by Noah Layton
Evelina was swimming slowly through the water, stopping at the other end of the pool before turning back to me and returning. She looked up at me with a flick of her eyes before focusing back on the pool edge.
‘You sleep well?’
‘I could do with a few more hours but there’s too much on my mind. Once I’m awake there’s no going back.’
‘So that’s the kind of person you are. Guess I’ll try not to wake you in the future.’
‘Presuming we’re not sharing the same bed.’
‘What makes you think that’ll ever happen?’
‘Gee, I don’t know… Maybe the part where my tongue was between your legs back in the bath chambers on Aries Island before you were bent over and practically begged me to fuck you.’
Exhaustion and frustration had resulted in me spewing that out, and for a second I thought that she would go berserk at me.
But all Evelina did was smile and wink over at me as she continued to breaststroke through the water.
‘That was a lot of fun.’
‘Fun isn’t the word I’d use. Maybe for you, but definitely not for me.’
‘Well, we never did get a chance to go swimming together in the chamber. We’ve got a little time to ourselves now – why don’t you join me?’
I had no interest in being sexually teased to the point of insanity for the second time since I had arrived in the archipelago, but the day was still bright through the exit of the cave. It would be a while until it would be safe for us to return outside and continue our mission, and with no chance of sleep and the sheer thought of returning to the puzzle driving me closer and closer towards total psychosis, taking a swim with a princess didn’t exactly seem like the worst idea in the world.
Already stripped down to my underwear, I crossed to the water’s edge and lowered myself beneath the surface, my feet touching the ground just as the water reached my neck. It was a tepid temperature, perfectly lukewarm – not uncomfortably cold but not overly warm, providing enough refreshment to give some relief from the punishing humidity that dominated the archipelago’s climate, something that had only been magnified inside the cave.
Evelina smiled over at me lightly, not saying a word, before slowing her pace and letting her body drift up to the surface. She covered herself up, wrapping her soaked wings around her body, turning them into a means of floating on the water’s surface as she closed her eyes to relax.
I wanted to ask about Ariadne – hell, I didn’t even know where the other harpy in our trio was – but right now that was a fire that I didn’t want to stoke. She would be somewhere in the cave, likely sleeping off the argument.
In the meantime, I closed my eyes and sank beneath the surface, into the white noise of the water’s depths. I exhaled through my nose, sinking to the bottom of the pool and sitting on the sand with my senses numbed.
Finally I returned for air, breathing deeply as I wiped the water from my eyes and returned to my original place on the sand.
Suddenly Evelina emerged from the pool, sauntering casually over to me. Maybe I would have expected that from her considering how she had left me hanging back in the bath chambers on Aries. What I didn’t quite expect was that she would leave the pool wearing absolutely nothing.
This time I fought to keep my mouth shut, but it was a hell of a difficult task.
‘There’s no shame in looking,’ she said casually.
‘I don’t know about that…’
I met her eyes briefly, striving to drag my gaze from her unbelievable body, her slender stomach, her luscious hips and her round, large breasts as she stood with her hips arched to one side, her hands relaxed on them.
I may have still been wearing my boxers, but they did nothing to hide how hard I had become in only seconds, something that wasn’t exactly helped by the fact that I had just awoken.
‘This… Isn’t a good idea,’ I said slowly, not believing the words myself but trying to stick to some level of morality. ‘Ariadne is around here somewhere…’
‘So?’
‘So…’
I struggled for a response, but it didn’t come. To them, there was no jealousy or pettiness when it came to sex. You laid with whoever you desired, so long as they desired you back.
And to say that I was desiring Evelina was an understatement.
‘Besides…’ Evelina continued, crawling over my body as I tried to sit up and pushing me back down to the sand, ‘Ariadne’s already had her turn with you, hasn’t she?’
‘How do you know about that?’ I asked, feeling myself growing harder beneath my underwear as Evelina slinked down my body to my waist.
‘I didn’t, but thank you for letting me know that my hunch was correct.’
Evelina ran her fingers into my underwear, sending the same shiver of excitement through me that Ariadne had pleasured me with back in my cell.
Does every harpy have an obsession with wrapping their lips around a guy? I thought, propping myself up on my arms as Evelina pulled my throbbing length from beneath my garments and took me in her hand, admiring my size before pulling no punches in wrapping her lips around the head of my cock and lapping her tongue against me.
Any shot at a thought that made sense vanished in that instant as I gave myself over to Evelina’s lips. It wasn’t just the fact that she was ridiculously good at taking a man in her mouth, even after so many years without the presence of one, it was the fact that she was a literal princess – and right now she was the one serving me.
I let my head fall back against the soft ground, pressing my hands against the sand either side of me and clenching it in my hands as the ecstasy flooded over my body like the waves crashing against the rocks that guarded this hidden place.
‘I can’t believe you…’
A third voice crept into the mix. My eyes slammed open. I looked a few yards to my left to see Ariadne standing there in her underwear, her arms crossed as she looked between us.
Shit.
‘You’ve had your time with him,’ Evelina said, continuing to pleasure me gently with one of her hands. ‘Why shouldn’t I have a turn?’
I looked back towards Ariadne, my mouth agape.
‘I still can’t believe you didn’t wake me. Didn’t you think I’d want to join in?’
I only became more confused. Ariadne pulled off her clothes as she crossed to us, dropping to her knees by Evelina’s side and pressing her tongue to my shaft without reluctance.
My head fell back again against the sand at the perfect sensation that they provided me with. I managed to look back up at them.
‘I thought you two fell out…?’
‘We had a chat while you slept,’ Ariadne said. ‘We worked things out.’
‘Just like that?’
‘It was a long talk…’ Ariadne said, running her lips to the other side of my length as they both teased me with their mouths.
I could have questioned it further but I was too caught up in the absolute ecstasy of the moment. A day ago I had had the best sex of my life with Ariadne, and now that was already being topped by not one but two girls pleasuring me relentlessly.
They took turns wrapping their lips around me as I indulged in these long, protracted moments, wishing that it would last forever – until they both moved to sit atop me.
Ariadne crawled up my body, smiling as she passed me before spinning around gracefully to sit atop my face. I pressed my tongue into the soaking wetness between her legs, and just as I thought that it couldn’t get any better, I felt Evelina take my dick in her hand, sliding me into her slowly until I had filled her up completely.
Her moaning echoed through the cave as she began to ride me. Ariadne followed as I tongued her clit wildly, feeling her hips quiver as she rode my face rhythmically.
I couldn’t get enough of the pair of them. The soft tightness of their perfect bodies could have overwhelmed me at any second, threatening to send me finishing inside of Evelina’s, but I was determined to keep a hol
d on myself.
The harpies’ moans soon began to sound stifled. In the haze of pleasure I quickly realised that they had wrapped their arms around each other and were engaged in a passionate, prolonged kiss.
The three of us were engaged in an endless cycle of pleasure, pleasing each other’s bodies in the heat of the cave. I ran my hands up Evelina’s hips, pressing her down against me and grinding against each other. She let out a shriek of pleasure, her hips shaking as she came around me.
We continued for a few minutes longer, wrapped in each other’s bodies, until I could hold myself off no longer. Warmth flooded through my abs and into my waist as I came hard inside of Evelina, groaning against Ariadne’s wetness as I continued to tongue her. In a climactic response her body seized, soaking my face lightly as we all came together.
Our orgasms finally subsided and we collapsed into a heap, all three of us panting and shaking.
‘Is that how you guys make up in your world?’ I asked.
‘Sometimes,’ Ariadne smiled. ‘Or, like I said, we talk it out. You know, like normal people.’
‘Sometimes,’ I laughed. ‘That works for me.’
Afterwards we laid together, I still spinning the puzzle in my hands. Sex, particularly sex as hot as that which I had just had with the girls, was one of the most effective ways for a man to clear his mind and realign his thoughts.
Returning to the puzzle I had hoped that those clear thoughts would aid me in finding a solution. Still, though, no answer appeared before me. I knew the method for solving a Rubik’s cube – find the corners and then the crosses. This was nothing like that, though. I had realised that shortly after we began, and returning to the prospect only confronted me with more failure.
The sun was getting lower as another hour passed. The girls dressed and checked for further supplies in the cave while I continued, still sat in my underwear like some basement-dwelling monster hunched over a toy.
Any semblance of a clear mind that I had had after bedding Ariadne and Evelina was now gone and after another fifteen minutes had passed my fury finally bubbled up.
I threw the puzzle onto the sand before me and paced to my pack, taking up the sword that I had used in the fight with the golems. It had been chipped and mangled slightly from the use of the Warrior’s Rage and could probably make it through one more fight before falling apart completely.
Or one really powerful hit.
I was blinded with anger and frustration, hardly able to see as I returned to the core and found myself lucid for just enough time to line the edge of the blade with the puzzle like batter setting up for the swing of his life.
Somewhere in the haze of my peripheral vision I caught the blurred sight of one of the girls – I honestly couldn’t figure out which one, or which one yelled Kit! across the room at me before I raised the sword over my head, swinging back with both hands before slamming the sharp edge of the blade down against the puzzle’s wood and metal frame.
Everything exploded, the object obliterating and splintering in every direction, and after the sparks died down I looked down to see myself holding nothing but a handle with no blade.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ Ariadne said, rushing over to me breathlessly. Evelina appeared from a spot on the other side of the pool. Both looked at me with a mix of confusion and shock, until all of our faces lit up with a flickering blue and orange light.
I looked down to where the crumbled remains of the puzzle should have been and instead saw a ball of swirling blue and orange light, which steadily rose up from the ground, floating between us all.
‘Is that it…?’ I whispered, my anger slipping away, along with the sword’s handle, from my grip. ‘Is that the real Harpy Core?’
‘I… I don’t know…’ Evelina said. ‘Take it.’
I stretched my hand out once again, touching the object – but instead found my hand slipping straight through it, as if I was reaching into a hologram.
I withdrew my hand fast, and the ball of light quickly flattened into a circle, stretching out before us like a table top.
The harpies were behind the times in terms of conventional technology, but this was like nothing I had ever seen, even back on Earth. This technology didn’t exist.
The image quickly turned 3D in the slightest of fashions, and together we were looking down at the archipelago. Hundreds of islands laid before us. I needed the girls to navigate and locate exactly what we were looking at, but they were way ahead of me.
‘Aries is here…’ Ariadne said, pointing at the last bastion of the harpies, ‘and we’re here…’ She pointed at the tiny spit of land that we currently occupied.
Suddenly a red dot flashed upon a nearby island, a stark contrast to the natural colours of the rest of this map that had projected from nowhere and onto nothing.
‘That’s Wildak,’ Evelina said. ‘Heavy drake territory…’
The image zoomed onto the island, landing on a patch of forest in the depths of the jungle.
‘Damn…’ Ariadne muttered.
‘Have you got it?’ I asked.
They shared a look, before nodding apprehensively. For a few more seconds that ominous red dot continued to blip on the forest before the whole projection disappeared entirely.
‘Is that… Normal for your world?’ I asked, looking between them.’
‘No,’ Evelina said slowly, shaking her head. ‘I’ve never seen anything like that before.’
Its appearance didn’t warrant any discussion other than looks. They had already talked to me about the gods… I had never seen evidence of a god on Earth, but this warranted something supernatural at the very least.
That was secondary, though – we had a mission to complete, and we had figured out the next part of the trail.
‘Kit…’ Ariadne said quietly. ‘Where it’s telling us to go… It’s dangerous.’
‘How dangerous?’
‘Really dangerous,’ Evelina continued, breathing deeply. ‘That squad of drakes back there… There were only six or seven of them. This time there’ll be a hundred at least. Wildak is a drake stronghold. We don’t have accurate intelligence, but that… thing, whatever it was, is telling us to go straight into the jaws of death. If we get spotted… Well, there are two options. Kill ourselves, or fight and hope that they kill us. Because if they capture us… You’re going to wish you were dead.’
I looked between them both. Nodding lightly, I clenched both of my hands, feeling the roughness of my palms; years of studying machines had left me with something close to workers palms, but the callouses I had developed over the past few days put those gained from working with moving parts and cogs to shame.
Dropping to one knee by the pool, I looked into it and saw the vague shape of my reflection in the dying light. Even after having swam in the water with Evelina, my hair was clotted with blood and dirt, my fringe falling over my forehead, my face stained with small cuts and mud.
‘A few days ago I was serving drinks in a coffee shop in my hometown,’ I said. ‘Now I’m part-Harpy and I’m on a quest to save the queen of a lost kingdom with a princess and a guard. So much of my life hasn’t meant a goddamn thing… But this does. This means something.’ I turned to look back at the girls. ‘If I give up now I may as well have taken that jump off the cliff a few seconds earlier so you wouldn’t have had time to save me.’
They both laughed lightly.
‘All right,’ Evelina said. ‘Looks like we’re doing this.’
‘I’ve had a good life,’ Ariadne shrugged turning to Evelina. ‘And I’m sorry for what I said earlier. It seems so stupid now…’
‘You don’t have to say anything. We’ve got more important matters to deal with.’
‘So where do we start?’ I asked, taking a deep breath.
‘Well, first things first,’ Evelina said. ‘You need to put on some clothes.’
Chapter Eleven
Diversion
Wait for darkness and silence to fall. Fly
low across the waters. Arrive on the island of Wildak. Figure out a plan from there.
It all sounded easy enough – but as we waited in the cave for the final whispers of day to vanish, the shrieks of the night quickly replaced it.
The screeching of the snatchers was already unmistakable to my ears, and in their midst I heard the yelling of the drakes, giving their orders.
This routine carried on for so long that we resorted to further exploring the cave. I could afford to light a torch as long as I was far enough away from the entrance to avoid the light being seen, and did so. Old boxes were scattered about, growing in quantity the further I descended into its depths. The crashing of water against the walls only a few feet from me grew in strength until I reached the end of the trail.
A single large crate was surrounded by many small others. They were all rotting and either upturned or emptied, but this final one remained ominously undisturbed.
Curiosity couldn’t help but get the better of me. I lodged the handle of my flaming torch into the sand nearby and retrieved my remaining sword, shoving the blade beneath the lid, ensuring it was wedged in place, then applying enough pressure to bring the lid splintering free.
It finally gave, wood chippings flying in all directions, and I retrieved my torch and held the flames over the box.
It took a few seconds for me to realise what I was looking at, but the moment my brain registered it I fell back onto my ass and damn near threw the torch away from the box, sending it back up the passage that I had come.
My entire body was shaking uncontrollably with terror.
‘Ariadne! Evelina!’
The girls both came running.
‘What is it?’ Ariadne asked, going to pick up the torch from where it lay in the sand on its side, still burning a few yards from me.
‘NO!’ I shouted at her viciously. ‘Leave it there…’
Ariadne jolted back at how loudly I had shouted at her.
‘What’s wrong with you?!’
‘Don’t put the fire anywhere near that crate…’ I panted, pushing myself up to my feet. ‘Did you know that was down here?’