by Noah Layton
Goddess King
A Fantasy Harem Adventure
Noah Layton
Copyright 2018 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.
Cover by ebooklaunch.com
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One - 21 Years Old
Chapter Two - The Locket
Chapter Three - Heat
Chapter Four - Gemstone
Chapter Five - Elena
Chapter Six - Ascevious
Chapter Seven - You’re Going to Kill a Monster
Chapter Eight - Totem
Chapter Nine - Kiss Me
Chapter Ten – Embris
Chapter Eleven - First Time with a Goddess
Chapter Twelve - Unleash
Chapter Thirteen - Lunch
Chapter Fourteen - The Break-In
Chapter Fifteen - Conference with the Gods
Chapter Sixteen - Waking Up with Goddesses
Chapter Seventeen - Library
Chapter Eighteen - Arifa
Chapter Nineteen - Behemoth
Chapter Twenty - My Dear
Chapter Twenty-One - Breakfast
Chapter Twenty-Two - Enjoying the Show
Chapter Twenty-Three - Party
Chapter Twenty-Four - Face to Face
Chapter Twenty-Five - Future
Prologue
‘Gods, and goddesses, James. The peoples of the world believe in all sorts of different things, but no stories are greater than those surrounding this powerful group of beings.’
‘What do you know about them?’ James Torrance leaned forward, listening carefully to his grandfather’s words, seated across from him in an armchair in his study. ‘The gods and goddesses?’
‘The truth is that there is not just one god, but many. They all come from different worlds, and they use our world as a kind of stopping-point. They come here to trade and meet and have fun. Our world is their playground. And they can all do different things – some can see into people’s thoughts, even control them… And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Some can fly, disappear completely, and open portals to other worlds.’
‘Other worlds…?’
‘There are millions of different worlds that gods and goddesses and beings occupy beyond this one. I can’t tell you what happens after you die because I have no idea, but what I can tell you for sure is that there are other dimensions existing concurrently to this one. And there are ways that you can cross over to-’
‘Are you serious, Jack? This again?’ James turned to see his father appearing in the doorway of the study, hands on hips, shaking his head. His father never raised his voice and had never laid a hand on him in his life, but he knew that that pose meant he was mad.
‘The boy needs to know these things,’ his grandfather emphasised.
‘No, he doesn’t.’
‘That’s a matter of opinion. And your opinion just so happens to be wrong.’
‘James…’ his father said, his tone rising at the end. ‘Wait outside, please.’
James hadn’t argued with his father once in the eight years of life that he had experienced so far; not when he couldn’t go to a friend’s house after school, not when he didn’t like dinner but ate it anyway, and especially not when his mother had passed away.
That last point was undeniably, in his mind, what his father and his grandfather were talking about in the study.
He waited further down the hallway for their hushed discussion to end.
The stories that his grandfather had told hadn’t begun until the passing of his mother two years ago, but the books that they stemmed from had been on the shelves of the study for as long as he could remember. James and his father had visited him once a month as always, but without his mom there to bridge the gap between the two men things had grown more and more tense as the months had passed.
‘… Cut the bullshit. None of this is real, that’s my freaking problem. I’m not ignorant of this stuff, all right? I just know that it’s not appropriate for a kid to be hearing about it. Don’t make these visits a chore for me, or next month will be the last time that we come to see you.’
Without a goodbye his dad returned to the hallway, trying to turn his scowl into a smile before he turned the corner but not quite hitting the mark. Not that James needed to catch the look, of course. Even if he was just a kid, he wasn’t stupid.
‘They’re just stories, champ. You know that, right?’
‘Right,’ James nodded as his father put a hand on his shoulder. They wandered through the echoing hallways of his grandfather’s old, remote house.
There would never be another occasion to visit, of course. His grandfather would pass the following month, and that would be the end of the stories about gods and goddesses and other worlds, about spells and monsters and legacies.
For now.
Chapter One
21 Years Old
‘What’s the scariest thing that ever happened to you?’
It was another one of Jake’s lunchbreak writing prompts, the ones that he fired at James and his friends every time they sat down to eat together. Most of the time it was just the two of them and Lauri, another one of James’s friends, but every so often somebody else would join.
That somebody else was Helen Kavanagh. Helen had been on James’s creative writing minor for three years; while he majored in Engineering, she had majored in Chemistry – even if she was nothing like the kind of girl that usually showed up on the course. Some people tend to bloom only when they leave high school, and that was doubly true for Helen. She had transformed like crazy but was one of the very few who didn’t put on the airhead act once they became hot.
Instead, she had held onto her geekiness and ridiculous smarts like they would slip away at a moment’s notice and as a result had perpetually been in the background of James’s life and in his head for three years straight.
Jake and Lauri knew about this, of course – they knew everything about James, and he knew most things about them, too.
‘So what is it?’ Jake asked again, looking between them all. ‘Okay, I’ll go first. A few years ago I was walking the dogs at night with my dad through this patch of forest behind our farm. We reach this clearing and I look up at the moon. It was a really weird shape. So I turn to him and say ‘hey dad, the moon looks weird tonight.’ He says ‘no it doesn’t, it’s right there. Looks fine to me’. And he points over at the actual moon. So I say ‘well what’s that, right there?’ We both look up at this glowing oval in the sky above us, and after a few seconds it takes off into the sky insanely fast, and just disappears.’
‘You missed out the part where it abducted and probed you,’ Lauri laughed, chewing her burger.
‘I don’t care what you guys think,’ Jake said. ‘I saw a real UFO. Scared the shit out of me.’
‘I’ve got a better one,’ Helen said. ‘It didn’t happen to me, but I remember watching it. After my dad passed a few years ago my mom tried to contact him using a Ouija board in the kitchen. She had the whole thing set up, but she’d lost the little eyeglass thing that you use to
indicate the letters, so she used a drinking glass instead. She put it down on the board, placed her fingers on it, and all of a sudden it shattered into a million pieces. I was watching TV and remember looking over my shoulder after hearing the glass smash. I tried to walk over but she shouted at me to stay on the couch because there was smashed glass everywhere, obviously.’
‘Wow,’ Lauri said, ‘we sure have lived some sheltered lives if this is the scariest stuff that’s ever happened to us.’
An alarm suddenly buzzed from Helen’s phone.
‘I gotta go,’ she said. ‘I need to pick up my dress for tonight.’
‘You’re going to the party tonight?’ James asked, trying to sound aloof but badly failing to do so.
‘Yeah. Got a nice dress for it too, seeing as it’s my birthday.’
‘It’s your birthday? Why didn’t you say anything?’
‘Well the party isn’t actually for my birthday. It’s somebody else’s party. The two just happened to coincide. Anyway,’ she smiled, winking at me casually and grabbing her bag as she stood. ‘I’ll see you there.’
With a charming smile she took off from the college canteen. James couldn’t help but watch her go.
Lauri was usually the more joking one out of herself and Jake, but this time it was him who looked at James with his head tilted to the side patronisingly.
‘Could you be any more obvious?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You still like her, don’t you?’
‘I… What? No. No, absolutely not.’
‘Look,’ Lauri said, setting down her burger, ‘here’s what I think. I think you got your heart broken in high school more than once and ever since you came to college you think you’ve left that behind. You do well in class, you sleep with a few girls, you work out, and you think that you’re beyond it. But that girl has got you, hasn’t she?’
James sat back in his chair, avoiding Lauri’s gaze.
‘So that’s a yes,’ Jake grinned.
‘She hasn’t got me,’ James laughed. ‘She just… I don’t know.’
‘Don’t beat yourself up, man,’ he continued. ‘Happens to all of us at some point. It just happened to you more than once. My advice? Forget about her. You want what you can’t have, just like everybody else on Earth. Ego gone wild.’
‘But what if he can’t forget about her?’ Lauri said.
‘I am still here, y’know?’ James smiled, waving at them.
‘James Torrance,’ Jake said. ‘You’re 21, you’re a few months away from completing college. You’ve already got an apartment and you’re not that bad to look at. And not too much of an asshole either, although that’s subjective because I’m your friend. So listen to me when I say there’s a world of girls out there that would be glad to go out with you. All you’ve gotta do is forget about this one for the last few months of your college career and you never have to see her again.’
‘Or,’ Lauri interjected, ‘you could just tell her how you feel.’
‘That’s the worst thing you can do,’ Jake said. ‘The moment you do that you’re beneath her, and I don’t mean literally. She’ll see you as not worth it.’
‘Stop,’ James said, shaking his hands, ‘This is like having an angel and a devil sat on my shoulders… Except I don’t know which is which.’
‘So what are you gonna do?’ Lauri asked. ‘Party’s tonight. Pretty big deal.’
‘Don’t tempt him,’ Jake said. ‘Listen to me – forget about her.’
They carried on lightly arguing over the specifics, not realising several minutes later that James had finished his food. He snatched his bag up to see their heads spin in his direction.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I need to go clear my head,’ he said in earnest. ‘I’ll see you at the party tonight.’
Before they could throw their advice at James anymore he headed out of the canteen and began to walk the streets, tuned out from the events around him.
After a less than fun experience at high school he had come to NYU with the idea of reinventing himself. A lot of people try to do that; they hated who they were as teenagers, so they go to college to make a fresh start. For the most part that had worked out for James; he had focused on himself instead of the opinions of everyone around him, and ironically, once he had started to do that, things had become so much better. He could talk to most people. Most people talked to him. He had had a few girlfriends. He stayed in shape. He focused on his classes.
But like an idiot he had had a crush sitting in the back of his head for three years that he just couldn’t shake.
His friends were right – it probably was just his ego. But he and Helen had always gotten along. They studied together. They had lunch. They talked for hours about movie trivia and mythology, both of which they had an interest in.
It was her birthday that night, and knowing that, he had to get her something. Her style had always been pretty unique, and she always adorned herself with quirky accessories. One side of him said that he was getting her something as a friend, while the other… James didn’t want to think about the other.
But he was.
After clearing a few blocks James passed a rent-controlled series of curio shops filled with the kind of junk that most people would never buy. One in particular caught his eye. While the others possessed tacky signs, this one was set into the ground floor of the five-story building that it occupied like it had been placed there a hundred years ago, stamped into place by a gigantic hand.
Its exterior was composed of battered wood, the brown and grey paint lining it having stripped and faded almost completely. The windows seemed darkened at first, but that wasn’t the case – the lights were just so dim inside, and the midday light of the world only managed to break in a little.
Within were the outlines and silhouettes of a variety of random objects, some of which he could identify, most of which he couldn’t comprehend in the slightest.
James looked up above the windows, seeing the name of the shop in chipped, fading letters.
Morgan’s Bazaar.
Helen would probably love something from here, he thought, and without any hesitation, he headed inside.
A doorbell rang above him as he headed into the dark shop, a musty, damp smell hitting him immediately. The shop was only small, comprised of a single room perhaps the size of his bedroom, but there must have been hundreds of items crammed into that tiny space. Taxidermized animals ranging from rats to owls, broken vases, weapons in glass cases, dust-covered pieces of jewellery, a robe seemingly composed of newspaper…
There was no rhyme or reason to the place, no structure or arrangement.
‘Can I help you, my dear?’
James almost swore, but caught himself. The lady had appeared as if from nowhere behind the counter to the right. She was at least 80 years-old and stood at less than five feet, grey hair pulled back from her face above a heavy array of shawls, jumpers and cloaks that covered her.
‘Sorry, you just scared me a little. It looked like you’d just appeared out of thin air.’
‘Many things may be capable of such acts, but alas, I am not one of them. The basement, you see?’
She beckoned to her feet. He headed over and leaned over the counter, seeing the wooden door that descended below the shop. Behind the counter was no different – crammed to the brim with random objects.
‘So what can I help you with?’ She repeated, smiling.
‘I’m buying something for a friend.’
‘I see. A lady?’
‘Yeah, actually.’
‘I’ve had many men coming into this place over the years looking for such things…’
‘Really?’
‘Oh, yes… But you seem a tad different.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘One can never explain such things. That would betray the way in which they come to one’s mind.’
‘So…’ he continued. ‘Anything
that you would recommend? I’m thinking of something small, like a piece of jewellery, but I’m open to suggestions.’
The woman looked to the side briefly, drumming her fingers on the desk, before holding up a finger and nodding. Without another word she disappeared into the basement. For several minutes James heard sounds of footsteps, fumbling movements and at one point an enormous clattering, as if an entire shelf had fallen over.
Finally she returned, taking the steps out of the basement one at a time before appearing before him.
‘Here,’ she said, holding a shaking hand out. Resting in the centre of her palm was a locket, ruby red in color, with a similarly red chain looped through the ring at the top of it. ‘Such a thing would be useful for a young man pining over a young lady. This will bring you everything that you truly desire, but it comes at a great cost.’
‘What cost is that?’ James asked. ‘I’ve got some cash in my wallet…’
‘Not a monetary cost,’ she said quickly, insistently. ‘A real cost. One of responsibility and great gifts. Money to me is inconsequential. You may take it, on the condition that you promise to use the gifts it bestows well.’
James took a long breath, looking between her and the locket sceptically. His departure from the stories of his childhood had left him cynical about anything based around the supernatural – he didn’t believe in a single part of it, and treated it as fiction. He had never experienced anything of the sorts in his life.
‘Are you sure?’ he said. ‘Are you sure you don’t want anything for it? I mean, you do run a business.’
‘I insist. You may take it or leave it. But the choice is yours.’
James looked at the locket once more before holding out his hand. She tipped it into his palm, the thin, fragile chain unravelling quickly before being handed over to him completely.
‘Thank you,’ he said quietly, nodding at her. She returned a bittersweet smile and nodded back, and James left without saying another word, closing the door behind him.
Moving from the darkness of the shop to the white light of midday in the city was like crossing into another world. Holding the locket in his hand, James looked at it once before pocketing it. For some reason it felt a lot heavier than it should have been, leading him to the belief that there was something precious about it – the stones it was composed of or the materials. He didn’t know a whole lot about jewellery though.