Descend- Coming Together

by David Burke

  Chapter 8- Unexpected Complications

  Jay exited the dungeon and with half a dozen running steps made it up the stairs. Thankfully the room at the top of the ziggurat was empty. He wanted a minute to compose his thoughts. At least that had been his thought until he heard voices raised, yelling in anger.

  Flashbacks of what had happened when Kenley led their attack on the cluster raced through his mind. The guilty feeling of having abandoned his team filled his mind. He had spent a lifetime fighting feelings of guilt. His dad had been an expert at blaming Jay for everything that went wrong after Mom and Kari died. He realized he had never been responsible for any of those things but this time… could he say the same if something bad happened while he had been in the dungeon.

  Not even waiting to climb down the stairs, he maximized his strength and durability for a moment and leapt from the top of the stone structure. His enhanced muscles were easily as strong as ten or more men so the leap carried him the length of a football field. He hit the grassy ground and sunk into the ground a couple inches from the impact before he switched to maximized speed and sprinted for the sound of the yelling.

  When he got to the bungalows, he stopped to take stock of the situation. What he saw both relaxed him and scared him at the same time. There were two groups of girls yelling at one another divided by Jasmine in the middle.

  The smaller group was only six girls, but they were the ones that mattered the most. His entire team along with Anne and a couple of the other girls that he recognized as being the most frequent flyers with Tyler and Miguel had their backs up against another of the bungalows.

  Facing them down were the other 27 girls, excluding Jasmine, in the form of an angry mob. The larger group was yelling at them and Jay had trouble picking out individual statements but saw that the leaders of the mob appeared to be Jessie, Mia, Kenzie, and Daphne.

  The first clear statement that he heard was, “It’s your fault that they all left.”

  Then, “What do we do now?”

  And, “If you hadn’t been so greedy…’

  Amelia was of course yelling back as she refused to appear intimidated. He heard her and shook his head because he knew that she was definitely not a peacemaker. “I called dibs on Jay first, so suck it. You all are just a bunch of horny wannabe sluts who can’t even get a man of their own.”

  After that the mob surged forward and Jay tensed up preparing to act, as Amelia pulled out a dagger in response. Fortunately, Jasmine held out a hand to both sides. “Girls, girls, this isn’t going to get us anywhere.”

  Jay watched her closely and not just because he liked the way her curvy backside looked. He could see the strain, she was clearly using her emotional ability. Even at this distance he felt a wave of calm wash over him and saw visible signs of both groups easing up.

  She continued, “We can all agree that we are upset that Jay and the others left, but we have to assume that they just went hunting in the dungeon. It’s almost sundown and there haven’t been any roars coming out so they are probably just killing all the monsters for us.”

  Jessie called out, “If that is the reason then why aren’t they back yet?”

  He thought he heard Huong say, “And why didn’t he tell us what he was doing?”

  Jasmine held up her hands again. “Look, we all know that emotions are running high. We can’t let hormones control us. Certainly having a period in this primitive setting isn’t any fun, but it's not like this is the first time for any of us. Grow up. Instead of getting angry we need to get organized. Instead of being divided we need to be a unified sisterhood.”

  Jay listened and watched as all the others seemed to be listening too. Fists which had been raised in anger were lowered to the side. Bodies which had appeared tense were now stepping back and shoulders were slumping. Even Amelia was listening, if still guardedly.

  “Good, see we can talk this out. Daphne, will you come join me?” Jay watched. He wondered why she had been singled out but watched as the very buxom redhead walked over to stand next to Jasmine, who whispered something in her ear.

  When next she spoke, Jay felt the emotions that she was projecting but they were much stronger. If he felt them like this at nearly 50 feet away, they must be hitting the girls nearby like a jackhammer. He watched them as over a few seconds their body language changed even further. They went from a half guarded posture to open and receptive.

  The waves of emotion fluctuated with what Jasmine was saying and who she was speaking to. There would be highs of excitement and joy followed by lows of shame and sadness. Jay was uncertain whether he should try to interrupt or wait till he could find his team without Jasmine around.

  He had known that she used the power to influence the group before and it didn’t bother him too much. Of course now he wondered how much of that was his emotions being toyed with. Even now she didn’t seem to be doing anything other than helping the group out. He kept asking himself if it was hypocritical of him to judge her for using the abilities she had, when she seemed to have everyone’s interests at heart.

  Yet he wasn’t quite as gullible as had been before. He felt his Iron Will skill helped and thought that having people he truly cared about also helped. Not that he didn’t think she was still hot. Looking at her in the little tank top she was wearing, her cocoa skin glistening in the fading light of the sun, made him remember that first dream he had about her.

  Wait, a minute. He just had a recollection. He had dreamed about Jasmine even before he was brought to wherever this was. That dream in his dorm room the morning he was taken, the first weird dream with the voice, she had been in it. He didn’t realize why he hadn’t put two and two together before now. It had been one of the most vivid dreams of his life and even now faded he still remembered enough to know who the two girls with him had been.

  He scrolled through his mind and thought hard. It had most definitely been Jasmine and now he just had to figure out who the other girl was. Looking back at the group and seeing Daphne next to Jasmine was all the trigger that he needed. He remembered a flash of that dream and it had in fact been Daphne with him and Jasmine.

  Now though he was perplexed. How could he have dreamed about people he had never met? He searched his memories again and was certain. It wasn’t just girls that looked like them. No, it was Jasmine and Daphne in his dream. What was more was that they hadn’t exactly been fully dressed in the dream.

  If he had dreamed about them dressed as he saw them on a daily basis then he might have believed his subconscious had superimposed their image onto his memory of the dream. That wasn’t it at all though. It wasn’t like he hadn’t wanted to see Jasmine without those tantalizingly tight shorts on before or had wondered just what Daphne’s clearly abundant bosom would look without a shirt on. Yet the simple truth was he hadn’t seen those things and so he shouldn’t have been able to dream about them.

  Then add to that the fact that it was his voice speaking out of Jasmine’s mouth in the dream. Somehow knowing who was in that first dream made it even creepier. He didn’t know what to say and this worried him far more than just watching Jasmine manipulate people. Was she somehow behind all of this? He didn’t think so but still…

  Jasmine’s voice got a bit louder and his focus was drawn back to the events unfolding before him now. “I understand that there is a great deal of jealousy. There are only three guys and whatever is in the water is making it hard for me not to jump each of them every time I see them. Trust me, I feel what you are feeling.”

  There was a great deal of mumbling as she said that. Several girls shook their heads as though to clear those while others were nodding along. “It isn’t the guys’ fault any more than it is ours and personally I think we are lucky.”

  Jessie demanded, “Lucky? How? This is intolerable. I feel like I can’t even control my own mind.”

  Jasmine smiled. Jay thought what a lovely smile she had with perfect white teeth that sparkled when contrasted with the richness of her
skin. Now it was Jay’s turn to shake his head as he berated himself, “Gotta focus.”

  With that smile still upon her face and waves of peaceful feelings rolling off of her, she said, “I just admitted how horny I am all the time. I haven’t been with anyone since we got here either.”

  Jessie interrupted her, “But they have,” as she pointed at the smaller group.

  “Yes, but not just them. Some of you have too,” Jasmine said calmly. She waited for the words to sink in as some in the larger group looked at the ground. “No don’t feel shame. It’s a perfectly natural thing and I am pretty sure it is part of the test they are putting us through.”

  “What do you mean?” one of the new girls asked. Jay knew her name, but for some reason it was evading his mind right now.

  “I can answer that,” Huong said. Amelia had her hand on the Vietnamese girl’s arm and the two exchanged a look before the blond finally nodded with a bounce of her curls.

  “You know something?” Jessie asked.

  “Not exactly know, but we have used deductive reasoning to figure out at least some of the objectives of this experiment. The final piece really came into place today,” Huong said.

  Even Jasmine looked interested at this point. “You all know Huong, she has helped heal several of you. She has a background in science. If she has learned something don’t you think we should hear her out?”

  Everyone nodded along that time and even Jay wanted to know what she had learned.

  Huong started out slowly and began speaking faster as she got excited. It was so typical for her and one of the cute things she did that endeared her to Jay. “So a few key facts first. We know that whoever is running this test is conducting experiments on us including putting aphrodisiacs in the water. Now I think it is pretty obvious from the abilities that we are all developing that creating a bunch of horny test subjects is not the sole purpose of whatever is in our water. At first, I thought it might even be an unwanted side effect because they put the option to buy something in the store which would counteract that effect.”

  Even as she started to speak quickly, everyone seemed to be following along. She just had a way of explaining things that made people want to listen. “But then you have to calculate in the birth control prices. It is designed so that the stuff that is effective with low-level guys is cheap and anyone could get it. The price goes up though the higher the level of the guy you are with, rather steeply at that. How much does it cost for the level 30 birth control, Meikiyo?”

  She answered the question simply, “800 credits.”

  Outrage blew through the listeners including even Amelia and the other girls with her.

  “The only way that we will be able to afford that is to keep descending in the dungeon. There aren’t enough credits from the gathering quest or from killing monsters on the first floor to be able to afford that. Certainly not with other essentials.”

  “So what does that mean?” Jessie asked.

  “The logical conclusion is that they want us to get pregnant…” Huong had to raise her voice to be heard over the clamoring of all the girls trying to talk at once, “but only by the higher-level guys.”

  After she managed to get everyone calmed down, Jasmine asked, “Are you sure? Couldn’t it just mean that they are pushing us to go further into the dungeon?”

  “It could,” Huong conceded before adding, “But there are still two other facts and one tidbit that suggest otherwise. First consider the message that we all got. It is not abnormal for a group of girls to have their menstrual cycle sync up but it takes time and close proximity. Our captors are doing it now rather than waiting, which implies that they want us all on the same cycle. That is the tidbit. The first of the other facts is the obvious gender disparity in the people who were brought here. It is something in the range of 30:1. Ironically do you know what the gender ratio is on most cattle farms? That’s right, it's 30:1.”

  Again the murmuring of numerous voices rose up all at the same time. Some were complaining about being compared to cows while others were saying it wouldn’t be that bad to have babies if they were going to have to live here forever. Huong coughed though and continued, “I understand what you all are feeling and while I am happy that I didn’t get pregnant during an indiscretion I had the first time with Jay, I am not repulsed by the idea. Which I suppose is not hard evidence but the fact that we are living in this place and yet are still open to that idea seems to imply that there is more to this than we thought. But wait, the final fact is something that most of you won’t know. I assume most of you are still on your periods. Right?”

  Huong waited as almost the entire group nodded, other than Amelia and Meikiyo. When everyone was focused on her again she said, “So you will probably all be interested in knowing the message that the three of us got just a short time ago.” She waited again for nods of agreement before saying, “We were notified that since we have passed the first threshold that our menstruation has changed permanently.”

  At that moment, Jay thought you could have heard a pin drop. “We were notified that we are now perpetually fertile except when pregnant and will not have to shed our uterine lining but instead it will regenerate naturally. Which is interesting because in the reset this morning we all got the skill Regeneration added to our status sheet.”

  “That is crazy,” Jessie said.

  “Well it just makes all of this much more important,” Jasmine said. “Remember we are a united sisterhood and we aren’t gonna let the guys come between us.”

  “Fine, but then how are we gonna share the guys. I don’t know how much longer I can go on like this,” another of the new girls said from the back.

  “We are just gonna have to take turns,” Jasmine said, “We all learned how to do that in kindergarten right?”

  “Screw that, Jay only sleeps with the girls on his team,” Amelia said. Jay was proud of her. She seemed to be resisting Jasmine’s influence the most although it was hard to say. Meikiyo was standing silently behind her and kept rubbing her temple as if she had a headache.

  Amelia’s words set off a number of the girls. Some barked angrily that this was all her fault and others said, “I wanna be on Jay’s team.”

  Jasmine calmed everyone for what must have been the 10th time before saying, “Amelia, that is fine, then you are just going to have to convince Jay to take on some more girls. There are just over 11 girls for each guy, so it is only fair. Does Jay simply decide who he is willing to sleep with and then make them part of the team?”

  Amelia said, “Not likely. We take a vote on it and majority rules.”

  “Oh so you could decide to add girls to Team Jay if you three all decided to?” Jasmine asked.

  The three of them looked at each other before Amelia slowly nodded.

  Jasmine clapped her hands and said, “That is great then. You all are his advisors. He is a strong leader, but we all know that men need to be guided sometimes. You need to convince him to take me onto his team and then I can help him see that we need this to be fair for everyone.”

  Jay sat here listening to the conversation and couldn’t help but be astonished. It had followed a logical path and if the chemicals truly had a greater impact on those of lower level, then it stood to reason that many of these girls must be going out of their mind with wild urges. Still, they were talking about him like he was the prize stud bull and didn’t even realize that he was hearing it all.

  The other thing was that he already felt guilty about sleeping with three girls. He laughed at what a silly problem this was. His gaming buddies would have hit him over the head and thrown him in the river just for the chance to have to deal with this problem. Most confusing of all was that even with his Iron Will skill active he couldn’t help but ask himself if he was truly being selfish by not taking one for the team and doing as they seemed to want. It wasn’t like he would exactly be suffering.

  He was drawn back by an argument then Jessie was asking, “Why do you get to be on T
eam Jay. I was already almost on it but she,” and she pointed at Meikiyo, “kept saying, ‘I’ve got fire.’ If anyone should get to be on Team Jay it is me and Daphne. We were the ones that were up for consideration before. Tell them, Amelia.”

  Jasmine spoke before Amelia could answer, “If Jay wants to keep a limited team we will have to respect that. From what I have seen, Tyler and Miguel are not so discriminating.”

  Anne said, “Hey wait a minute.”

  Jessie spoke over her and said, “But I don’t wanna be with them. I want Jay. He’s been kind to me every time I have been around him. He is hot and nice. He helps us train and we already know he can protect us.”

  This sparked an argument but surprisingly it was Meikiyo who brought everyone to heel with a flaming burst. She held her hand out with the palm up and shot a burst of fire straight up like a flare but the explosion rocked the surrounding air. “Enough. Team Jay picks those who are best suited to be on the team. We won’t be told who has to be on the team or how many we will accept. What we will do is talk about it.”