by Porter, Jack
“That bad?” The lady monk then turned from me and sorted a few sections of plants and began ripping some up. “We can talk about it later. I think the head of the bug is still inside her leg. That’s why she’s been getting worse.”
That explained why the venom kept coming back. “I’ll remove it.”
“Alright, but careful not to let it—oh,” she paused as if remembering something. “Never mind. Your body can probably handle something like that.”
“Even if my magic could handle the venom, I’d still make sure not to let it too close,” I said, grimacing. “Talk about creepy.”
Yua murmured her agreement, and we both fell silent as we got to work. Yua began grinding bits of different plants together into small flakes. Then she bound them with what looked like honey. My eyebrows rose. I hadn’t known there were bees on the island.
Stowing that knowledge away for later, I made a diamond shape with my fingers and thumbs and pressed it tight just outside of the angry deep red of Piper’s wound. Then I pinched them together in slow movements to try force the head of the bug out of her leg.
Piper woke with a gasp and immediately placed a hand to her stomach. “Is the baby okay?”
“Fine, fine,” I said. “But we think the bug’s head is still inside you. Once we get it out, you’ll be good as new. Just bear with me for a little. It might be unpleasant, but I hope it’s not much worse than taking out a fat splinter.”
Piper nodded and lay back down, staring up at the melting igloo.
Working fast so I wouldn’t drag out the pain, I gave two quick pinches. When the head came out, it was not as tiny as I’d expected. It was roughly the size of a grasshopper’s, rather than the ant size I’d been expecting.
Its ugly brown and white visage wasn’t snapping miniature pincers at me though, so I was going to count that as a win.
Wrinkling my nose, I flicked the bug to the other side of the igloo and made a note to tell the other girls to watch out for these.
“All clear,” I told Yua, and inched aside so she could begin smearing layer upon layer of salve into the irritated wound.
“It’s already looking better,” Yua said to no one in particular. Her cobalt blue eyes found mine and she flashed me a smile. “Good job, Dexter. I may not approve of the method, but you were right. I might have been too late if you hadn’t intervened.”
Grinning back at her, I gave a thumbs up, only to frown when the monk turned a bright red and snapped her head back to look directly ahead, showing me the dragon tattoo she had snaking up her neck.
How could I get her to open up to me? She’d shut down and avoided me like this for weeks now, starting when I’d tried to talk to her about her masturbating against my guardian cloak in the days after we defeated Zavier.
Heat flooded me when I recalled the image of her sexy body writhing against her fingers as she moaned my name. The way she’d rocked her hips as if she were riding my cock.
However, when I’d taken her hand and told her it made me happy to see her feelings for me, she’d clammed up and run away. Ever since, she’d been avoiding eye contact and being alone with me.
Didn’t she know I would never force her into anything that made her uncomfortable? I simply wanted to talk it out.
Now I wished I’d said nothing and just waited for her to come to me when she was ready.
I sighed, moving the conversation to safe, professional waters. “So, why did you stop me from healing Piper completely, Yua? Was there something wrong with what I was doing?”
“Not wrong exactly,” she answered. “But your execution was haphazard. You can’t pour god magic into a human without a crystal. They aren’t made for it. I saw her threatening to have a seizure on the floor and realized what you were doing.”
My mouth opened in shock. “But Zavier—”
“Zavier has untold millennia to practice using just the right amount of power needed to not overload a human. And if you remember, the one he was using was already dead. Not much worse he could have done at that point,” Yua reasoned.
“Hmm. You healed my cough too.” Piper chimed in, evidently understanding what had happened while she was out cold. “I was worried about how my breathing rattled every so often. Thank you, really.”
Yua’s eyebrows went up. This was obviously news to her. Maybe Piper had been keeping it to herself.
I replied, “The beginning of pneumonia from what I saw. Glad I could help. Though, I’m sorry I almost caused you to seize in the process. Luckily Yua stopped me. If it’s any consolation though, I could feel the baby’s life force growing while I was in there. Truly amazing, Pipes. I can’t wait to meet him. Or her,” I amended.
Piper smiled and closed her eyes, obviously tired. “You know, you might just have healed my morning sickness as well. The thought of eating doesn’t make me want to retch anymore. I could probably eat a whole buck myself.”
Yua and I laughed. “I’ll let Megan know,” I said, turning to go.
This would please the girls to no end. Megan was quickly becoming the chef of the group and she was taking it personally that Piper turned her nose up to everything she offered.
Yua placed a hand, still slightly sticky from the honey salve, on my arm. From my profile view of her, I saw the guilt dulling her usually sharp gaze.
“How’s your nose?” she asked, her voice hushed and her expression shy.
I was just happy that she was talking to me of her own free will. So I gave my nose a wiggle like Salem sometimes did before a sneeze.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I teased. “Seems pretty serious. Piper may have to operate. Think gods can grow back body parts? Like a lizard?”
Yua rolled her eyes, but she was giggling uncontrollably. I loved that sound.
With both of the women happy, I once again turned to go.
But I only made it halfway to the melting igloo entrance before the stars exploded in my vision, followed by a crippling surge of agony.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
It was the only word I could get out before the pain blessedly ended.
Everything faded from me as I lost consciousness and hit the wolf-skin blankets beneath me.
Three
Waking up, I found five extraordinarily gorgeous female faces hovered over me. Two goddesses and three babes.
A man could get used to waking up like this.
Then the prior events began trickling back. I’d had a crystal headache. One bad enough to drop me like a stone.
And I had a feeling this was only the beginning.
They began talking to me all at once as I sat up. I picked out a few things, mainly them asking me what happened. Only Yua looked like she had some inkling of the origin of my dramatic episode. Her questions were slightly different.
“Is it better when Hannah or Layla activates her power?” the monk woman asked.
She was the closest to me. From my vantage point, I could see the seductive curve of her cleavage. Her kimono had likely gotten disheveled when she helped drag me out of the igloo, which I noticed was no longer melting. It had collapsed with the midday sun.
It looked like I’d been out for a while.
Taking a sip of the water Megan offered me, I told them about the headaches I’d been experiencing over the course of the month, and why I thought I was having them.
Megan frowned when I got to that part. “Well, I must head off soon then,” she said. “To find my crystal. It’s been all I can think about, anyway, like a siren’s song that won’t let me go.”
“The same for me,” Piper added. “And now that I’m feeling better, I can go too.”
A big, fat, hell no was the overwhelming response to that one.
“Well, one more crystal won’t be enough for long,” Piper argued. “Megan will find her crystal and Dexter might be in the same state he was in when she left. We’d be back at square one—and I would be even more pregnant.”
She let out an exaggerated huff of frustration. Sh
e crossed her arms over her belly and rubbed it protectively. “It’s not ideal, but it has to be done.”
I shook my head. “Think you’ll be saying that when you come face to face with your guardian?” I asked her. “I do not want you to put yourself or the baby in that kind of danger, Pipes.”
I paused, looking around at the group. Layla and Hannah were excellent with their weapons now. Hannah could fly and use her bow at the same time. Layla could turn invisible until the second she slit your throat with her Sai.
I couldn’t think of better protectors for my unborn child and their mother.
Already seeming to see the plan in my mind, Yua turned toward me.
“I will accompany you. There are too many things you don’t know about your magic, White Guardian. My shrine was a wealth of knowledge, and I’ve had three hundred years to study Kain and Zavier’s legacy. In addition, with my own training in the spirit realm, I believe the gods brought me to this island with the purpose of guiding you into your role of power.”
Megan turned toward me, excitement filling her hazel eyes. “I’ll go hunting now so we can start drying meat for the trip.” Without another word, she left me alone with the goddesses and the mother of my child, who were waiting for their own instructions.
“I could go pack the furs,” Layla offered, moving to stand.
I shook my head. “You and Hannah will stay here to protect Piper. And—” I raised a hand to quiet Piper’s protest before she could tear me a new one. “I will also use this time to look for the sleeping goddesses. Hannah, you said they were somewhere close, right?”
Hannah had been in ongoing communication with the sleeping goddesses through the spirit realm, when she was Zavier’s prisoner.
She nodded. “Toward the north from the waterfall, and somewhere past the mountain path beyond. That’s where I felt them. I’m sorry I can’t tell you more, but I couldn’t see where they were even when I connected with them.” Her tone was solemn and her eyes sad. “It’s like they weren’t anywhere.”
Despite that worrying sentiment, optimism peppered my tone. “I’m sure I’ll find them. And that should kill two birds with one stone. And perhaps, as we get closer, we’ll sense them through the crystals.”
The crystals called to me, too, but less strongly than they did for the girls. I didn’t sense their direction at all, only their presence.
Piper still didn’t seem happy with being left behind, but she finally nodded. “I hate to admit it, but that plan is better than mine.”
I clapped my hands together, bringing an abrupt end to the conversation before anyone thought better of it.
“Good, that’s settled. There’s just one more task to finish before we set off.”
“What’s that?” Layla asked, cocking her head to the side, one fox ear flopping down in a cute way.
“I’m not leaving you ladies here to sleep in those infernal igloos every night, especially now that the weather is warming. You won’t have any snow or ice to build them from in a few days. It won’t take long to build a proper shelter, and we aren’t leaving until one is complete.”
Excitement gleamed in their faces.
A sense of purpose filled me. I stood and tested my footing. Everything seemed to work okay, even though I still felt an ache behind my eyes.
“Alright,” I said, looking first to Hannah, then Layla. “If you lovely goddesses would join me, I believe we have a cabin to build.”
We started early the next morning and quickly discovered a hang-up with my plan. We didn’t have many of the tools needed to make a proper log cabin.
That meant I had to improvise.
First came the finding and felling of a whole bunch of ten-inch-thick trees. Of course, we didn’t have an axe or saw. As much as I hated to use Kain’s sword for chopping, in the end it proved to be the best tool at our disposal. That and Layla’s Sais. They were the weapons of the gods, after all, and their blades turned out to be impervious to harsh use.
It was a blessing that my sword never needed sharpening. It would have taken a fair amount of work to bring the blade’s edge back after the rough chopping I did with it.
If Layla and Hannah hadn’t gained the superhuman strength of goddesses when they found their crystals, it would have taken much longer to construct the cabin. As it was, they were able to work as hard as I did, and our strong, tall bodies became useful in our task.
Even so, felling the trees took more time than building the cabin itself. Hannah had to fly ahead, select an appropriate tree, and fell it with my sword. Then Layla and I would drag them back to our clearing by the waterfall.
Once that task was finished, Layla and I used our blades to strip away the rough bark on two sides of each log.
That done, I hacked at the wood to create slots in the logs that would line up perfectly with one another.
The goddesses and I worked nonstop, only pausing briefly to eat an entire pot of venison stew each.
“I’m going to miss Megan’s cooking while she’s gone with you, Dex,” Hannah said, sighing in contentment as she patted her flat stomach. “All of our food is going to be overcooked and flavorless now.” She lowered her voice. “You know, when it’s Layla’s turn to cook.”
“I heard that, you flying harpy!” Layla yelled from across the clearing. She was drinking water straight from the stream after her soup had burned her tongue.
This was a perk of being blessed with a deity’s power. We didn’t have to boil any impurities out of the water first. “Besides, you’re the one who always burns the vegetables,” Layla continued. “It tarnishes the entire meal.”
Hannah let out a sound remarkably like a bird’s screech and turned her unblinking gaze toward Layla with a look of indignation.
“Take that back, you big-eared land mammal!”
From where I was, I could see Layla’s russet tail fluff up and her ears lay flat. I imagined she’d have her sharp canines exposed in warning.
I raised an eyebrow. These two nitpicked one another frequently, even when they had been human, but this seemed different somehow. More threatening.
Was it because of their crystal-gifted traits? They were both predators, after all. I was sure their animal counterparts wouldn’t hesitate to fight one other if met in the wild under the right circumstances.
Had months of crystal exposure brought out that animalistic side of them? Would it be a bigger problem in the future?
What would happen if one of the other crystals provided a creature of prey? I shuddered at the thought.
One problem at a time.
Pressing my lips together, I took their attention from one another.
“Ladies, be on your best behavior when I’m gone. Piper can’t be properly protected if you two are bickering all the time. Besides, I’ve tasted both of your cooking. Both are just fine. However, if you want some variety, maybe Piper knows the right plants in Yua’s garden to help season the meat. She’ll be tending it while we are gone.”
That seemed to calm them both down, and Layla joined us in a chipper mood, as if the fight never happened.
The goddesses’ quarrels became scarce after that.
In fact, every girl was in a good mood. Even Piper, who looked worlds better.
Apparently, I had cured her loss of appetite. It made me happy to see her put on weight again and take on a glow that competed with any goddess.
While we had been prepping the bones of the cabin, Yua left us, not saying where she was going but that she’d be back soon. When we next saw her, it was with three sacks full of dry grasses slung over her shoulder.
“For when we thatch the roof,” the lady monk supplied with a shrug. “This is just the start. There’s lots more where this came from.”
The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind, but apparently, this was how shelters were built in her time before the island.
We laughed and cursed together as we finished setting up the cabin. Hannah, Layla, and I stacked the logs into place
. Yua climbed on the top and worked swiftly to make the thatched roof.
Most of the work I’d opted to do shirtless. This was something the girls seemed to appreciate as they’d often stop whatever they were doing as I walked by. Their gazes trailing after me with blatant lust in their eyes.
So many gorgeous babes eye-fucking me stirred the beast below. Most days, it wasn’t long before I was walking to the stream for a long, cold dip.
Sometimes, that wasn’t enough, and one or other of my women helped me pass a pleasant hour or more.
All in all, the large, rectangular cabin took almost a week to build. When it was complete, we all stood back and admired our handywork.
Not bad for the first try, I thought.
Eventually, we’d have a whole mini-village of them, I hoped. This first cabin had little in the way of homely comforts, like beds and tables, and it lacked space overall, but it would keep the one pregnant woman and two goddesses warm and dry until I got back, and that was good enough for me.
The prep-work had been done, and we were ready to set out on our trip. However, my goddesses had planned a surprise for me before I left.
Four
The stab of a crystal headache wormed its way from my left temple to my right as I broke the surface of the water. This time, I wasn’t cooling off the beast below, but soothing my aching head.
It occurred to me that I hadn’t yet told Layla and Hannah that using their powers would help to keep the headaches at bay. While we’d been building, Hannah had been flying so much that she’d kept my headaches to a minimum. But Layla had little reason to become invisible unless Megan took her hunting.
I’d need to tell both girls to use their new abilities as much as possible while I was gone.
I only hoped it would work no matter how much distance there was between us. We’d gradually tested this part of it all over the last few weeks, and although all of us had grown in power, the true range was about to be put to the test.
With water dripping down my body, I sloshed out of the stream, used a buckskin towel to scrub my hair, and climbed back into my pants. Then I began to search for the girls.