by Noah Layton
He intended to swing the dirt-encrusted axe, but the notion became secondary by total accident. Readying himself and stepping to the side, James held his breath and tried to jump forward with the axe in hand. In a cowardly fashion he bailed out at the last second; the same green light that lurked in the embris’s chest suddenly formed within the hollow points in its face.
The next dodge wasn’t all bad, though.
Instead of simply hopping to the side, James leaped through the air, rising no less than ten yards from the ground.
‘What the fuck…?’ He shouted in shock, looking out over the entire forest just above the treetops before descending rapidly. He landed deftly, bending his legs as he touched down on the other side of the clearing, regaining a hold on the axe.
The embris had slammed into the trees right behind where James had been stood.
If I had been there a second ago I’d be a smear on the floor.
It sharply turned back to face him, at which point James’s nervous smile at his amazing new power vanished.
He raised the axe, feeling a sudden explosion of rage-induced heat burst through his body. It flowed up his arms and into his fingertips, and James watched in amazement as the dirt and rust either fell away or vanished entirely, exposing the shimmer steel of the blade and the black binding of the handle.
It was as if it had just emerged from the smelting pot.
And the embris was raring to attack him once again.
‘Okay, come on…’ He said, clenching the handle with both hands. ‘You make me look like a dumbass in class, you almost set my ass on fire in the middle of campus, and when I really need you you decide to hide away? … Fucking work, damn it!’
The embris’s whole body began to fill with a green flame.
It jolted towards him again.
‘COME O-O-O-O-N!!!’
The words escaped him in a furious rage, and a wicked orange light filled his eyes – not stemming from his face, but reflecting that which the blade of the axe was giving off. It was engulfed in flames.
And so was James’s mind.
Suddenly he knew what to do.
Timing it perfectly, he swung the axe back and connected it with the embris’s side, dodging its main attack. The blade sliced through its toughened skin, another screech escaping it, but this one of searing pain rather than anger. It skidded to a halt, slamming into a tree, its green flames dimming before stepping forward with a returning rage before striking James hard across the chest.
The force threw him back into the clearing, sliding into the centre point in which he had first found the creature. His axe flew from his hand, which he now scrambled for despite the stinging sensation that was rushing through his torso. Returning the weapon to his hand he looked down at his shirt to see it soaked with blood, the force of the strike from the embris having easily cut through his skin.
He had never felt a pain like it, even with the rushing adrenaline from the fight, but that same pounding rush of adrenaline brought him back up to a fighting stance, face to face with the injured embris as it stared back at him. It continued to screech, holding its side as the green flame of life that dwelled in its chest began to spill out, disappearing into nothing.
‘Let’s go…’ James panted. ‘You think you can take me now?’
It couldn’t understand him, but James didn’t care.
Another charge, not just from the monster, but from James. He roared out, the sound escaping his lungs not feeling his own but feeling so right.
As they closed in on each other, the axe lit with a flame that illuminated the entire clearing.
***
‘Damn it…’
Elena looked out into the forest, hearing the echoing shrieks of the embris and the roaring grunts of James come to an end. She ran her hands through her hair, suddenly drawing them away and looking down at them. Her fingertips were shaking in the slightest of ways, and she realised that she had finally shown emotion for the first time in almost 80 years.
James might have been the one that happened to stumble upon her first, but she could already feel her connection to him growing.
Maybe it’s the fact that I haven’t been around another being apart from that bastard embris for almost a hundred years, but I was really starting to like that idiot…
Crunch.
She looked out to the forest once again, searching in the darkness for any sign of movement. At any moment she expected the embris to burst through the trunks, splintering wood and stampeding towards her.
But a monster didn’t emerge – and it didn’t come stampeding through.
‘This what you were looking for?’
James pushed past the final trunks that blocked his way. He staggered on his feet, his shirt spattered with blood, both his own and that of the monster. In one hand he clutched the axe, still swelling with heat at the tip of the blade, and in the other he held the embris’s decapitated head.
‘You… You did it…’
Even though James’s consciousness was failing against the brutality of his injuries, he could still make out the sight of his goddess.
Elena opened the gates and James stumbled through, falling forwards. Elena caught him, lowering his form to the ground as his tokens of war fell either side of him.
He felt the warmth of her, Elena taking him in her arms with genuine worry and care.
‘Some fucking baptism of fire…’ He muttered, his consciousness finally slipping away completely as he handed himself over to the dark.
Chapter Eleven
First Time with a Goddess
James’s felt a softness beneath his head as it rolled back and forth like a swaying pendulum. The exhaustion of the fight had taken everything away; even the terrifying sight of the embris’s face filling up his vision as it bore down upon him was now a secondary thought to the comfort that had set itself down upon his body.
James’s eyes flickered open in the lantern light of Elena’s chambers. Pushing himself up a little and looking around, he found his goddess sat at the end of the bed wearing a silken robe with a mug of water in her hand – the one with Hello, Is It Tea You’re Looking For? stamped in huge letters across the side. It belonged in his kitchen cabinet, so how the hell had it gotten here?
But that wasn’t the strangest part about this whole image – it was the thought process that had gone along with it.
Wait a minute… My goddess?
That was what he had thought. Ever since meeting Elena she had been nothing but a royal pain in the ass, and he had had more crazy shit happen to him in the last 24 hours than he had in the last… Ever. And now here he was, thinking of this goddess, as strange as that word still seemed, as his own.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Pretty, okay, I guess,’ James said. ‘I did just get the shit beaten out of me by a mythical monster, but all things considered I don’t feel that bad.’
‘Drink this,’ she said with a smile, handing the mug to him. ‘I had to go back to your apartment to get the water seeing as I didn’t have any here. It took me a little while to figure out how to find it.’
‘Right…’ James smiled, ‘I keep forgetting how much you’ve got to catch up on. Presuming that Ascevious hasn’t laid waste to New York when we get back you and I should go for a tour of the city.’
‘I’d like that. We should have plenty of time once we return to your dimension. I doubt that Ascevious will have made any major moves as of yet.’
‘Let’s hope. And assuming no more monsters get in the way of things.’
‘Apologies for that – like I said, I had to make sure that your abilities were of a decent level.’
‘So does this make me, like… The one, or something?’ James said, almost cringing at the words.
‘The what?’
‘No, it’s stupid…’
‘No, tell me.’
James sat up, not believing that he was even saying this somebody who looked like Elena.
‘Okay… So in ever
y fantasy story I’ve ever read or watched or played-’
‘Played? Like acted?’
‘No – I’ll tell you another time. Anyway, in every story there’s always this chosen hero that fate calls upon to save the princess in the tower, or the world, or… Stuff like that.’
‘This is nothing like that.’
‘Good… I mean I didn’t think it was, but-’
‘There’s no such thing as fate, so your hero story would never work.’
‘No such thing as fate?’
‘Of course. It’s a ridiculous notion. Why, is that something that you believe in?’
‘No, I just… Always wondered.’
‘Fate suggests that things line up in a perfect way,’ Elena said matter-of-factly, ‘as if all the stars align and create some kind of outcome that was meant to be. But that isn’t the nature of the world. Things do happen a certain way, but most of the time they don’t happen for a reason; they happen just because that’s the way they happen. Unless you choose to intervene, of course.’
‘As a goddess I would’ve thought that fate would be your thing.’
‘My thing?’
‘Yeah. In our world you’re supernatural beings, whether you’re a demon-goddess or a wolf-goddess or a dragon-goddess. The moment people think of you they think of spells and curses and God knows what else.’
‘True, but we still possess free will, and so do you humans. You’d be amazed how many people look around for signs of things hidden in the random garbage that happens in your world. Faces in pancakes, the way the planets line up… The reality is that you act and things happen as a result. And sometimes things happen that you couldn’t have even anticipated.’
‘So because you’re a goddess you know all of this stuff for definite? Is that another one of your goddess perks?’
‘No, nothing is for definite. But we have been around for thousands of years, and we have watched over every great achievement and terrible catastrophe that you humans have brought upon yourselves. Believe me, it’s all caused by decisions and unintended consequences. But most people don’t want to take responsibility for their bad decisions.’
‘Do you?’
‘Of course, but as you can probably guess, our consciences don’t work the same as yours.’
‘That’d be a dream,’ James dwelt. ‘I can’t imagine how easy life would be without having to worry about the consequences of your actions.’
‘I wouldn’t know what it’d be like on the other end of things. But knowing that you have free will and not having a conscience means you can do what you really want a lot of the time.’
‘Like what?’
‘Well…’ Elena started, raising a slender hand to her shoulder and grabbing at the collar of her robe, ‘With no master leading me I now require a new one, and with the essence of a goddess master now dwelling within you I would request that you be my new master.’
James froze up, processing exactly what she had just said.
‘Your… Master? What does that even mean?’
‘It may not be your fate to try to stop Ascevious’s efforts, but right now you are the only one who holds the potential power to do such a thing. And I and my goddess companions are the only ones to help you. Being our master denotes total control over us… Over me…’
‘Total control…?’ James said, liking the sound of it but feeling bad about it at the same time.
‘Absolute,’ Elena replied, her voice sounding smooth as silk. ‘Of course, considering that I can still see into your soul a little, for the time being I can still see your desires without asking you. So what’s your answer?’ Elena stood, undoing her robe and letting it fall to the ground.
James had hardly been able to take his eyes from Elena’s body since had had first met her, but seeing her back in her red lingerie and nothing else was like finally satisfying the withdrawal from some ridiculously addictive Schedule 1 substance.
‘Your wounds have already started to heal nicely,’ she continued. ‘Did you know that in medieval times the citizens of Earth believed that sex could heal a whole range of ailments? It’s only half-true, of course – sex with a goddess is what heals them, but only if that goddess is your subject.’
Save for the moments when he had been fearing for his life, James felt as if he had been perpetually hard for the last few days ever since bringing his bootheel down on that little green gem. He had been entranced in the conversation with his goddess up until now, but dropping her robe away had sent his mind reeling once again.
‘Oh my…’ Elena chimed, half-sarcastic in her faux-shock, although her scheming smile belied a knowingness. ‘It seems I’m already having an effect on you.’ Her eyes flitted down to James’s waist.
It was only then that he realised he was completely naked - there was nothing containing the swelling of his length beneath the covers.
‘I thought you said that you couldn’t see into my mind,’ James said.
‘Master’ – an eager thrill ran through James’s body and mind at the very sound of Elena calling him that – ‘I hardly need to see into your mind to know your desires at this moment. You are a man, after all, and men have needs… But so do the goddesses.’
Elena reached her hands up behind her back, undoing her lacy red bra almost instantaneously. The losing battle that it had been fighting against her disproportionately buxom chest finally ended as the pressure upon the laced material was released. She shrugged out of it, catching one end with the tips of her fingers and casting it aside.
James drank in the sight of her huge, round breasts, briefly wondering how her slender figure managed to keep such an enticing posture with the weight of those hanging firmly on her chest. Running her hands up and over her body, she brushed her hands slowly over her enormous mounds, her fingertips sliding over her nipples, becoming visibly harder.
He found himself, somehow, getting harder still. By now the cover that had been cast upon him was pointless; his hardness stood on end enormously, a reminder of how he had grown bigger since taking on the souls of the gods.
Shamelessly and entirely caught in the moment, James clasped the silken cover in his hands and pulled it down over his body, revealing his length to both himself and Elena for the first time. A thrilling confidence filled him – this had to be one of the changes that Elena had been speaking about.
‘Oh my…’ Elena said slowly, James seeing that this was a genuine reaction. There was a change in her entire body. Her hand stopped at her heart – or at least where he imagined her heart would be if she even had one, James thought.
Her hands drifted down of their own volition along the slender sides of her body, her fingers slinking into the band of her red panties before she pulled them down over her slim thighs. They fell to the ground around her ankles in a second as she bent over, her breasts seeming even bigger as she did so.
James’s eyes met with hers as she rounded the bed, he still lying there watching her. Her look said one thing; stay right where you are. Even if he was now the master, he knew when to do what he was told.
‘Engaging in such an indulgent act with a goddess, particularly a demon-goddess is the ultimate sacrifice of yourself,’ Elena spoke slowly, her voice sound silkier than ever. ‘Doing so creates an inseparable bond between yourself and our own world, one that can never be broken… Except by the death of your soul.’
Men across the ages had made stupid decisions while lusting over women. Wars had been started, ships had been launched, and empires had been brought to the brink of destruction.
But I don’t care, James thought.
It wasn’t just about her. He liked this new version of himself.
And he definitely liked what it had led to so far.
‘Just how bad are the needs of a goddess?’ James asked, having already decided to give himself over.
‘Insatiable,’ Elena whispered, every syllable rolling off her tongue as she leaned forward onto the bed, over James’s form, wrapping her w
arm, soft fingers around the base of his hardness and wrapping her soft, luscious lips around the head of his length.
Pleasure coursed through him the likes of which he had never felt before. He had let go of the world he knew, the real world, to risk his life and to come to this tiny dimension. Earth had fallen away, but now even this dimension fell into nothingness too. Elena sank her mouth down upon his hardness, lapping her tongue against him wildly as she took him with her mouth.
Pulling herself away and rubbing him lightly in her hand, she ran her tongue up the side of his shaft, releasing a passionate groan from James as he rested back against the bed.
‘Eighty years since I’ve had a man… You’ve no idea how difficult it was not to have you the moment I got out of this damn place…’
She continued momentarily, sucking at him hungrily before drawing away. James looked up to see her slender, busty figure climbing atop the bed, moving over him on all fours like a wild beast. She stopped at his waist, raising herself up on her knees as her perfect form towered over him, the slit between her legs hovering over his hard, wet cock.
Elena took him once again in her hand, lowering herself down until her own soaking wetness met with him. James felt how wet she was immediately upon touching her. Their eyes met one last time before James rested his hands upon her soft thighs, running his battle-hardened palms up to her waist. Elena expertly lowered herself onto him, guiding his hardness into her depths inch by inch.
His goddess rested her hands on his chest, breathing deeply with the sensation at first as she took more and more of him, until he pushed even further into her depths. She finally released a stifled, shocked moan as he filled her up, her sharpened nails sinking into his skin.
Something told him that few men had made her do that before – that was why she was trying to resist against making a sound. Now that she had revealed herself, though, there was no sense in hiding it any longer.
Elena pushed herself away before sinking back down, riding his cock desirously as James panted with pleasure. She worked herself into a steady rhythm in no time, taking him over and over again as she moaned ferociously. That same glint of redness flashed over the reds of her eyes over and over again as she threw herself down upon him, grinding herself as if her life depended on it.