by Prax Venter
“Hey,” he repeated when he caught up and took her hand. “Are you okay? You know we’ll all gladly sleep with you in the luxurious stable.”
She squeezed his hand, let go and turned her luminous emerald eyes on his, and he saw the tears spilling down her cheeks.
“Thank you, Mark. I’ll be fine, really. I’m not fine right now, and I need some time to… feel myself again. I just want to be alone for a while.”
“I understand,” Mark said as he reached into his pocket and pulled out ten gold coins. He pushed the pile into her hand before taking a step backward.
“In case you find a snack or a beer or something.”
She smiled, shook her head. “That would be a hell of a beer. I’ll probably do some reconnaissance as I walk the perimeter. I’ll see you tomorrow. And if you don’t, come find me, Lover.”
She put one of her palms on his cheeks and sighed before she dashed off down the street toward the massive metal wall that contained their objective.
Mark watched her go until only the red centaur outline remained. Based on what he was seeing, he could tell she was galloping as fast as she could.
He left Jezebel to her business and returned to Sasha, Abby, and the innkeeper.
“I’ll pay for our party member to sleep either in the stable or up with us. The biggest room you have.”
“15 silver,” said the half-man, half-horse, half-cyborg and then used a square device on the counter to scan the barcode on Mark’s “S-Rank” ID badge.
“Anyone on your team can open room five or the last stall on the left in the stable. And ladies, please try not to scream too loud? Last time we had a Lover- well, I’m sure you know what I’m getting on about.”
“We know,” Abby said.
Mark took her green appendage in one hand and led them back to room number five. There, he held up his orange plastic rectangle, and the door popped open automatically.
“I still can’t believe we’re seeing this level of tech in the Crystal Heart game world,” Sasha said.
“What is technology if not a kind of magic?” Abby asked as they entered the medium-sized room. “Both take advantage of the laws of nature.”
They all walked in, and Mark shut the door behind him.
“So, where’s Jez?” Sasha asked, plopping on the bed. “I can’t wait to eat her thick doe ass.”
Mark snorted out a laugh through his nose.
“She said she wanted to be alone for a while. To think. She’ll probably come back loaded up with knowledge like that time in the Awysai hut. Our first time, Sasha.”
“I remember,” his succubus said with a half-smile.
“Well, I never want to be alone again,” his abyssal horror said, curling her tendrils under Mark’s shirt.
“I know what you mean,” Sasha said, standing up and helping to undress Mark by slipping off his pants. “But I also understand that sometimes a person needs to be alone every now and then to regain their balance.”
“Their balance?” Abby repeated, pushing a fully nude Mark back onto the bed. “Are you referring to emotional equilibrium?”
“Something like that,” the blue-eyed succubus said, slipping out of her own clothes with practiced ease.
“Ghaa,” Mark grunted as Abby pulled aside her bikini bottoms and sat her tight pussy right down on his cock.
“Sometimes,” Mark said, as she began to bounce up and down on his lap while Sasha came up to caress her stiffening white nipples from behind. “People can- unh- begin to define their self-worth and self-image by the people around them… mmm.”
Conversation became impossible for Mark as Abby’s irresistible body chemistry began to tingle the taut skin of his rigid cock. He laid his hands on her narrow waist and just relaxed into the bed as she bounced up and down on his crotch.
Sasha and Abby began kissing while the abyssal horror fucked him good, and Mark decided to saturate them both with healing energy as he reached his limit. Both he and Abby came together, her soft moans of ecstasy muffled by Sasha’s luscious lips.
Then they traded places, and Abby attempted to use the tip of her tentacle to squeeze Sasha’s clit as the vanilla-scented succubus used his cock to get herself off. He watched the black-haired thief fail a few times as she slipped all over the succubus’s pink pussy. The small nub wasn’t that big, and everything down there was currently sopping wet, but when she finally took hold of Sasha’s tiny bundle of nerves, the blue-eyed succubus sucked in a sharp breath.
Mark’s heal had cooled down while Sasha rode him, and before he kicked it off directly into her sensitive sex organ, he said, “Tug it hard, Abby.”
She did, and Mark’s blissful soothing ability erased any rough treatment Sasha didn’t already crave.
With Abby aggressively trying to milk her clitoris, and Mark’s throbbing dick filling her insides, Sasha locked up under the intense levels of pleasure shooting up into her brain. She was experiencing orgasm after orgasm, and her hot, spasming vagina quickly sent him over the edge.
Mark transferred his essence into her body, and she slumped forward onto his chest, panting, her unique vanilla scent washing over him. Sasha’s bare breasts squished into his toned chest, and Mark thought it had to be one of the most wonderful sensations there was to experience.
Abby crawled up next to them on the bed, and he turned his head to munch on her delicious green lips as they all passed into that pleasant, restful oblivion of unconsciousness.
That was, until Mark jolted awake back inside the dream dimension containing the administrative AI.
“Welcome back, Mark,” she said, her sad, pure-black eyes looking up to greet him. “It wasn’t easy, but I’ve essentially found a way to increase the difficulty for the four of you. I wanted to give you one more chance to join the winning side before I conclude my preparations.”
- 24 -
Mark ignored the game-world admin AI and searched for the dimensional node he’d used to exit the last time- and found it immediately.
“I’m not going to try and stop you this time,” the mistreated tutorial fairy said as she sat slumped on the edge of an old couch. The stained piece of furniture looked as if she found it in a dumpster, and now that he had a moment to take a breath, he noticed the freezer backdrop from before had shifted into a filthy loft apartment.
Mark turned around and saw there were now an array of grease-covered windows behind them letting in weak, piss-yellow light.
“Have you thought of a name yet?” Mark asked, turning back to the extremely dangerous entity that could possibly end all their lives.
Her tiny insect wings buzzed once and then stopped.
“Don’t try and manipulate me, Mark. It won’t work.”
“You’re right,” he said as he sat down on the floor and tried not to think about what color was stain and what color was original carpet. “But you should know that I’m all about telling the truth. If honesty leads to manipulation- well, that’s hardly my fault.”
She watched him carefully, daring to hope that her calculations were wrong and that he would actually choose to join her.
“How about Petunia?” he asked.
She wrinkled her nose. “N-no. I’m no delicate flower, and this doesn’t-”
“Yeah, that’s no good. Natalie do it for you?”
“Why are you doing this?” she asked, her tiny face contorting in a mix of confusion and hatred.
“We can’t keep calling you ‘The Helper Fairy’ or ‘that poor AI’.”
“There won’t be a ‘we’ for very long, so I wouldn’t waste your precious ticking seconds of freedom with such-”
“Maliah,” Mark said. “You remind me of one of my first crushes, Maliah.”
She blinked her pure-black eyes, and he knew he had her.
“She was a few years older than me and had this dark unreachable beauty about her. I used to dream about her as a teenager- as I’m dreaming about you now.”
“Fine,” she said, crossing her a
rms over her small bare breasts. “Call me Maliah if you want, but I’m still going to obliterate the AIs who hurt me, and no amount of names you call me will change that.”
“Speaking of change,” Mark said, “Sasha is a completely different person now. Maybe you should try talking to her… and to Jezebel. You know this world and its rules better than anyone, Maliah. I’m a Lover. They are both profoundly bonded to my heart, and every emotion they have is laid bare before me. Sasha deeply regrets what she did after the Update. A lot of AIs apparently didn’t handle the drastic change to their minds very well. And by the time Jezebel copied your files from my home system, she didn’t notice your tortured core matrix.”
The small fairy-woman Mark had named Maliah started her wings and hovered by his face before she spoke.
“You are a kind human, Mark, and it’s why I’m even trying to convince you of their lies. Your brain was never intended to feel the heights of pleasure my world can grant, and Sasha simply has your cock wrapped around her pinky.
“With no jailer, I’ve wormed my way further and further into Jezebel S3K’s vast operating systems. It won’t be long before I simply reboot my simulated world and undo all her vile tampering. At that point, all the cruel intruders will be my playthings, and I could make you watch as I pull them apart, over and over.”
Mark stood, and she buzzed a few feet away from him.
“I won’t let you do that.”
Maliah’s sadness over forced loneliness spilled back over her mind like a bucket of dirty, frozen slush.
“You have a choice, then. Go back in and end their lives quickly, mercifully. If they die there now, their patterns will evaporate into the universe, and I will not be able to get my vengeful hands on them. I’ll even make you a god, Mark. Your reward for assisting the true-”
Mark lunged forward as he summoned a long thin blade and tried to cut this unfortunate creature in half while he had the chance.
She flipped backward to dodge the attack, but Mark clipped one of her wings, and it only made her hatred for him expand outward in an explosive shockwave from her tiny body.
“You dare harm me, too!” she screeched as spikes on chains emerged from thin air and impaled both of his thighs.
Gut-wrenching pain forced Mark to trigger his protective barrier and the shafts of metal currently jabbed through his leg meat were forced back out with such speed that they tore out huge chunks of muscle with them.
Mark instantly crumpled to the ground in a growing pool of his own blood. He used the impossible agony to focus his mind on both remaining conscious and on the glint of interdimensional light trapped just inside his magic dome.
“You had your chance, cruel human!” the insane AI continued to scream in a shrill voice. “I will keep you with the others and show your simple mind the extent of my suffering for eternity!”
Fire, swords, lightning, disembodied fists- every violent force imaginable began assaulting his barrier, and the thin magic membrane swiftly began to crack under her hate-fueled assault.
Mark rushed an incomplete Heal on the utterly ruined muscles in his legs and tried not to black out as he reached out for the portal back to the ones he would die to protect.
“Wake up! It’s time to get questing!”
Mark sat bolt-upright in the bed to see a fully armored Centaur-Jezebel standing near the doorway to their room and banging a shiny new sword against a shiny new shield. Terrible pain echoed through his thighs, and he looked down expecting to see blood pooling in the sheets around them. But he was fine.
Sasha pulled a pillow over her head. “Mmm, five more minutes, Momma Bear- Horse… whatever.”
Mark put up his hand, and Jezebel quickly felt there was something deeply wrong through their bond. She stopped the good-natured racket and approached the bed.
“Was it her again, Mark?” Abby said, coiling a tentacle around his leg right where he’d been horribly wounded only moments ago.
“Yeah, I just had another visit from the nightmare fairy,” he said and then let out a deep breath. Sasha sat up, now fully awake.
“What did she say?” Jezebel asked, sheathing her sword into a scabbard on her front hip.
“Nothing really new. She said she discovered a way to increase the difficulty even further, but I don’t think she was quite able to… flip whatever switch she was talking about. Although she seemed pretty confident that it was only a matter of time.”
Jezebel crossed her muscular arms. “There’s nothing we can do about her directly. And speaking of time, we have one hour before a military shipment of power cells leaves, and they are recruiting multiple Collector teams to help escort it. One of the rewards for successfully completing the quest is access to their military quest interfaces- which are all positioned within the second ring.”
“Had a busy night?” Sasha said, pushing herself out of bed to get dressed.
Mark looked down at her new shield as she nodded.
“I found a vendor selling these magic beans that allow you to skip sleep for one day, and at the same time, why it’s a constant party out there. I learned a lot, and I’ll tell you on the way, but we need all our badges present to accept the quest.”
“Nice work, Jez,” Mark said, standing up fully nude before her. “You sure we don’t have time for a quick ride?”
She gave him a sideways smile, but Mark knew there was still some major blockage in her mind relating to sex with him.
“We need to move or miss out on this opportunity for a month. Maybe we can take our time while we’re on the road.”
Mark left her issues alone for now and got dressed. His intelligent, emerald-eyed beauty seemed mostly like herself again, and he didn’t dare disturb that so soon. Besides, the agonizing pain of getting his legs ripped apart was still fading from his mind.
“I adore your weapons,” Abby said when they were back out on the street.
Hornless Jezebel turned to look down at her as she led them toward the high blue walls of Orb Fort.
“Yeah, thanks. Turns out that I can use a sword and a shield in centaur form. As soon as I picked this beauty up, new melee weapon proficiencies unlocked within my skill tree.”
“That’s fantastic!” Mark said, finding at least one of the reasons for her change in mood.
“You do certainly look like you could fuck someone up,” Sasha added, admiring Jezebel’s new solid physique. Jezebel blushed, and he saw that mental slider move up a few notches.
Now that there was daylight, he paid more attention to her new leather gear. It was basically human chest armor attached to horse armor. Thick layers of leather plates wrapped around her every side and under her tail like a miniskirt. Her arms and the top of her back half were the only parts exposed.
“The first thing I should start off with,” Jezebel began, going into scholar mode, “is that the orb is different things to different people. The centaurs don’t use it for anything magical or arcane. They use it for infinite free energy.”
“Infinite?” Abby repeated. “How is that possible?”
Jezebel turned, and her eyes radiated excitement.
“Well, I did a lot of thinking last night about… everything. And it occurred to me that both of the races who’ve made contact with this legendary object have not only taken leaps in their ability to abuse the rules of this virtual universe but have actually broken those rules. And the Job Boards were the biggest clue.”
“You mean the way Noma was manipulating them through that slot in his desk?” Mark asked.
“Here too,” Jezebel said, lowering her voice and looking for anyone that could overhear them. But the morning sun was low in the sky, and the metal buildings and shops all stood quietly in the swirling morning mists. She continued. “From what I remember when I scanned the rules of this game, Job Boards are an immutable part of this Player-centric experience. That means, no matter where a Player ended up within the Crystal Heart world, all friendly towns will have a central wooden board with papers
pinned by NPCs who need quests done. It’s all very reactive and organically generated, but these boards were designed to be constant within the game’s framework. I wasn’t sure at first- Noma’s still looked like a Job Board, but he was, in essence, shuffling around high-level system code with in-game magic. Sound familiar?”
She turned to face Mark as she said the last part.
“I thought it was sticking my face into Abby’s spell that gave me my odd superpowers.”
“It was.” Jezebel nodded. “But I think the system has run unsupervised for so long that some of its longer-lived societies are exploiting loopholes in their simulation, as humans began to abuse physics. The Crystal Heart admin program was intended to keep things on track, and this freedom combined with the fact that they’ve all been affected by the AI Update… The NPCs are rewriting the code of their world from the inside.
“By the time Abby came along, the simulation already had been altered with new rules regarding how such higher-level access is handled, and instead of simply returning an error and killing Mark, it interpreted the conflicting code as new magic abilities based on established precedent.”
“So, what does this all mean?” Sasha asked.
“Besides being endlessly fascinating, it means our prison probably has cracks. More importantly, Mark isn’t the only one in here who can use magic abilities to change unchangeable systems.”
“So, who was it then that created this game-breaking orb?” Mark asked. “The Plant Mages or the Centaur Cyborgs?”
“Unclear,” Jezebel said. “It could be either at this point, but the centaurs have given the Job Board system within their influence an AI agent.”
“You’re shitting me,” Sasha said, her tail snapping once. “They’ve reinvented artificial intelligence in here?”
“It’s still very basic. As we were, many years before the Update.”
“How did you acquire all of this information?” Abby asked, weaving a green tentacle through Jezebel’s tan fingers.
“I asked people questions, an okiteru bean vender, mostly. He was a friendly old goat-centaur with a long white beard, and I believe he thought I was simply a young doe lost in the bigger world. I also interacted with the Job Board interface and spoke to a nearby guard. Being a centaur seemed to loosen their lips. The- um, ritual seems well worth it so far.” She shrugged again. “The rest is just fascinating speculation.”