Goddess King: A Fantasy Harem Adventure

by Noah Layton

  ‘Yeah…’ James said, reaching into his bag and retrieving his books… Or attempting to at least. The zip was caught, and he was struggling to slide them through the gap. ‘I just… It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Yeah it does, man,’ Jake said in earnest. ‘Something made you leave.’

  ‘I just…’ James grunted, pulling harder on the bag.

  With another final grunt it gave – completely. The bag ripped apart like a piece of paper, the sound of the threads tearing turning a few heads from the rows in front.

  Jake and Lauri exchanged a look which James pretended not to notice, before he laughed purposefully and stowed the bag under his seat. He set his books down and shuffled in his seat.

  ‘You all right?’ Lauri said.

  ‘I’m fine…’ James muttered, smiling nervously.

  What the hell was that?

  ‘I, uhh… No, I just wasn’t feeling great. Too much to drink. Sorry I didn’t tell you guys.’

  ‘Okay…’ Jake said. ‘So are you gonna tell us what really happened?’

  ‘Fine,’ James smiled. ‘I went inside and saw Helen making out with some guy. Not exactly great timing after the little pep talk, but thanks for it anyway. No, I mean it. You guys still made me feel good about it, and seeing her with that guy… I guess it helped me forget about the whole thing.’

  ‘Well, that’s good,’ Jake said. ‘You can get back out there now, man. Forget about all of that.’ He patted James on the back, before drawing his hand away slowly enough to give suspicion. ‘Have you been working out, James?’

  James gulped, feeling a swell of heat run to his cheeks, that exact same feeling that you can’t help but give yourself over to when you’re embarrassed. He panted hard, feeling as if every huge intake of air wasn’t half as enough as he needed.

  ‘James…?’ Lauri’s voice started at her normal tone, but right after collapsed into a distorted version of itself that was completely unrecognisable.

  ‘You’re burning up, man,’ Jake said, looking at him with genuine worry. Rubbing his palm over his forehead, James found myself matted with sweat. His hair was stuck messily over his fringe. It was like he had just stepped out of the shower and it had come on in seconds.

  ‘Let’s get started, please,’ another distorted voice spoke, but this time it was from the front. Professor Larson was stood at his podium and had finished setting up his slides. A light feedback ran through the speakers in the theatre, but to James it felt like all of those thoughts from that morning had morphed into a gremlin that was now trying to claw its way out of his other ear.

  ‘Agghhh!!!’ James yelped out, standing and clasping his hands over his ears in pain. He clenched his eyes shut until it subsided a little. Opening them, he was met with every pair of eyes in the theatre, including Jake and Lauri, looking at him with a hellish mix of disbelief, fear and confusion.

  James drew his hands steadily away from his ears, looking around at everybody. He had never felt more embarrassed, but his face was already red enough, and it now went an even darker shade of maroon.

  The embarrassment quickly subsided, though, giving way to that overwhelming desire that he had felt on the way there just to move.

  Leaving the destroyed bag and the books behind, James dashed to the door and down the corridor, hurrying out of the building and into the overcast, pale daylight.

  Not a single part of him felt like himself. It was as if he was standing right behind his physical form, looking over his shoulder at the chaos that was taking place inside his body.

  His body felt as if it was on fire.

  James could run, but he wasn’t prepared for the all-out sprint that he broke into as he ran across campus, back in the direction of his apartment. He made it to the plaza, a relatively quiet spot on the edge of campus, when he realised that there was no way that he was going to make it back to the apartment in time to duck into a cold shower.

  The fountain in the centre of the plaza, on the other hand, was only ten yards away.

  He resisted the urge to leap in seeing as it was only three feet deep at its lowest point, but even knowing that, the prospect was enticing.

  He knew how stupid it was.

  He knew that he would look like an idiot to the few people seated on benches nearby.

  He knew that it was flat-out disallowed to enter the fountain.

  James just didn’t care.

  Pulling off his jacket and shirt and kicking off his shoes in time before his body moved of its own volition, James leaped into the fountain, sinking beneath the freezing water.

  It was like finally going to the bathroom after having been stuck in a car for seven hours.

  Pushing against the walled ledge, he kept himself under the water until he couldn’t breathe. Finally sitting up and gasping for air, James found something that resembled inhibitions coming back to him. Apprehensively he looked around, expecting to see yet another set of bewildered faces.

  But instead he could see nothing.

  His surroundings had been obscured by two things – shrieks of fear and smoke.

  No, not smoke – this was water vapour.

  It took a few seconds to realise that the sheer overwhelming amount of it was stemming from himself. His body had been that hot when he had entered the fountain that it had vaporised the water within.

  I can stand around in disbelief like an idiot, or I can grab my clothes and get the hell out of there.

  His jeans were soaked – removing them might have been a step too far – but his shirt, jacket and shoes were salvageable. He pulled them on as he dashed through the clouds, making an escape quickly and setting off sprinting, this time determined to make it back to the apartment.

  ***

  For a lot of lonely people, or just people who lived alone like James, television was a godsend. In a world that had shortened attention spans beyond belief, silence was just a little too weird – naturally he mostly left the TV playing in the background whenever he was home.

  When James arrived at the apartment he had turned on the first random sitcom that he could find, but it had now gone quiet. From the confines of the shower, bathroom door hanging half-open, he could only assume that the are you still watching screen had appeared, considering how long he had been in the shower.

  For the first time in his life James cranked the temperature gauge as close to freezing as it would go, and god damn did it feel good.

  The sizzling stopped after around twenty minutes, but this time he had the chance to ditch all of his clothes.

  What the hell is happening to me? He thought, shaking his head from side to side as he pressed it back against the tiles. Body like a fitness model, overheating beyond belief…

  There was no name for any of this. Maybe somebody had injected him with a boatload of bull testosterone at the party last night, but that was the only answer he could come up with to any of this.

  When the waves of steam emanating from James’s body gave way and things finally started to feel normal again, he turned the nozzle off and crawled out of the shower. Pulling on his boxer shorts and sliding beneath the covers of the bed, he reached for the remote and pressed play, drowning out the silence with the sound of another sitcom episode.

  Somehow he felt even worse. The heat felt unnatural, but back at a normal temperature James felt a radiating nausea. He gripped the covers, curling up into a ball, sick of wondering what was wrong with himself.

  That lasted all of about five seconds, when a voice appeared in his head that wasn’t one of his own thoughts.

  ‘You know, you really shouldn’t fight the heat. It’s an important part of the process.’

  ‘Right…’ James said to himself, his eyes slamming open as he sat up and looked about frantically against the nauseating sickness. ‘I’m definitely insane.’

  ‘No, you’re not. We need to talk.’

  Chapter Four

  Gemstone

  ‘Okay, psychiatric wards…’ James said to himself
, sliding into his desk chair and googling for the closest self-check-in ward that he could find.

  ‘What’s a psychiatric ward?’

  ‘Ignore it,’ James continued. ‘This is all clearly some paranoid delusion, but at least I’m aware of it. This way I can get help before it gets out of hand and I lose my mind completely…’

  ‘You’re not losing your mind. Can I ask who I’m speaking to?’

  ‘Me,’ he grunted through gritted teeth. ‘You’re talking to me, because you’re a voice inside my head.’

  ‘I’m not just a voice. I belong to a goddess.’

  The voice was female, sporting a perfectly eloquent English accent that flowed through his mind beautifully like a sheet of silk. It was beyond enticing to be taken in by it.

  ‘Okay…’ He said, taking his hands away from the keyboard for a moment and deciding to humour it. Maybe he shouldn’t have, but what was the harm…? ‘Who are you?’

  ‘My name is Elena. I was assuming that I would be greeted by my master upon my release, but with the shaken tone that you have taken on that must not be the case. Where is he?’

  ‘Your master?’ James asked. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘What a mess…’

  ‘You’re telling me,’ he said to the voice, returning to the keyboard and scrolling through the results. There was a walk-in ward nine blocks from his apartment. It wouldn’t take long to make it if he set off sprinting, and with the amount of energy that he still possessed that wouldn’t be a problem.

  ‘Okay,’ James continued. ‘I’d love to stay and chat, but I need to go somewhere.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘A psychiatric ward, like I said.’

  ‘You did not answer my question. What is a ‘psychiatric ward’?’

  ‘It’s like a cage for people who are going crazy, which is the category that I fit into right now.’

  ‘A cage?’ The voice suddenly became louder. ‘Absolutely not. I am already stuck in a cage. I do not wish to be stuck in another.’

  ‘Of course you’d say that. You’re probably gonna start telling me to burn things and kill the president, too, huh?’

  ‘I don’t know why you would think such things.’

  ‘Well, what would you make me think?

  ‘We have clearly had a misunderstanding. Did you come into possession of a locket? And did you open that locket?’

  A pang of doubt went off in James’s mind, but he still wasn’t paying attention to it.

  ‘Yes and yes… But of course you would know that. You’re me.’

  ‘I am not you. I am communicating with you from the confines of my cage. How you came into possession of the ability to communicate with me is another question entirely. What happened when you opened the locket?’

  ‘Two bursts of smoke came out of it…’ James said slowly. ‘One red and one black. They both… Went through me.’

  For a moment the voice went silent, until-

  ‘Good lord… This is much more dire than I thought.’

  ‘… What is?’

  ‘Such a thing would be much easier to explain to you in person.’

  ‘You really think that I want to move this delusion from inside my head to the real world? Hearing voices is bad enough, I don’t need to start seeing things too.’

  ‘For the last time, I am not a voice in your head. I am a goddess, and I must be freed from my cage. If I can communicate with you from these confines then I must be in proximity to you.’

  ‘Of course you are,’ James said, tapping in the address of the ward on his cell phone and grabbing his keys. ‘Don’t worry, I’m sure we won’t be hearing much from each other soon.’

  A few minutes later James was on the streets, pacing hard along the sidewalk, following the directions on the screen.

  ‘Our psychic bond is growing stronger. You are getting closer and closer to the location of my cage.’

  ‘I’ll be in a cage of my own soon.’

  ‘Your presence grows greater.’

  ‘Shut up!’ James shouted, drawing the looks of a few people around him. People talking to themselves in the streets wasn’t exactly strange for the city, but he still felt like a lunatic being on the receiving end of it for the second time that day.

  He dashed into a nearby alleyway, pressing his palms against his temples.

  ‘Okay, you win. What’s it gonna take to get rid of you?’

  ‘All that I ask is that you free me from my cage.’

  ‘And where is your cage?’ James sighed, seriously pissed with himself that he was actually going along with this whole thing.

  ‘I was confined to a gemstone some time ago. It will be located somewhere nearby.’

  ‘A gemstone?’ He repeated. ‘That could be anywhere.’

  ‘You are getting closer to it. Continue in the direction that you were travelling.’

  James briefly considered the prospect that it would be located at the curio shop that he had purchased the locket from, but that was in the opposite direction that he had been moving.

  ‘And what do I do when I find it?’

  ‘Break it open, of course.’

  ‘Obviously,’ James said sarcastically, shaking his head. ‘So you can… Sense me getting closer to it?’

  ‘Indeed I can.’

  ‘Well tell me if I’m getting hotter the closer I get.’

  ‘Hotter? What do you mean by this?’

  ‘It’s an expression – you say hotter when I’m getting closer and colder when I’m getting further away.’

  ‘A strange form of vernacular, but I think I understand.’

  James left the alleyway and continued in the direction he had been heading.

  ‘You are getting hotter… Hotter…’

  Even with the complete insanity of what was happening, he couldn’t help but smile at this ridiculously sexy voice saying those words.

  James crossed a busy intersection, starting to move up the next block.

  ‘Colder.’

  He halted in his tracks and turned around, moving back to the edge of the sidewalk and taking a right.

  ‘How about now?’ He asked.

  ‘Warmer again. You’re getting closer.’

  The street he was on was flanked by high-priced designer clothing stores on both sides. Interspersed within them was the occasional jewellery store, their storefronts laden with glistening necklaces and bracelets that would take a year of the starting salary he was expecting out of college to even put a deposit on.

  ‘I really hope that this thing isn’t in one of those stores… Otherwise I’m never gonna get it.’

  ‘You’re much hotter, now. Your presence is close.’

  Moving into one of the jewellery stores, James winced as he expected to hear Elena’s voice confirming his worries…

  ‘Colder. Turn around.’

  He sighed in relief and turned, heading back to the street and searching around, when he suddenly realised something.

  How does this sexy, schizophrenic voice in my head know where the jewellery shops are? I’ve never been this way before – whatever’s lurking in my mind couldn’t lead me here itself.

  James brushed the thought off for a minute, dodging a cab which honked hard at him as he hurried across the street.

  ‘Hotter.’

  Nothing but designer clothing stores stood before him; maybe this voice wasn’t all that credible after all.

  Figuring he had nothing to lose except his mind, James headed into the store straight ahead.

  Warm air and enticing scents of perfumed roses hit him like a truck upon stepping into the store. It was quiet; aside from himself and a few women to the left of the large space moving amongst the aisles, there was only the teller at the counter to his right.

  ‘What am I doing…?’ James muttered quietly to himself.

  ‘Finding the gem. What else?’

  ‘Not you,’ He replied quietly. ‘Anyway, how close am I?’

 
‘Very close. You are very hot. On fire, you could say.’

  For the first time she laughed, a sound even more pleasant to listen to than her voice.

  ‘That was supposed to be a joke.’

  ‘I know.’ James shook his head and found himself smiling.

  He crossed to the teller, figuring that if he had to start somewhere then she might be able to point him in the right direction.

  Her name tag read Maria – she was pale and pretty with blond hair tied back in a ponytail. All of that, of course, was only the second thing that James noticed. Her slender figure looked almost unmatched to her perky chest, barely contained by the tight blouse that she was wearing, far too open at the neck to be a mistake.

  He stepped up to the counter, feeling as awkward as ever in a place like this, but to James’s surprise she looked up at him before he even arrived.

  He had had a few girlfriends in the past and a few nights of fun over the past few years, but this girl was something else – she was certainly not the type to give him an indulgent look up and down before dragging her blue eyes back up to his as she bit her lip seductively.

  ‘Not a joke. You’re on fire. You must be able to see it.’

  And then, trying as hard as he could to keep his eyes away from the teller’s chest, James saw it – perched right above her cleavage, a glowing emerald was resting, hanging on a thin silver chain.

  ‘What can I do for you, sir?’ She said smoothly, giving him her full attention. In his entire life James had never had a girl who looked like her address him like that, and on the spot he had no idea what to do with this kind of attention. Without a hint of trepidation about being caught eyeing him, Maria gave his body another admiring look.

  James paused for a moment before looking down at his figure. His clothes used to fit him in a regular way, not too loose but not too tight. Now, though, everything gripped his muscular form in the most defining of ways.

  Looking back up to meet her eyes, he found her admiring his face, too, before giving him a light smile.

  ‘I, uhh…’ He started stupidly, pulling his gaze away from her attractive face and looking around the store, ‘I’m looking for something. An accessory, I guess.’