Mark 2.0: Book 4: Love

by Prax Venter

  Amina was watching him carefully and nodded.

  “Can I ask you one last thing?”

  “No,” he said. “You can ask me infinite things.”

  She pulled her thin lips tight and cringed before speaking. “I have no concept of how to Enthrall. How do I forge such a bond?”

  “From what I can see, you two are both standing on the edge of that cliff. Just take her hand, tell her all the things you told me about how you feel when she looks at you, and then jump into each other’s eyes.”

  The Awysai Fighter sighed. “You put things in such odd ways, yet this was a very productive walk. I thank you, Mark. You are a true friend.”

  He shot her a grin. “You bet, Chieftain. Anytime.”

  Most of the fermented milk fuzz around his brain finally had faded as they walked up the stairs of the ancient structure, but Mark found the blond bombshell of a succubus had pushed herself in the other direction from sober while he was away.

  “There he is!” Sasha bellowed from within a gaggle of sexually hopeful rabbit-men. She roughly pushed her way through them and as each turned his direction, Mark felt their collective jealousy almost knock him back down the stairs. Sasha continued. “Let me at that beautiful bulging cock, Lover. Get that thing in me right the fuck now, I don’t care where you stick it.”

  Mark looked past the lurching sex demon to see Jezebel give him a helpless shrug as she and the others stood around the center console.

  Sasha’s irresistible blue eyes were both wild and half lidded as she closed the distance but tripped over her own hooves before she made it to him. She instinctually snapped out her wings as Mark caught her and there was no mistaking the alcohol on her breath. He was going to get drunk again from just a single kiss.

  “Gimme,” she breathed, pawing at his junk while everyone stared at them.

  “Oookay, time to put my succubus to bed.”

  “Allow me to escort Sasha to the inn,” Learis said, coming up behind them. “I’ve learned all my mind can handle for now. I don’t need to scout the cleared depots, but I am coming with you tomorrow.”

  “Thank you,” he said then focused on Sasha’s bond with his considerable mental strength. Once he had her attention, he willed her the concept of him sneaking his dick inside her and trying to make her cum while she was dreaming.

  “Ooo,” she groaned, taking a step back to lean against Learis. “That’s my kinda dirty.”

  “And I’ll take this one,” Amina said. Mark glanced over to see her lifting a bleary-eyed Abby into her arms, and he gave her a nod as well.

  “We’ll be down to join you as soon as we get a quick peek at what else is out there.”

  Abby reached out her tentacles as Amina carried her past, and Mark brought one to smear across his lips before she was out of range. The inebriated abyssal horror then snuggled against the Chieftain’s chest before passing out again as she was carried off to bed.

  Now that the sun was going down and people were leaving, most of the villagers came to shake hands with Mark, giving him their final thanks for helping to protect their home. By the time he approached the center console with Jezebel and Angel, there were only a handful of die-hard revelers sitting on the metal floor or leaning against the walls until they felt sober enough to move.

  “So, ladies, how exactly does this whole thing work?”

  “It’s going to be difficult to fully pick up,” Jezebel said, crossing her arms. “Angel here has capabilities regarding perfect memory that I should have access to yet are disabled for me- and you. Fully understanding any of this technology will require learning a whole language. However, ten seconds after pressing this, anything standing over there will be teleported to one of the selected destinations.” She pointed at a green flashing square among a sea of unintelligible text and random shapes, then to a faint circle pattern in the floor nearby.

  “Jezebel is understating her ability,” Angel added. “Yet I tremble at the thought of what you will be capable of once we escape the multiverse.”

  “Me too,” Mark said. “You and I get to see it for the first time together, little bot.”

  Angel blinked her pixelated eyes. “I still am not fully appraised of your history.”

  He waved a hand and chuckled. “Believe it or not, neither am I, but let’s focus on hitting up some of these other depots and see if we can’t fill that robo-brain of yours with more Lagomorph data or crafting patterns.”

  Mark followed Jezebel over to the teleportation area while Angel tapped the activation button and gently clanked her metal shins into the floor as she joined them.

  A strange blue symbol appeared over the console for a moment then shifted to another, then another. It was obviously a countdown.

  “Why does everyone speak in English, but this text is alien?” Mark asked.

  Jezebel shrugged. “The original game designers probably thought it was a good balance of mystery and function.”

  “Fascinating,” Angel said, and Mark could tell the concept hit her hard.

  Before anyone could say anything, a flash of light seemed to destroy his physical body, and Mark felt an impossible sense of forward motion as pure light before popping back into existence with a brain-smashing collision with reality.

  “Respawns!” shouted a deep female voice, and Mark’s True Sight blared out a warning of an incoming attack. He sparked up an ethereal coating around his forearm just in time to catch an enormous scimitar aiming to cleave his skull in two.

  His eyes shifted down to those of his attacker, and he saw what could only be described as a seven-foot llama woman with curly brown hair and a skimpy metal bikini.

  “Wait!” he shouted as Jezebel shifted into a bear behind him, but his voice was washed out by another llama female with a dark hood over her tall neck. She lifted her hands and yelled, “Metal Rain!”

  Mark locked up as memories of twinkling black eyes behind a white mask filled his mind- then the first piercing projectile from above zipped into his foot and the excruciating pain triggered his magic dome defense.

  Everyone close enough besides Jezebel and Angel were tossed against the curved walls of the ancient depot. Despite the agonizing pain from the metal lodged into her back, the shifted druid lifted a paw and entangled the spellcaster in her standard Vines spell.

  “Enough!” Mark shouted with a new force behind his words that radiated outward as a visible wave of electric blue energy. Fear immediately reverberated back to him from those still conscious around the edges of the depot and a particular spike crashed into him from a Llama-man wearing the same black, white, and red outfit that he himself had started with.

  He was another Lover, and these llama-women were his heart-bound Enthralled.

  Mark put everyone outside his protective bubble equally out of his mind as he turned to yank the three-foot spike from his foot. Reality slipped a little as he thought it should be a sewing needle instead of a simple geometric shape, but the pain of ripping it out erased any extraneous thoughts.

  A glance told him Angel’s armor had protected her, and he winced as the bot reached to pull the shard from Jezebel’s back.

  With the invading objects removed, Mark closed his eyes and blanketed every scrap of organic material inside his protective dome with formidable healing energies. Jezebel’s bear tongue lolled out of her mouth as magical ecstasy assaulted her body while Mark himself felt only the relief of pain.

  Once his own were cared for, he turned to face the others in the room.

  The wide-eyed llama Lover was cradling the unconscious amazon who’d been flung the farthest and beside him was a smaller llama woman. By the identical rapiers on the ground, she appeared to be a dual-wielding warrior but was now only holding a broken arm as she stood guard over her teammates. The caster was still being held by the ethereal vines yet was no longer struggling to break free.

  “If any of you attack us again, we will reluctantly erase you from existence,” Mark said, looking them each in the
eye. “Do you understand?”

  “We understand,” said the Collector. “We will not attack.”

  The other man was shaken, but Mark’s eye pulsed with truth, so he dismissed his barrier and Jezebel shifted back to her satyr form before she canceled the vines on the silver-robed mage.

  “Why are you attacking our lands?” demanded the llama-girl with the broken arm through gritted teeth.

  Mark was confused for a moment, but Jezebel answered quickly. “We did not create these structures, and we are not from this world.”

  “Are we even in Lagos anymore?” Mark asked either of the two smarter women standing behind him. “These guys certainly aren’t Lagomorphs.”

  However, a quick glance out the windows showed the same rolling hills covered in blue windswept grasses he’d come to associate with the rabbit homeworld. Lightning flashed in the distance though where it had been clear skies for miles back where they started.

  Angel turned her pixelated eyes on his. “It might be an error to assume there is only one species to be found in this dimension, Commander.”

  A change in the magical currents pulled his attention back to the llama Lover as he cast his own heal on the large barbarian in his arms. Her furry abs constricted as she sucked air back into her lungs and her brown eyes fluttered open to focus on Mark.

  “I’ll destroy you!” she shouted, hatred flashing out of her wide-set eyes as she launched herself forward ready to rip him apart with her bare hands. The emotional lock triggered a direct link into the enraged amazon’s digital soul, and Mark’s high-level mind had the equivalent of hours to browse her past before she would place a single split hoof on the metal floor.

  Amorata was her name, and her loyalty to her lovers was only slightly outmatched by her unquenchable rage. She was from Lagos, a world that apparently also had sheep-people as well as llamas and rabbits, and Mark was able to walk with her through the formative years of her tribe’s nomadic existence. She faced ridicule from girls regarding her deeper voice and brutal beatings from boys leading to her father teaching her a fluid style of martial arts to defend herself. He called her his ‘little butterfly’, and she adored him.

  A year before coming of age, three boys ganged up on her outside their temporary camp and held her down. Mark winced as he watched them press the white-hot end of a burning stick into one of her nipples- forever scarring her for not agreeing to date one of them. The rage she’d been cultivating burst forth like a demon, and she murdered the teenage boys, snarling as she choked the life out of each one. The elders ordained she should be tied to a post and left to survive or die on her own as they moved on, but the betrayal of her father leaving with the tribe had been the final fiery brand to her heart that seared in her hatred. Her tears eventually stopped as she tore free from the rope, and as a result of her ordeal, physical pain no longer had any hold over her ability to survive.

  It was many years later that a Collector called Parcel had come near the dungeon she’d been running solo. Mark wanted to explore this concept of a living dungeon, but all paths in her mind from this moment forward bent toward a long-lashed Lover-Class llama riding in on a hill strider. His gentle eyes and gentler touch had been the only thing that could convince her to finally trust someone again, but those eyes and hands were out of reach now as she propelled herself toward Mark- the perceived threat to her precious Parcel and the sisters of her harem.

  “Amorata, no!” her Collector cried out, but despite trusting him, he couldn’t always quell the flames of her rage once they were lit.

  Mark wasn’t helpless, however. With a mental pulse to Jezebel to stay back, he extruded a full set of armor from the ethereal energy granted by Salivis.

  The frenzied llama berserker tried to tackle him, but his True Sight predicted her headlong rush, and he sidestepped the lunge while taking a moment to wave off Angel as well.

  “I am not your foe,” Mark said calmly, but he barely got it out before the large woman changed her momentum and spun a huge right hook toward Mark’s head. He distributed a portion of his energy into bracing his legs and the rest of it toward creating a round shield on the back of his hand. He caught the blow, and her oversized knuckles crunched against the deceptively solid translucent force.

  The pain of her ruined hand never reached her brain, and she immediately tried to swing her other fist up to castrate him with a low blow, but his True Sight was way ahead of any damage possibly heading to that particular area.

  Mark stood firm, shifting the thickness of his armor to cover his crotch while using the rest to create an ethereal tail similar to Amina’s with the intent of once again bracing against any amount of strength she could hurl at him. And hurl she did. Mark’s blind eye noticed the universe condense around her hand just before her primal roar. Flames burst from between her fingers an instant before she made contact, and as before, her ability-imbued attack crashed spectacularly against his armor.

  The llama’s wrist bent backward at an unsettling angle, yet she still didn’t seem to notice and reared up to try another reckless tackle.

  Everyone on her team was shouting her name, afraid Mark would keep his promise to erase anyone that attacked them again, but Amorata was unconscious for that initial exchange, so his plan was to just let her beat herself out of options as he practiced conducting his flow of goddess-given power.

  It didn’t come to that as Parcel injected himself into the melee and wrapped his furry arm up around her long neck.

  “Stop…” he pleaded when she spun to face him. “They are not going to hurt us.”

  She shuddered as his eyes held hers steady and the savage llama-woman drew in a shaky breath before letting it out smoothly. The tension in the room dissipated.

  “Thank you,” Parcel said, looking past her to Mark. “I don’t know who you people are, but we will not attack you again.”

  Even though this Collector’s bonded berserker didn’t feel pain, as a Lover, he felt enough of it for her- and Mark did as well through his powerful magic eye.

  “We understand the misunderstanding,” Jezebel offered after sending a proud pulse through their bond at how he handled the situation. “Strange monsters have spawned at these mysterious towers and we, obvious outsiders, appeared out of nowhere. This ancient structure-”

  “We have claimed this tower as our home,” Amorata interrupted with lingering resentment and still oblivious to her ruined hands. “We defeated the final demons. It is ours by right.”

  “Shh, sister,” the magic-using llama said as she took a step closer. “Let these strangers explain why they have come to us.”

  Mark put up his empty palms. “We aren’t here to take anything from you. This tower is ancient technology that’s waking up because of some unfathomably powerful forces at play. Its main function is to serve as a teleportation network and resource depot. We cleared the tower near a Lagomorph village called Gylmear Fields- known for awesome cheese. Do you know where that is in relation to here?”

  The cream-colored llama-girl with the broken arm and the dark-furred mage shared a glance before Parcel answered.

  “I passed through that village years ago. I’m probably mistaken, but it couldn’t be less than 9 days ride from here.”

  “Interesting,” Mark said and then nodded for Angel to begin digging into the center console. “Start figuring out how to get us back.”

  “Complying.”

  Jezebel activated her glowing wing shapes and said, “Please don’t hurt my Collector while I take a look around the area.” After a stern glance at the berserker barbarian with snapped wrists, the emerald-eyed satyr vaulted out of a window and started a circular scouting pattern.

  “What is that creature doing to our magic sculpture?” Amorata demanded.

  “She’s figuring out how get us out of your new home.” Mark felt his healing ability tick over as he spoke but turned to Parcel before doing what was in his nature. “As you’ve guessed, I’m a Lover too. I’m good to go again, w
ould you allow me to heal everyone?”

  “By all means,” he said with a slight nod.

  Mark sent his invasive perception into their bodies and blanketed the whole area with glittering motes of restorative energy. Everyone in the circular room let out uncontrollable moans- even Parcel, yet he paid special attention to the anger-fueled amazon with the solid sensual body barely covered by metal rings. Her burned-off nipple tingled in under his powerful eye and there was a good chance he could use his high-level ability to revert system objects to… but he paused before taking away a formative scar of her past. Something told him that she might want to stay the way she was.

  The thin warrior whose arm was no longer broken picked her dual rapiers up off the floor and slid them back into loops on her belt.

  “Who in the void are you strangers, really?”

  Mark gave her a shrug. “We are the ones fighting to save this and all universes.”

  - 13 -

  Lightning flashed through the deep purple clouds beyond, and Mark opened his nostrils as wide as they would go to try and collect that unique pre-rain breeze. The imminent storm brought Jezebel back quickly and reporting only the same endless waving grasses they’d seen everywhere else on Lagos. Angel quickly learned of another new depot accessible from this point and found several different crafting patterns, but nothing useful in combat. Also, she hadn’t figured out how to copy these patterns from one depot to another yet, so it wasn’t as if they could start building a central library of autocraftable goods. Yet his magic eye whispered into his brain that she wasn’t saying the whole truth about what she found, but it was clear she didn’t want to give out sensitive information in front of these strangers, so he let it go for now.

  Mark had asked the llama harem if they’d ever seen a huge black ball made of the same material as their newly claimed tower. They hadn’t, so after a solid handshake with Parcel, it was time to move on.

  “I suggest we test going back before traveling further outward,” Angel said, and they both easily agreed. Jezebel knew something was wrong by now as well.