by Eric Vall
“Did you think I was done with you?” I asked with a smirk.
All Arwyn could manage was a shake of her head before I plunged two of my fingers into her.
A long, strangled purr rang out from her throat, and it was the most wild I’d ever seen Arwyn. She watched me with hooded eyes as my fingers disappeared in and out of her, and I had the feeling she was enjoying the show more than the action itself. That was okay, though. If it was a show she wanted, then I would give her a show she would remember.
I shifted just a smidge, and with the pad of my thumb, I grazed over her sensitive nerve again. Immediately, she tightened around my two fingers, and that was just what I needed to get her going.
“Look at you.” I smirked and crooked my three fingers until she shuddered violently. “You’re so willing, so beautiful.”
“Gryff … ” she moaned, and she watched as my eyes roamed every single inch of her that I could see.
“Let go for me, Arwyn,” I commanded as I picked up some speed and started to pound my fingers into her wet, clenching pussy.
That was it. The words left my mouth, and Arwyn’s jaw dropped as her body shook with pleasure and her pussy tightened around my hand like a vice. Her second orgasm was intense, and I quickly covered her mouth with my free hand as her body bucked and writhed beneath me. She was silent, however. Her pleasure was so overwhelming there wasn’t a noise to convey how it felt.
“I love you,” she whispered as her green eyes fluttered about at me, but I wasn’t sure I heard her at first. Her body rode out her orgasm, and I carefully removed my fingers from her.
My hands roamed the expanse of her body, and I soothed each shudder until Arwyn was putty in my hands. I petted her until she was purring, and then I pulled her into my chest, where I held her for a while. I didn’t care if we would be water-logged and pruney by the time we got out. This moment was much more important than that.
I sighed when her skin moved against mine, and I realized how comfortable I had been just to keep her this close. Our noses brushed, and we shared a soft, tender kiss. I would have given anything to stay in this moment with Arwyn forever.
“I meant what I said,” she whispered again when she pulled away. She looked deep into my eyes then, and all I could see was a bare and vulnerable sincerity.
I nodded. I knew what she was going to say, but I wanted to hear it again.
“I love you,” she whispered, and then she reached up to cup my face tenderly between her hands.
“I love you, too.” I nuzzled her cheek, and I felt my heart soar with absolute joy.
Chapter 7
By the time Nia and Orenn had come back from their reconnaissance, Arwyn and I had already cleaned up and made things look as though nothing happened in their absence. All that was left was to hope she and I had been quiet enough not to draw their attention whilst they were away. Nia knew, of course, but I wasn’t ready to explain myself to Orenn or risk Arwyn’s career on our sexual escapades.
If they had heard anything, though, nothing was mentioned.
“What are we looking at?” I asked them as they crossed the clearing.
“Nothing definitive,” Nia sighed. “There’s some more of those bushes along the path. It’s like a maze.”
“If we’re going to find them, we have to do it soon.” Orenn shook his head and placed his hands on his hips. “I fear the longer we wait, the more we lessen our chances of finding them alive.”
No one missed the stab of truth that followed Orenn’s proposal as we all fell eerily quiet. He was right, and we knew it.
A chill raced up my spine as I ran a hand through my damp hair.
“Alright,” I mumbled. “Let’s move.”
“Arwyn, are you able to continue on?” Nia asked as she knelt next to my other lover.
“I appreciate the concern, Nia, but I will manage just fine,” Arwyn assured her.
Nia nodded and offered her hand to help her up, which Arwyn accepted with a gracious smile. It was nice to see them getting along not as student and teacher, but as comrades in arms, and maybe even friends. Heck, if I was lucky, perhaps they could be even more than that once or twice.
I shook my head. Friends first, sex later.
“Where do we go from here?” Arwyn inquired as she brushed herself off. There was a glow to her that hadn’t been there before we arrived in the clearing, and I kept my smirk to myself as she walked just a fraction slower than she had been before we entered. Of course, she would blame it on not feeling well, but the two of us knew the real reason.
“Northeast.” Nia pointed to the other end of the clearing where she and Orenn had returned from. “It’s the only other way out of here aside from where we came in. Once we get a few kilometers in, though, it gets tricky.”
Arwyn took up her sword once more and motioned for Orenn and I to follow them.
“I guess this is the part where we leave the horses behind,” I joked to him as we caught up.”
“I guess so,” he chuckled. “Think we’ll be able to pick them up on our way out?”
“Sure hope so.” I shrugged. “Otherwise, it’s going to be a long walk to wherever it is we’re going from here.”
We started to follow Arwyn and Nia back into the thick of the Narufey when I heard the distinct sound of rustling leaves. I brushed it off at first. After all, it was probably just the breeze dancing amongst the canopy. It might not have been that strong, but any slight change in wind direction could have caused the sound.
That was when I realized there was no wind. Everything had gone deathly still, and I felt the hairs stand on the back of my neck as goosebumps raced up my spine.
“Stop,” I commanded.
Everyone came to a halt and turned to look at me.
“Gryff, what’s wrong?” Nia questioned with a look of concern. “Are you--”
“Shh!” I silenced her. I hadn’t meant to sound so harsh, and I offered her an apologetic glance as I listened harder. My friends waited with bated breath as I closed my eyes and held up a finger.
I could hear movement in the trees despite the lack of wind. Even the sound of the waterfall seemed to be dimmer than it was before, though that might have just been me trying to block out the sound to hear beyond it.
“We aren’t alone,” I informed them in a hushed tone.
“What?” Orenn whispered frantically. “What does that mean?”
“What do you think it means?” I asked back.
“There weren’t any animals, were there?” Arwyn pondered aloud. “There weren’t any bugs, no creatures of any kind?”
“I didn’t see anything like that,” Nia recalled as Orenn and I nodded to confirm.
“If there are no creatures, then what do you think is in here with us?” Orenn shot a quizzical look at me.
“I don’t--“ I cut myself off so I could listen again. I could sense whatever it was moving to the exits of the clearing.
It was coming right for us.
“Gryff?” Nia nudged me. “What--“
“Run!” I shouted as I sprinted past them. There wasn’t time to explain, but I knew whatever had surrounded us in the clearing was going to try and prevent us from leaving, and I wasn’t going to let that happen.
Our feet pounded against the forest floor as we sprinted through the clearing toward the exit. Black and green thorns like the ones Arwyn had cut down earlier started to weave into our path to block us from escaping, but I knew we could outrun it.
“Go, go, go!” I yelled, and I stepped to the side to let the girls go first. I ushered them through the quickly enclosing vines, then let Orenn go ahead of me before I narrowly dodged them myself. I winced as a thorn cut my arm, but I didn’t have time to tend to it, not when whatever was in the trees was giving chase.
We ran at breakneck speeds through the forest. Between trees and over rocks, we dodged whatever landscape came our way. The mystery chasers in the trees though weren’t giving up, though. They slung spells at us
to knock us off our feet and keep us down. What the hell did they want from us?
More importantly, who, or what, the hell were they?
As I pushed foliage and fungus out of my way, I hadn’t noticed I’d gotten ahead of everyone again. I looked behind me and saw Arwyn and Nia not far behind me, and Orenn trailed not too far behind them. I knew he was a fast runner despite his size, but it was nice that he was looking out for the girls while I found our way to safety, or what I hoped was safety.
When I turned back around and saw the drop off, I didn’t have time to react. I leapt over a small purple boulder and before I knew it, I was airborne. All I could see below me were the tops of more trees and no safe way for me to land without impaling myself.
I needed to think quickly if I was going to survive this.
“Gryff!” Arwyn shouted, but I couldn’t see her. I just hoped she and the others didn’t follow after me.
“You have to jump!” I heard Orenn yell. “Now, or they’ll get you!”
Well, so much for that, right?
Arwyn and Nia both leapt from the ledge, and I hastily grabbed my pyrewyrm crystal. I smashed it in my hand, and the faceless bird appeared underneath me. I clung to its back as it soared, and I commanded it to catch Arwyn and Nia before they met an untimely fate.
They landed with two consecutive thumps beside me. A few seconds later, Orenn landed on the wyrm’s back as well.
We hovered for a moment while I looked for a safe place to land the pyrewyrm. There was another, smaller clearing not too far from the drop off. That should have been big enough for my mount to get into.
“That was some nice reacting on your part,” Orenn complimented as I carefully focused on steering my monster without breaking concentration. I was getting better at controlling the bigger monsters, but it couldn’t hurt to exercise a fair bit of caution, especially when losing control would mean plummeting to my death.
“What was that?” Nia asked, breathless.
“I don’t know,” I replied, “but I think we’re in the clear now.”
I maneuvered the pyrewyrm to the smaller clearing and allowed my friends to hop off before I followed suit. The wyrm looked relatively disgruntled, as though I had been a bother to it.
“Sorry about that,” I apologized to it. “You really helped us out, though. Thank you.”
The pyrewyrm huffed, and though it wasn’t all that friendly by nature, it allowed me to show it an inkling of affection by extending its neck for me to pat it. After a short petting, I recalled the wyrm to its crystal and observed the new part of the forest we were in.
“Where do we go from here?” I asked aloud, though the question was posed more to myself. I wandered the area and noted another, smaller stream that ran through it, along with clusters of flowers scattered in what appeared to be random spots.
But then I felt it. The wind shifted, and I knew whatever it was that had given us chase was here.
“Shit!” I swore quietly. “We have to move.”
Again, we were off at a sprint, and I heard my friends’ footfalls behind me as we tried to make our escape. There was only one way out of the clearing, other than flying into it, of course. We were so close to the exit, but whatever was in the trees was faster. A gust of chilled wind whipped past us, and just as I reached the break between the clearing and the rest of the Narufey, I was thrown back forcefully.
“Gryff!” Orenn yelled as he caught me. “You good?”
“I’m fine,” I groaned and righted myself. “What the hell happened?”
“Oh, it’s quite simple, really,” a voice I didn’t recognize cackled from the trees. “You see … ”
There was suddenly another shift in the breeze, and the leaves of the trees blew wildly around as a handsome man who appeared to be around my height and build descended from atop a platform of concentrated wind. A few others followed, too. They were mostly men of varying builds, but there were some women as well.
“You have a lot of nerve showing yourself here, Gryff of Njordenfalls,” the man said with a growl.
“Have we met?” I asked tentatively, and my fingers inched toward the bag with my summoning crystals in case I needed to throw down.
“No, not quite,” the man chuckled as he landed before us. He was rather tall, maybe an inch or two taller than Orenn. His silver hair was long and braided down along his shoulder, and a jagged scar across his nose took away from his hazel eyes. His skin was darker, likely someone from the west like Cyra.
“That’s cryptic,” I half-joked. “Tell me more.”
As we spoke, the others who had been hiding in the trees landed and surrounded us. A quick glance around told me we were outnumbered at least three to one, and there was no such luck that all of them weren’t mages. If this was indeed a place only magic folk could see, then there was a zero percent chance any of these men and women were ordinary humans.
“Come now, don’t you think we should introduce ourselves first?” the man taunted with a drawl that made my skin crawl.
“You seem to already know who I am,” I snapped back.
“Oh, I do, but please, introduce me to your friends.” The man licked his lips as he stepped closer, and I instinctively stepped back.
I debated for a split second whether or not I should tell them the truth, but if the man already knew who I was, there was already a good chance he knew them, too. He was toying with me.
“Orenn Vascarti, Arwyn Hamner, and Nia Kenefick,” I told the man, and I ignored the stares my friends gave me.
“A Kenefick, you say?” The man grinned and clapped his hands together. “Oh, that is a splendid bounty indeed.”
“Bounty?” Nia chirped. “What bounty?”
“That is none of your concern, General Girl,” the man hissed and slithered closer to her.
“Back up,” I warned him with a growl low in my throat. “Touch her, or any of my friends, and you’re as good as dead.”
There was a beat where the man paused, and then he turned to me again. The smile on his face nearly split it in two as he looked me up and down.
“Aren’t you going to ask my name?” he cooed, and I could smell the sickeningly sweet scent of violet perfume on his high rimmed collar now that he was a mere foot from my face.
“I assumed you’d tell me since we were doing introductions.” I smirked at my own coyness.
“Ah, yes! How very rude of me!” the man exclaimed jovially as his henchmen snickered. “The name is Antoine Delafora, at your humble service.” He bowed low and flourished his arms magnificently.
I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the man. He reminded me of a ringleader for the shows that traveled from village to village, eccentric and over the top. He certainly didn’t look threatening, but I knew better than anyone that looks could be deceiving.
“Right, Antoine.” I rolled my eyes at his flamboyant display. “What exactly do you want with us?”
Antoine stood upright again and crossed his arms.
“Why, I thought I had made that quite plain,” he mocked. “You have a bounty on your head. We want it.”
“What is the bounty worth?” I asked. “Surely you can do better than a couple of student mages and a teacher.”
“Oh, yes, absolutely we can,” Antoine agreed, and again, his henchman chuckled, “but it isn’t every day a twenty thousand gold bounty pops up.”
I almost choked on my own spit.
“Twenty thousand?” I asked incredulously.
“A piece,” Antoine added with a devilish smirk.
“What?” Nia shrieked.
“That’s what I said, too, when we were hired,” Antoine laughed as he stepped up close to Nia again. “I was simply floored that someone would be willing to pay so much money for a handful of ragtag kids from the Academy and their rather attractive teacher. It really left me to wonder what you did to get such a high price tacked onto your name.”
“Who hired you?” Arwyn cut in, her eyes fiery and furious.
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“I’m not done,” Antoine’s tone dropped as he narrowed a deadly look on Arwyn.
Arwyn swallowed thickly, and out of the corner of my eye I saw her fingers twitch on her sword. She was willing to fight and take them down, and I was going to be right beside her.
“I was curious, you see,” Antoine continued, “but no longer am I plagued by the mystery of what capabilities you possess, especially you, Gryff of Njordenfalls.”
“Is that right?” I asked as I squared my shoulders.
Antoine stepped back to me. This time, he was close enough that I could feel his breath on my neck, and I balled my hands into fists to keep from cringing.
“I sent one of my finest after you first,” he revealed. “She was insistent you would be an easy job, but then again, she was always a little cocky.”
“She?” I questioned.
“Ah, splendid she was indeed,” Antoine raved on without paying me any mind. “My sweet little Penny.”
My heart lodged into my throat, and my stomach bottomed out. I felt as though I was going to be sick. It might have been months for everyone else, but for me, it was only a week or so ago that Gawain and I had encountered her. Penny was the little dark mage who’d been hired by the bandits to do me in for stealing the tablet they themselves had thieved. We encountered her on the first day of our journey in the fields between Varle and Tietra, and it was unfortunately the last time we would have a run-in with her.
The fight had been intensely brutal on her physically. At the end of it all, she ended up destroying herself, consumed by her own magic.
“No … ” I trailed off and shook my head as my face blanched.
“Oh ho ho, yes. Penny, my sweet love. She’d found the perfect way to get to you, too.” Antoine smirked wildly. “Found some bandits who claimed they had a bone to pick with you and some gypsy boy.”
“Varleth!” I exclaimed as my heart started to pound wildly.