One of the sparkling tendrils of water looped back on itself and dead-ended into a small lake. They might have missed the several log-cabin-type buildings hidden under the colorful trees if it wasn’t for the short wooden pier sticking out over the water.
Their flying steed gracefully landed on the weathered dock, her black hooves clacking quietly against the boards. After a short trot forward toward land, Mark, Sasha, and Abby dismounted and surveyed what appeared to be a small fishing village.
Mark cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Hello?”, but no one answered. The day was calm and what little summer breeze they’d felt in the air was blocked by either the forest behind the tiny town or the thirty-foot sandstone cliffs to either side. Utter silence was all they heard from any direction.
“I think we found our sanctuary within Sanctuary,” he said, hands on his hips as he spun in place.
They found most of the shoddy beds in the small village hardly fit one person, but after exploring more thoroughly, they found a stable filled with an abundance of clean hay in each of the stalls. With a little work and the white sheets found hanging out to dry on several clothes lines, the four of them constructed a fluffy nest within one of the 12 x 12 pens to relax and have their picnic.
“It appears that I was destined to end up in a stable after all,” Jezebel said, tucking her doe hooves to the side as she settled into one of the corners.
Abby moved to sit close to her. “This is far more comfortable than I imagined it would be.”
Mark and Sash
a joined them, and each took their own corners while Jezebel began rooting in her pack for their lunch.
“Okay,” Mark began with a sigh, mentally agreeing with Abby as he settled into the soft hay buffered by layers of freshly laundered cloth. “We have a lot to discuss, and some of this is going to be difficult, but I want to start with you, Sasha.” He turned to his loyal succubus as she pulled her unfocused eyes from the ground. “We’ve been over this. I’m begging you to let your past with alternate me be left behind. You haven’t been the same since we stepped in here, and I need my Sasha back.”
She nodded and gave him a sad smile.
“I’ve been thinking about that too. I know the way I feel hurts you and that makes everything so much worse. But, Mark, this is who I am.” She pointed to the shallow gouge of a scar that ran from her left horn to the middle of her cheek. “My past is a part of me. And I know beyond a doubt that that Mark wasn’t you, yet to me, it’s impossible to forget what I did to a Mark.”
The curvy succubus got onto her hands and knees as she crawled over to him. Once there, she scooted back until her ass pressed into his crotch and then she pulled his arms around her bare stomach. Her vanilla scent was maddening and tugged hard on his stored essence.
He quietly enjoyed her presence in his arms, and she continued.
“You have pulled me from the edge of despair, Mark. You too, Jezebel and Abby. At this point in my life I can no longer imagine existence without all of you- but I am still one fucked-up bitch with a shady past. Deal with it.”
Mark nuzzled his nose into her shoulder-length blonde hair and squeezed her tight.
“You appear to feel indirectly responsible on some subconscious level for this repeating day scenario,” Abby said quietly from her place next to Jezebel across the stall from them. “While it seems noble to right wrongs similar to mistakes in your past, I agree with Mark that your depressed sulking does not help the situation.”
Sasha had been melting into Mark’s embrace, but she stiffened now.
“Sulking?!” she repeated, and he felt her trapped spade tail wiggle with indignation against his chest.
Jezebel nodded. “More like moping.”
Sasha wanted to argue but huffed out a puff of air and settled back into Mark’s arms.
“Fine, point taken. From now on I’ll try and keep my sulking stuffed deep inside. Maybe all I need is a good deep dicking.”
Mark planted a long soulful kiss on the back of her neck and felt her perfect flesh prickle under his attention.
“Soon,” he whispered, then addressed all his bonded monster-women. “But we have more heavy shit to talk about before I attend to your… our needs.”
Sasha felt the seriousness of his intention and crawled away toward Jezebel and Abby. Ignoring the angry protests from his throbbing erection, he continued onto heavier territory.
“Jezebel,” he began. “You said you experienced- uh lived through… Whatever- you know all that happened to Other Mark inside the Crystal Heart program that got installed on my ChronoRig, correct?”
She froze in the middle of passing Abby what looked like a blueberry muffin.
Fear started leaking out of her too now.
“Yes,” she said after a pause.
“Seeing that broken stuffed doll in the Lagomorph village seems to have knocked something loose. Fragments of remaining memories, I believe. Then, last night when I had a blue shaft of energy through Abby’s stomach, a flash of one-eyed robots shooting blue lasers popped into my mind and almost distracted me from saving someone very very important to me.”
Tears began to immediately well up in the satyr’s emerald-green eyes.
“You… This shouldn’t be possible, Mark. You’re remembering?”
Mark made fists in the sheets and they all felt his tidal wave of anger.
“Stop, now,” he said firmly. “We just got through spanking her over depressed sulking. I need to be able to talk through this with my team without getting tangled up in shit we can’t control.”
He paused and softened his voice before continuing. “Like Sasha just said, the four of us have been through so much together, there is no force in any universe that could change my mind about how I feel about my curious cute doe, my logical beautiful boss monster, or my sassy bombshell of a techno succubus. Especially not some bullshit memory fragments of ex-girlfriends. For better or worse, our four hearts are bonded for eternity.”
They all smiled at that.
“So, did I have some weird doll creature as an Enthralled?”
Jezebel let out a short laugh as she wiped away the tears.
“Yes. Does the name Roo mean anything to you?”
Mark thought about it, but nothing came back. He took that as a good sign. He shook his head.
“No.”
Jezebel seemed encouraged as well. “What about Vale? Ahnix?”
“Ahnix?” Mark repeated to himself. It was an exotic word he was sure he’d never heard before… yet. A whiff of savory musk and a flash of intense dark eyes stabbed his brain but was instantly gone.
“You were very close with Ahnix,” Jezebel said quietly, feeling his internal reaction. “It makes sense that if there are any memory remnants, she would be in there somewhere. I can’t believe I failed so badly.”
Mark pulled in a deep breath. “It’s incredibly faint…”
He focused on the name ‘Vale’, but nothing really jumped out at him.
“Jez, I want to get these bits out into the open so they don’t creep up and surprise me again. Tell me about this Vale person.”
Everyone looked to her as she thought about what to say.
“Well, she was a Giant Naga- her lower half was all snake. She was like your general and served as the group’s tank.”
“Hmm.” Mark turned inward holding these new clues and found faded images of ridiculously huge black nipples with… thick metal hoops through them?
“Okay,” he said. “This is good. Compartmentalizing these foreign bits feels right. I can collect them and put them into some dark corner out of the way.”
Abby sat forward. “Are these fragments of past Enthralled what triggered your indescribably pleasurable healing spell?”
“And the impressive area attack that followed?” Sasha added.
Mark shook his head again. “No. Both were the result of me almost failing to heal you, Abby my love. I was so profoundly livid over these intruding memories that I burst open some higher level of consciousness or something. It felt as if my mind became perfectly interfaced with this simulation. I was hooked into everything and there was no separation from this virtual reality and myself. I could do anything. But there certainly was a cost.”
“Fascinating,” Jezebel said. “I hate to suggest we should explore this if it causes you harm, but I still believe Abby’s initial interference altered your code in some way that we may be able to abuse to escape this virtual prison.”
Everyone was quiet for a few moments as they processed the conversation.
Abby took an enormous bite from the muffin with her beartrap of a mouth. Seeing her pointed teeth was rare, but it always amazed him that she’d never poked his sensitive flesh with them.
“I’m jealous of Jezebel’s memories,” she said as she chewed. Then she swallowed and turned to face the strawberry-blonde satyr. “You have access to a whole database of Mark’s sexual escapades with three other Enthralled. Did the four of them orient their genitals in ways we have yet to experience with him?”
Jezebel blushed. “Um… some of their anatomy was different-”
“Can we not talk about this?” Sasha said, her brows coming down.
“Yeah, no,” Mark agreed, crawling over to get some bread and cheese. “Maybe someday I’ll ask you to regale us with vivid hardcore details, but I would rather know what abilities Other Mark unlocked- or even had access to.”
Jezebel nodded as she handed another muffin to Sasha.
“It’s different, you’re
different. I’m not sure the rules are the same for you with regard to your enhanced eye and other changes. That being said, you could heal in a fairly identical way. Which makes sense as it’s the staple of the Lover class.
“The one major difference is that you unlocked a powerful skill that enhanced or boosted your team’s abilities, pushing them higher in levels. For example, you’d be able to enhance my Vines to entrap larger targets if the situation called for it.”
Sasha sighed. “That was my doing. I wanted to focus on training his Enhance when I had him repeating that day with me. It felt a bit more tingly on the old pleasure center than his healing, and when he figured out how to do both at the same time, well…” She shook her head and looked up from her untouched muffin. “Despite that, this Mark- My true Mark, has touched me deeper than anyone ever has. Also, your oral-sex goddess energy blows Enhance away.”
“Imagine if he could use all three skills on our bodies at once,” Abby mused. “You should focus your attention on this ability as soon as possible. And I suppose it may come in useful for combat, as well.”
Mark was still trying to deal with how he felt about exploring the life of this imposter. He knew he was the one to bring it up, but now that he was hearing things… things other him did with his Sasha…
He pushed that line of thought out of his mind. She was here, and she was his alone. That was all he would need or could ever ask for.
“I don’t think I’ve unlocked that ability, Abby,” he said after scanning for any potential avenues of power he’d overlooked within his mind. There was a well-worn space allocated for healing energy, a pool of the oral goddess energy, a pool for the dimensional doorways, and the magic shell. There were more amorphous gifts like his True Sight for combat and deep empathic exploration. And there was the new ability to repair physical reality, but both of those felt distributed throughout his whole being and not part of the official Crystal Heart game systems.
“Speaking of abilities,” Jezebel said, and Mark looked up to see her holding the seven Crystal Heart shards piled up in one hand as she bit into one of the crisp red apples.