Monster Girls 2

by Edward Lang

  “Don’t worry about it, I was just joking. How was it?”

  “It was WONDERFUL,” Hara said with a blissful sigh. “I have never felt anything that good in my entire LIFE.”

  “I know,” Alia said with a smile.

  In fact, all my girls got a faraway look as they recalled our past trysts.

  “Mmm,” Dyra murmured.

  “So lovely,” Spirella sighed.

  “YES,” Seera agreed with a lustful grunt.

  Looked like I might have to get back to work pleasing the rest of them pretty soon.

  But before I could say anything, Parch appeared.

  Congratulations!

  You have now bonded with the harpy Hara!

  You have also received the ability ‘First Flight.’

  You may fly for short distances

  over a span of three seconds.

  “Oh wow,” I said, surprised.

  “What is it?” Alia asked.

  “Parch just said I got a new ability.”

  “The Messenger of the Gods?” Hara asked in a hushed voice.

  The other girls nodded.

  “Parch, you’re saying I can fly?”

  For short distances,

  and only up to three seconds.

  “What’s the cooldown?”

  He ‘grunted’ in annoyance.

  Ugh.

  There IS no cooldown.

  You can use it as many times as you want.

  I was just about to try it out when I thought of something. “If I go a hundred feet up in the air, could I hurt myself when I come down?”

  You will not hurt yourself

  if you only fall as far as you initially fly.

  If you jump off the side of the mountain, though,

  and fall a thousand feet,

  yes, you will probably die.

  But if you jump straight up into the air,

  you won’t hurt yourself when you come down.

  Actually, ‘straight up’ sounded like a good initial test.

  “Okay everybody, stand back,” I warned the girls.

  When they were all ten feet away from me, I started to flap my arms.

  Nothing happened.

  The girls stared at me like I was insane.

  You don’t flap your arms,

  you just jump.

  “Then why isn’t it called ‘First Jump’?” I asked crossly.

  Because harpies fly, they don’t –

  “Never mind!”

  I squatted back down and jumped as high as I could.

  This time, something happened.

  I leapt up almost 20 feet into the air, fast in the beginning and gradually slowing until my momentum gave out at the top.

  Then, after I hovered in the air for a split second, I gently drifted back down, gaining speed until I landed back on the ground as fast as I’d been going in the beginning.

  I absorbed the shock by bending my knees. The impact was no worse than if I’d jumped just a couple of feet without First Flight.

  The pebbles hurt my bare feet a little, but that was it.

  “Whoa,” Alia murmured.

  “Oh Scott!” Hara cried out happily.

  Spirella clapped with glee. “Amazing!”

  “Impressive,” Seera said with a raised eyebrow.

  Dyra just stared in disbelief.

  I turned to Hara. “If I go over the side of the mountain, come catch me before I fall too far, okay?”

  She frowned. “Are you planning to jump off the side of the mountain?”

  “No – I’m just warning you in case something goes wrong. Ready?”

  She lowered slightly like a runner in a crouch. “Ready!”

  Then I jumped – not as forcefully as last time, and not straight up. This time, I jumped outwards at a 45-degree angle.

  I was aiming for top of the nearest boulder, about ten feet away and seven feet up.

  I hit it effortlessly.

  In fact, I almost overshot and might have slid down – hell, I might have even slipped and slammed down on my back – but I immediately used Wall Crawler to make my bare feet stick to the rock.

  After a second of wavering back and forth getting my balance, I was standing atop a seven-foot-tall boulder.

  Not bad.

  Not bad at all.

  NBA, here I come.

  All the girls cheered and clapped.

  ‘First Flight’ was really more of a jumping ability, but hey – it was still a pretty cool addition to my powers.

  Without thinking, I hopped off the boulder –

  And winced as I anticipated slamming down on the ground.

  But the impact was fairly soft.

  I guess as long as I was using the power, it somehow magically helped my landings as long as I didn’t drop a big distance.

  “That’s awesome, Parch!” I said happily.

  I’m pleased you like it.

  “What about getting cooperation from the harpies? You didn’t mention that part yet.”

  There was a pause before the next words appeared on Parch’s surface.

  Um…

  Yes…

  About that…

  “What?” I asked in alarm. “Don’t tell me there’s some sort of problem!”

  Well…

  I wasn’t aware of this

  when we met the flock,

  but apparently harpies are

  EXTREMELY jealous.

  They will not be more likely to follow you

  because you mated with Hara.

  In fact, quite the opposite –

  they are far LESS likely to help you now.

  “WHAT?!” I exclaimed.

  That may be why Raptora

  kills her human mates –

  so that no other harpies

  can procreate with them.

  “How less likely are we talking about?” I demanded.

  Um…

  0%.

  “WHAT?! But we had a deal! If I killed the dragon – ”

  Yes, about that…

  If you had merely returned victorious

  after killing Krom Varak,

  they would have stuck to the bargain.

  100% of the flock would have supported you.

  But… not anymore.

  “WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK!” I roared.

  “What’s wrong?” Hara asked in alarm.

  “Did you know that if we had sex, your mother and the other harpies wouldn’t help me?” I demanded angrily.

  “What?! That’s – no!” she cried out. “She said that if you killed the creature, they would help you!”

  My anger cooled down when I saw her distress. “Yeah, I know.”

  “Then why would they go back on their promise?!”

  “Parch says they’re incredibly jealous, and – ”

  Hara looked horrified. “And they won’t help now because of – because of me?! Because of us mating?!”

  “Um… well…”

  “Oh NO!” she cried out, and covered her face with her wings as she started bawling. “Your friends – the liches – I’ve doomed them!”

  She obviously hadn’t had any malicious intent.

  Either that, or she was giving an Oscar-worthy performance.

  But I didn’t think that was possible.

  I pried her wings away from her face and wrapped my arms around her body. “Shh, shh,” I whispered as I kissed her forehead. “It’s okay, it’s gonna be fine.”

  She looked up at me with tear-stained cheeks. “I swear to you, Scott, I didn’t know – ”

  “I know, I know.”

  “I swear I’ll help you even if they don’t – I’ll do whatever you need me to do to get back your friends – ”

  “It’s gonna be okay,” I whispered as I wiped the tears off her cheeks. “Don’t worry.”

  She put her head against my chest and gave a few more sobs, then quieted down.

  “Is it true?” Alia asked in shock. “They’re not going to help us?�
��

  “We’ll figure something out. Don’t worry about it.”

  But Parch had something else to say.

  I’m sorry I had to be the bearer of bad tidings,

  but at least I have some good news.

  As a result of killing Krom Varak,

  you are now entitled to his cache of gold.

  “Oh shit, I forgot about that!” I exclaimed, my mind filled with visions of Scrooge McDuck’s swimming pools filled with doubloons.

  “Forgot about what?” Dyra asked.

  “The dragon had a treasure – remember how he accused me of wanting his gold?”

  All the girls exclaimed in excitement.

  “That’s right!”

  “I forgot!”

  “Well,” I grinned, “let’s go find it.”

  We got dressed and made our way to the cave, which had a slightly musky stank to it.

  “Parch, is there anything else in there we should be aware of?”

  Not that I know of, Scott.

  But please be careful.

  “Understood. I’ll take point, and Alia can back me up with Fang. Hara, Seera, Spirella – why don’t you stay out here, just in case.”

  I didn’t want to say it out loud, but their bodies would make it harder to maneuver inside the cramped tunnel if shit suddenly went sideways.

  “Dyra, can you light our way?”

  “Of course.”

  Alia and Dyra followed me into the cave, its walls lit by the soft glow of Dyra’s hands.

  The cave circled down deep into the earth until we reached a den of sorts. It would have only been able to accommodate Krom’s bulk if he had been curled up in a pile.

  The floor was made of rock, with a dozen or so detached scales littering the floor.

  And there was gold – though not the vast wealth I had been hoping for.

  A pile of maybe 30 coins glinted in the corner, along with a few rings.

  Not a bad haul, but not exactly enough to enable me and the girls to live like kings. Maybe dukes and duchesses… though only for a short while. And that was assuming we could find a human innkeeper willing to take on a lamia, dryad, arachne, centaur, and harpy.

  Oh well. Maybe it would buy some bitchin’ weapons or something.

  The coins were too numerous for me to carry them all by hand, and Dyra was lighting our way while Alia held Fang. Rather than divide the coins up, Alia donated her chain mail bra as a temporary purse.

  Those cup sizes were more than adequate to carry our haul – plus I got the side benefit of seeing Alia’s tits again. Never got tired of that.

  We made our way up to the surface, then dumped everything on the ground for the others to see while Alia put on her bra again.

  “Not the greatest haul in the history of dungeon-diving,” I said, “but I ain’t gonna turn it down.”

  “This would pay for the insemination of my flock for a hundred years!” Hara exclaimed.

  …huh.

  That was one way to put it in perspective.

  I tried to calculate in my head what the going rate of knocking up a harpy was, then decided no amount of gold was worth it.

  Any job where you might get disemboweled at the end was WAY underpaid.

  Parch suddenly reappeared.

  Scott, there’s something you’re overlooking

  that’s worth far more than gold.

  “What?” I asked, then cheesily added, “The love of five hot monster girls?”

  Alia frowned. “What was that about the love of five hot monster girls?”

  “Parch just said there was something far more valuable than gold.”

  All of the sappiest girls – Alia, Hara, and Spirella – got a look on their faces like they’d just seen me hug a puppy.

  “AWWWWW!” they exclaimed all at once.

  Dyra smirked and shook her head. “SUCH a goofball.”

  Seera was the only one who frowned. “Well, of course.”

  Parch, though, was not amused.

  …hmph.

  I was speaking, of course,

  of the dragon’s scales.

  “Dragon scales? What about them?” I asked.

  “Of course!” Seera said, perking up. “They’re incredibly strong, lightweight, and fireproof!”

  “They are?” I asked in surprise.

  “Yes! Armor made of dragon’s scale is highly prized, and worth more than its weight in gold.”

  “Really…”

  Seera is correct.

  Krom Varak’s scales are worth much,

  MUCH more than his gold.

  “We can’t exactly cart him down the mountain and sell him off, though,” I protested.

  No… but you COULD fashion

  a suit of armor for yourself.

  And perhaps for Seera, as well.

  “Well, that would be awesome, except we don’t exactly have a way to make armor out of them.”

  “I could stick them to pre-existing armor with my webbing,” Spirella suggested helpfully. “It should hold until we find someone who could make something more permanent.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Damn… that’s a pretty great idea. Could it work, Parch?”

  I see no reason not to try.

  First we retrieved the dozen or so loose scales we’d seen littering the floor of the cave.

  Then we spent the next hour harvesting more off of Krom’s dead body.

  Alia would stick Fang deep as she could between the scales, then use the blades to saw them off his hide.

  Hara joined in by testing for scales that were weakly attached, then ripping them off with her talons.

  Meanwhile, Spirella did her best to repair my tattered armor. I scraped off as much char as I could, and then she bound all the holes with spider silk – a combination of non-sticky where my skin would come in contact with it, and sticky webbing where the thread needed to bind to the leather.

  Any holes that were too big, we covered with bits and pieces taken from the dead paladins. For instance, the hole in the front of my armor got covered with a piece of steel plating – a plackart, Seera called it. It was heavy, yes, but the webbing held it securely in place – and now nobody would ever be able to stab me in the stomach, that was for sure.

  Spirella even extended my truncated leggings with spider silk. Now I had soft, sheer pants legs all the way down to my ankles.

  Then Spirella started putting squirts of sticky webbing on the scales and sticking them to the armor. Over time, she built up slightly overlapping layers like shingles on the roof of a house.

  An hour later, I had a brand-new suit of not-too-shabby-looking dragon-scale armor.

  Twenty minutes after that, Seera’s leather cuirass was covered with dragon scales, too.

  Not bad. Not bad at all.

  I also retrieved my boots and dumped my charred feet out of them.

  Let me tell you, if you can ever avoid disposing of your own hacked-off limbs, I highly recommend it. Not good for the old emotional health.

  The boots had basically been turned into shoes, but at least they still fit well. No problems with them sliding off. Spirella layered scales over them, too.

  Now I was covered from head to foot with a protective layer that weighed less than leather, was far more resistant to damage, and yet was fireproof.

  Not only that, but the webbing undergirding everything was stretchable, light, and breathable. The overlapping scales would hopefully protect from any fire getting to it.

  If fire did burn away the webbing, everything would fall apart like a striptease outfit. You know, where you yank a string and a girl’s top falls off. (Thank you, Sex.com videos.)

  It wasn’t perfect, but it would work until we found a professional armorer to put everything together permanently.

  And the nice thing was, we could pay for a professional armorer with Krom’s gold – which was clinking away in a spider-silk purse Spirella had attached to my belt.

  “Alright, ladies,” I said when we’d do
ne as much as we could, “time to go.”

  21

  We set off down the mountain shortly thereafter. It was a little past noon, and I hoped we could settle up with the harpies quickly so I could figure out what to do about the Grim Keep. With or without the flock’s help, there was no way I wanted Zala to have to suffer one more night under Necra’s control.

  One nice thing was that it was substantially easier going down the mountain than going up it.

  Spirella was able to anchor multiple spider silk threads at the top, then more every hundred feet or so, that we used as ropes to steady ourselves. They greatly lessened the chance of somebody stumbling and falling down a cliff. I didn’t even have to carry Alia – she was able to use Spirella’s threads to help her down the mountain.

  Hara flew Dyra down to the bottom. She’d tried to lift Alia, then Spirella, but their unusually shaped bodies were just too unwieldy for her to manage safely.

  And if she couldn’t lift an arachne or a lamia, there was no way in hell she could transport a centauress.

  So Dyra lucked out on a ticket down to the bottom of the slope.

  I could have ridden down with Hara on the next trip, but there was no way I was going to leave my other girls behind. So I stayed up on the mountain with them, using Wall Crawler and Spirella’s threads to get down the mountain safely. Hara flew back to join us.

  By the time we reached the plateau with the harpies’ version of Stonehenge, the bird women were circling overhead. Dyra was nowhere to be seen.

  Suddenly I heard her cry out frantically nearby.

  “Scott!”

  I looked over to see her crouched under an outcropping, scared out of her mind. There were savage slashes across her arms and back, though they were healing in fast-forward before my very eyes. Apparently she was using her powers on herself.

  “What the fuck happened?!” I asked as I rushed over.

  “I don’t know! As soon as Hara flew off, the harpies started circling me – and then they attacked!” Dyra said, tears spilling down her cheeks.