Goddess King: A Fantasy Harem Adventure

by Noah Layton

  Elena was the same. She had put the oversized dessert away in just a minute more, with more than a few heads in the moderately busy diner having turned their way at the speed at which they were finishing their meals.

  ‘That’s your powers at work,’ she said, nodding at his empty plate. ‘With your human body adjusting to your steadily growing repertoire of abilities, you’ll need to have enough energy to fuel everything that you want to do.’

  ‘Hey, if it means I get to eat more and keep a body like this, I’m all for it.’

  ‘So…’ Elena said slowly. ‘Feel like another?’

  ‘I thought you were gonna judge me for saying that.’

  James signalled over to the waitress who returned to them a moment later. He was a second away from ordering the same again when Elena’s eyes flared red, her hand reaching out, her fingers clasping tightly around James’s arm.

  ‘Wait!’ She said sharply, her eyes scanning the room hurriedly.

  James frowned at her but she took no notice. He glanced up at the waitress, who was looking at them both with a raised eyebrow, slightly worried.

  ‘Sorry,’ James said, bringing a finger to his temple and spinning it around. ‘My cousin. She’s just a bit… Y’know…’

  Before James could finish forming whatever excuse he was trying to come up with, Elena pulled her hand away and slipped out of her seat in the booth, taking off for the door, leaving James and the waitress pulling the exact same look of confusion in her direction.

  The waitress glanced at James.

  ‘So… You gonna go after her?’

  ‘Sometimes I think my life would be easier if I just let her wander off,’ James said flatly, shaking his head. Scrambling for some money, James slapped it down on the table and thanked the waitress, hurrying towards the door.

  Rushing out onto the street, James frantically searched for his goddess amongst taxis and pedestrians. Finally he spotted her across the street, looking into the lobby of a twenty-story office building.

  Dodging cabs and honking cars across three lanes, he headed up to her side.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘Wait…’ Elena said insistently, listening for something. ‘She’s here.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The next goddess. She’s somewhere nearby… In there.’

  James looked into the lobby of the cold, metallic building. It was moving towards late afternoon and the 9-5 workers were beginning to vacate the various premises downtown, save for the few late night financial analysts and security guards.

  ‘You’re serious? In the lobby?’

  ‘Not here… It’s like she’s in this area but far away…’

  They both looked at each other momentarily before turning their heads back to look up. The grey and black exterior of the building towered over them like a god in its own right, a monolith peering down upon everyone.

  ‘That’s why she seems far away,’ James said. ‘She’s somewhere up there.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Break-In

  ‘You’ve gotta be kidding me, right?’

  ‘No, why?’

  Half an hour of deliberating and discussion later and James and Elena were stood outside the neighbouring office block to the building where his second goddess resided. Having googled the address and finding it belonging to Wyatt and Simmons, a prestigious financial firm with a Controversies section on their Wikipedia profile long enough to make anyone blush, James figured that trying to break in through the front door would probably result in the pair of them being shipped off to a Supermax prison or, on the more likely side, shot in sight by the plethora of security guards lurking in the lobby.

  The alternative that Elena had suggested was a little more creative.

  ‘You said yourself that this building had less security, if any. It’s simple – we get to the roof which should be quite easy, and then I fly us across to there. We smash through the window and we’re inside.’

  ‘I can’t… Even begin to list the stuff that doesn’t work with this plan. Stealing the freaking axe was bad enough, but this is insane.’

  ‘At least I’m telling you about the plan this time.

  ‘You’re only doing that because I’m your master. You have to.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘Okay, well if I’m your master I’ll make the decision, and my decision is no this is a goddamn terrible idea.’

  ‘Then you need to suggest an alternative. As the goddess master you have control over the goddesses, but it is also your responsibility to lead us properly. There are about to be three of us in this group, and Ascevious is making moves to enslave your race as we speak. He is choosing, and now you have to do the same.’

  James looked between the two buildings once again, trying to resist putting his hands on his hips and thinking back to his dad, a few hundred miles away.

  His father had grown up in poverty more abstract than most people knew in the western world, and having made more than a few mistakes himself in his younger years he had always tried to get James to do the right thing. No drugs, drinking in moderation, making careful decisions – all of the things that a responsible parent who wanted their son to be better than they had been would enforce.

  Now James was trying to cope with the souls of two gods lurking within him, and a demon goddess from another dimension who was trying to convince him to risk his life to save another goddess.

  But as Elena had reminded him, he had made the choice, and he would need to walk the path.

  Go running through the lobby and get myself shot, jump off a building on the back of a flying goddess and hope that she sticks the landing, or leave it a few days until Ascevious unlocks all of his minions and gets the upper hand, after which he’ll probably succeed in enslaving the entire human race from what Elena has told me.

  James sighed deeply, knowing that he was screwed for a decision either way.

  ‘Well, as much as I hate every single possible option that I have available right now, flying from that building to our target is probably the only one that doesn’t result in my definitely dying. Only probably dying.’

  ‘What do you mean probably? We’re going to be fine. Besides, in the unlikely event that I did drop you, your newfound strength would keep you safe.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘I’m going to say yes, but that word ‘probably’ is now starting to sound a lot better. You’ll probably be okay. You might break your squishy human legs… Master.’

  James shook his head, realising that there was no other way around this whole situation.

  Besides, the jump wasn’t that far… Was it?

  ***

  Twenty minutes later and they had made their way through the neighbouring office block, and after a little creative rerouting James and hid goddess had arrived on the roof. Elena took no time to strip herself down, something James was still getting used to in public, in order to fully stretch her wings out.

  Darkness had already fallen, and the only semblance of light that remained was from the streetlights below, grasping up desperately in an attempt to have their shine spread to the darkened, hidden rooftops that were out of reach. Seeing her with her full wingspan arced to her sides sent him back hours before, back when she had fucked him senseless, riding him from above in all her glory.

  Now James just had to hope that those wings of hers actually worked.

  ‘So how do we do this?’ He asked, his stomach already doing somersaults.

  ‘Hold on to me as we cross, and once we reach it we’re going to have to smash our way in. We can try and do it with brute force, but the glass looks thick.’

  ‘I guess it’s gonna have to be the axe, then,’ James replied, removing it from its case. It had only been a few hours since he had used it to defeat the embris, but holding it again just felt… Right. There was an implied strength to the thing, something primal and brilliant that he loved about it.

  ‘You ready?’

&nbs
p; ‘As I’ll ever be.’

  They crossed to the edge, Elena stepping up onto the safety wall without a second thought while James measured his footstep carefully.

  Kill a mythical creature; easy. Risk falling to my death; I’ve never been more afraid.

  He had already accomplished that crazy jump during the fight with the embris, but the kind of distance that lay ahead of James was much farther – and at this point he didn’t even know that he could rely on his powers to not flake out instantaneously.

  He didn’t care about heights, but that was usually only because there was always a guard between him and whatever huge fall laid ahead.

  Now there was nothing.

  He took a deep breath and stepped up, keeping a hold on to Elena’s arm.

  ‘Who’s really the master here?’ James asked, laughing nervously.

  ‘Not a question you want to be asking right now,’ Elena said before wrapping her arms around him and leaping off from the edge.

  No warning. No second guessing. James found his feet scrambling for a non-existent platform beneath him, but in a way was glad that he hadn’t found one; doing so would mean he had hit the ground.

  ‘Now would be a good time!’

  James looked over to the incoming blackened windows, his eyes going wide. He scrambled for the axe, swinging it back and striking the eleventh floor glass with the edge of the blade.

  Half of him expected it to bounce right off considering this stuff was made not to break, but it broke away in a moment, the axe slicing through it like butter.

  Elena pushed onwards, the pair of them hurtling into the dark, warm innards of the building, into the belly of the beast where the next prize awaited.

  Collecting himself, James quickly noticed the blaring alarm in the background. Security would be on their way in no time.

  ‘We need to get moving now,’ he insisted, turning to Elena. ‘Can you find her?’

  His goddess paused, looking about, her silhouette twitching slightly as she searched for the goddess’s presence.

  ‘Up,’ she said. ‘We need to go up.’

  ‘Guards will be taking the elevator, so we’ll take the stairs.’

  Hurrying between desk cubicles and past water coolers, they found the lit stairwell and pushed through the fire doors into it. Elena moved ahead of him, impossibly fast, but James found the same strength that he had experienced in the forest in her dimension now coursing through him. He could take the stairs three at a time with little effort, rushing from floor to floor with only the slightest breath.

  Energy filled him; aside from finishing inside of Elena, it was one of the greatest feelings he had ever experienced, and more felt as if it was trying to push its way out of him until-

  ‘Here!’

  His goddess barged through the door on the 19th floor. James barely had time to register the fact that they had ascended 8 floors in what seemed like seconds until he saw the huge number stamped on the wall of the stairwell.

  Moving through the door they found themselves greeted by an entirely different layout; a single corridor, much more high-fashion and chrome than the open office they had originally arrived in, stretched before them.

  James followed Elena promptly as she moved from door to door, shaking her head with each that they passed. James caught sight of the names and titles on each door, quickly realising that they belonged to the most dangerous people in the building, even more dangerous than the security guards with guns who were no doubt on their way to find he and Elena at that very moment.

  They belonged to the executives and the directors, the ones who ran everything. The guards might pull the trigger, but it was them who ordered it to be pulled in the first place.

  And where else would Elena lead James to, but-

  ‘Here.’

  They stopped at the end of the corridor, right before the hardwood door with the words Jordan Axley – Chief Executive Officer.

  ‘In there.’

  ‘Of course it’s in there,’ James muttered to himself. In the background the alarm still sounded faintly.

  James considered his options, but like everything that had happened so far he reconciled himself to the fact that they had come this far – what had to be done had to be done, and with the energy piling in his veins he suddenly found himself bounding forward, raising his leg and bringing the heel of his boot against the locked door. It splintered off the hinges, the pure strength lurking within his body sending it flying.

  Wait… Did I just do that? Or was that…

  For a moment it had felt as if something else within him had forced him forwards, had controlled his body and moved his limbs without any of his input.

  ‘An impressive move,’ Elena said, briefly taken aback for a moment almost as much as James himself. She headed inside, glancing over her shoulder at him as he stood outside the door. ‘You coming or not?’

  ‘I… Yeah…’ He said quickly, shaking his head free of the thought, reminding himself that he had already killed a monster with this strength and pushing on into the room. ‘Where is this thing?’

  The room was lavish, minimally decorated with expensive, strangely-shaped furniture, including a desk that was far too big for its own good. The view from the window was magnificent, looking out over the lights of the bustling city below.

  ‘This would be a fantastic place to fuck…’ Elena said, becoming just as distracted as James had been by the view for a moment before her head jolted to the side. ‘It’s here somewhere…’

  ‘It’ll stand out,’ James thought out loud. ‘There’s no way it can be a modern object if the goddesses were imprisoned that long ago.’

  James wandered about the office, looking carefully but paradoxically quickly, that constant ringing sound reminding him every second that they had a limited amount of time.

  And then he saw it.

  The horn was suspended on two perfectly vertical Y-shaped sticks, the peaks of the letter holding the object in place. It was perfectly curved, tinged brown, and sitting right on the edge of the oversized desk.

  A fancy-looking artefact set up as nothing but a pretty piece of décor on some alpha-CEO’s work table, that just so happened to have a goddess living inside of it.

  James took it up in his hands carefully, as if it were a bubble that would pop at any moment. Elena appeared by his side, looking down at it.

  ‘How am I supposed to open this?’ James asked. ‘With the gem it could crack, but with this thing… If I break it too badly it’ll destroy the dimension but she’ll come rushing out…’

  But I don’t want to destroy the dimension inside… There’s another world in there, no matter how small.

  Still, the alarm continued to ring.

  James brought his finger carefully to the hole at the end, knowing that he needed to carefully manage his newfound strength now more than ever.

  The wood was pliant, steadily giving under the increasing pressure he placed upon it, until-

  Snap.

  The wood broke, cracking down the middle several inches but keeping the object intact.

  Elena and James glanced at each other in darkness of the office.

  ‘What else do you think we can tr-’

  Even in the dim light of the office the blue smoke exploded out brilliantly, spinning around the ceiling so quickly that it seemed like a small tornado would break out at any moment.

  James dropped the horn to the ground in shock, he and Elena stumbling back as the smoke finally began to form into a solid shape, just as his first goddess had done upon her escape from the gemstone.

  Now, the second appeared before his very eyes.

  She was crouching down, knees bent, both of her hands clasped flat on the floor. For a moment she did nothing but remain there, breathing deeply.

  They both watched with curiosity as the goddess stood, turning to face the pair of them. James found himself face to face with an absurdly sexy girl who appeared to be in her early twenties. Her wavy, shoul
der-length auburn hair that surrounded her beautiful, sun-kissed face was obscured only by a pair of furry cat ears that seemed to protrude from the top of her head, twitching slightly as she surveyed James. Another limb seemed to stretch out from her behind her in the darkness, but upon closer inspection who saw the handle of a long samurai sword, holstered and held over her body.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Conference with the Gods

  The cat-goddess dived at them, screeching out as she crashed into Elena.

  They smashed into the wall, James leaping out of the way as they grasped at each other’s arms, the cat girl delivering a sharp scratch with her clawed fingernails and hissing wildly. Elena’s cheek ran red with blood before the wound slowly began to heal, but there was no time to watch any more take place. Elena threw herself forward with a roaring rage, her wings propelling her on as she took hold of the new goddess and smashed the pair of them into the CEO’s desk, splintering it to pieces as if it was nothing but a toothpick.

  Another round of shrieking and sparring began as the two goddesses scrambled about on the floor, and in the midst of their warring sounds James heard something else beyond the alarm.

  The shouting of male voices, and footsteps accompanying them.

  Leaving the girls while he decided what the hell to do with them, he dashed to the door of the office and looked out into the hallway. The noises grew louder.

  The security guards had found them.

  ‘Oh, shit…’ James said, looking over his shoulder and back into the room. Energy had filled him previously but there had been few obstacles except for a door in his path. Now he had a team of armed security guards running in his direction and two goddesses beating each other senseless in the other.

  There was no way Elena would be able to seduce these guys; they were professionals, and the fact that she was otherwise preoccupied in a fight with a cat-goddess right now didn’t exactly help.

  Something had to give – and it was himself.

  Choose.

  James returned to the office, slamming the door shut behind him.

  ‘Cut the bullshit!’ He yelled, his voice roaring vigorously through the room. The sound, the words themselves, neither of them felt like his own. To him it didn’t matter, though – Elena and the cat-goddess separated, rolling off of each other, both with shocked expressions on their faces.