by Logan Jacobs
“The nether realm,” he repeated shakily. “That’s where the elf dude’s bosses were. I overheard him talking to one of the guys, uh, Razor, saying he had to go back to the nether realm soon and get his next orders. So whatever you guys are looking for, I think it’s there.”
Neither Ariette nor I said anything for a long moment. I looked at the elf to see if her face gave me any clue as to just how bad this news was, but she was stony calm.
“Thank you,” she said finally to Rob before she turned on her heel and marched out of the room, with me very close behind. “We’ll be sure to keep this information in mind when we talk to the human police about your sentencing.”
“Wellllll,” I said and tried to take on a tone of cheerful excitement. “We stopped the thievery. That was the goal after all.”
Ariette pursed her lips like she wanted to argue, but then her face softened, and she sighed.
“Good point, HC,” she chuckled as she rubbed tiredly at her brow. “Ever the optimist.”
“What’s the deal with the nether realm, anyways?” I asked her quietly. “I’ve read a bit about it, but that was all magical theory and I want to hear about it from a practical standpoint.
She just looked up at me, and for the first time, I saw that her big blue eyes were full of actual terror.
“It’s a place where no one wants to go,” she started. “Unless, of course, you’re a group of evil Unseelie who see it as a playground for your vile plan, and not a forest of apocalyptic doom.”
“That sounds lovely,” I quipped, but she didn’t laugh.
“This is going to be a long battle,” she sighed heavily. “The nether realm… Damn.”
“Let’s get some sleep,” I replied as I pulled her toward the stairs. “I have a good feeling tomorrow’s going to be a celebration. And then we can worry about the nether realm and the Phobos and the end of the world.”
“The Fae do love to celebrate,” she agreed, and then she let me pull her up the stairs and to our bedrooms.
Chapter 18
I woke up from the deepest sleep I’d had in, well, days. I actually couldn’t remember how long it had been since Ariette and I had woken up together in bed, but that was the last night I’d had a really good sleep. Maybe it was the sex, or maybe it was the peaceful calm that floats down over the Jefferson Guild whenever we stop some terrible bad guy from doing awful things, like kidnapping baby animals and training them to be killers. That kind of stuff.
“Good morning,” Ariette mumbled from the pillow next to me.
The elf had squashed the downy pillow up into a tiny little ball of fluff and stuffed it under her face so she could lay on her stomach with her head propped up. How that position was comfortable to her, I would never know. I preferred to lay flat on my back so I could watch the moonlight pour in from the edges of the thick curtains.
“Morning,” I whispered back sleepily. Then I turned on my side so I could face her, and she instantly curled her body into mine.
“Thanks for the t-shirt, HC,” she sighed into my chest.
She had picked up one of my old human t-shirts from the pile in my drawer last night, after we had fucked pretty roughly against the wall. She claimed that she didn’t have the strength to walk back to the doorway and grab her regular clothes, so she took a piece of mine.
“It looks better on you,” I replied as I leaned over and pressed a kiss to her brow. “What time do you think it is?”
“Mmm, I don’t know,” she groaned as she rolled over and stretched her arms high in the air. “Hopefully it’s late in the afternoon. Like very, very late, and we can skip over the reports and just head straight to the feast.”
“Ugh,” I groaned at the mention of the reports.
I tried to take my mind off all that damn paperwork by watching the way Ariette’s breasts rose as she stretched, and the way her nipples formed little domes in the fabric of my t-shirt. One of them seemed to dot the “i” in the word “FireSquad,” and my favorite band just got a whole lot cooler.
Ariette closed her eyes and cracked her neck before she fell back lazily into the soft mattress. The blanket had fallen down right then to reveal the lacy top of her sky blue panties. My dick twitched with a mixture of arousal and morning wood, and I rolled on top of her and lightly pushed my fingertips under the top of her underwear, just above the little bundle of nerves I wanted to touch so desperately.
“It’s too early for teasing,” the elf complained as her hips rose up to try to push my fingers farther down.
“Who said anything about teasing?” I grinned at the elf.
And just as I was about to comply with her pleading blue eyes, a bundle of warm fur and hot saliva bounded onto the bed and landed on Ariette’s chest with a thump. Storm started to lick the elf with two of her heads, and then she turned the third one to wash my own face in warm kisses.
“Good morning to you, too,” Ariette giggled as she tried to shove the cerberus puppy off of her. “Have you grown already? You feel heavier!”
“She got ten pounds heavier in the last two days,” I chuckled back to the elf as I wrangled Storm off Ariette and plopped her into a semi-seated position next to me. The puppy’s tail wagged with such force that she couldn’t even sit down properly.
“Are you two up yet?” Kalista’s voice demanded suddenly from outside my door. Seconds later, she pounded her fist against the door so hard the frame shook.
“How does she even know you’re in here?” I asked Ariette with wide eyes. “Is she using her Hand?”
Ariette snorted and struggled upright, her hair a chaotic halo around her head.
“She probably went and pounded on my door first, then stomped over here when I didn’t answer,” the elf said as she shrugged. Then she raised her voice to address the impatient dwarf. “You can come in, Kal.”
Kalista barged in then, already dressed and ready for the day. She slammed the door behind her and then stood and stared at us with her hands on her hips. Her violet eyes were alert and excited.
“You’re not dressed?” she cried as Storm bounded up to lick her kneecaps. She bent down to scratch at the three slobbering heads, and then she looked up at us again and frowned. “What are you still doing in bed?”
“It’s what we’re not doing, actually,” I groaned as I rolled away from Ariette and swung my legs over the side of the bed.
“Milton, take care of your morning wood yourself this morning,” Kalista ordered with a roll of her eyes. “We have a celebratory feast in an hour, and I am not going to miss all the freshly bottled wine and sausage from Sal just because your own needs a bit of attention. It’s nearly three in the afternoon, you know!”
“It’s three in the afternoon?” Ariette exclaimed, and then she scrambled out of my bed in search of her clothes. Her pale butt and sky blue panties were just barely visible under the hem of my t-shirt, and I stared at it, longing to have her back underneath me.
“Yes, Ari, it’s three in the afternoon,” Kal snapped back. “Time flies when you’re having fun, eh?”
“No, Kal,” Ariette said as she hurriedly pulled on her black pants. “We got to get Maaren and Danira into the command center. Actually, wait, no, scratch that, get them to meet us in here.”
“Why?” Kalista asked, slightly worried now.
“The nether realm,” Ariette said, her voice muffled as she pulled my t-shirt off. I admired her full breasts as they popped out from under the material, and my mind raced as she continued her conversation with the dwarf.
“The nether realm?” Kal prompted as Ariette lay down on the floor and snatched her shirt out from under my bed.
“That’s where the Phobos are! So that’s where we have to go,” Ariette finally replied as she put on the last bit of her clothing.
“The Phobos are in the nether realm, but … oh!” Kal exclaimed with wide eyes, before she hurried off to find Maaren and Danira and do as Ariette asked.
I blinked after the dwarf in confusion
and finally looked up at my elven companion. I’d been distracted by her perky breasts, but now that she was covered, I could focus on the beautiful features on her face.
“Okay, wait. Time out. Why are they meeting us in here?” I sighed as I got up sadly to pull on clothes of my own. The chill of the morning air made goosebumps stand at attention up and down my arms.
“Because we’ve only been cutting at the branches of this Phobos tree.” Ariette explained. “We need to go to the root, which means we need to go to the nether realm and destroy them there. But Hasen can’t know.”
Her voice took on a sharp and serious edge, and I stopped pulling my shirt on to look at her in bewilderment.
“Why not? Shouldn’t we tell him so we can get another team to go with us?” I asked. “This doesn’t sound like a mission we should take on alone, Ariette. I’m serious.”
“So am I,” she intoned as she looked me in the eye. Gone was the playful woman that I woke up next to. In her place stood a lethal and battle hardened warrior. “We can’t tell him because he wouldn’t send a team. HC, he wouldn’t even let us go.”
The elf walked over to stand directly in front of me, and I gazed down into her ocean blue eyes.
“He’s the guild master,” I argued as my brow furrowed. “Even a dickwad like Hasen doesn’t want the Phobos taking over.”
“He doesn’t believe they exist,” Ariette sighed.
“What?” I pulled back. “How can he not believe they exist? They’re not some bedtime story. This is a real threat. We saw them ourselves! The Seelie have dealt with them before.”
“Yeah, and the Seelie wiped them out,” she replied as her jaw clenched. “Or at least that’s the party line. It’s the ‘truth’ that people need to hear and believe so they can sleep better at night. But remember how I mentioned that Herm got fired because of his fight with Hasen?”
“Yeah,” I said slowly. “It had something to do with my prophecy, too, right?”
“Well, yes,” she continued, “but Hasen told the entire guild that the prophecies were old wizard bullshit from a bygone era, and that the Phobos are dead.”
I chewed on this information and crossed my arms over my chest.
“So this has to be a secret,” I finished nervously. “We really have to go into a dark, secret realm with absolutely zero backup.”
“We’re going rogue,” Ariette said with a nod, and then she worried her bottom lip and looked at me anxiously.
This was more than breaking a couple of rules or letting some policies slide. This meant that my team would be on our own.
“Alright, what’s going on?” Danira grunted as she banged open my door, followed quickly by Kalista and Maaren. Kal shut the door behind her slowly, and everyone turned to look at Ariette and I.
“We know where the Phobos are,” the elf said calmly as shocked looks spread across Danira’s and Maaren’s faces. Kal just sank down on my bed and petted Storm, who sighed softly at the touch. I wasn’t sure who it calmed more, the dwarf or the puppy.
“The nether realm!” Kalista exclaimed, and she laced her voice with fake excitement. Then she quickly dropped back against the bed with a huge sigh. Storm perked up and leapt on top of the dwarf’s face, much to the dismay of the dwarf.
“No,” Danira breathed as she looked wildly between Ariette and I. “That can’t be.”
I nodded somberly.
“The guy we arrested last night, Rob, he overhead Cirsen talking about it,” I replied. “The animals were just the first step in a grander scheme, which we already knew. But the one thing we didn’t know was where they were, and …”
“And now we know,” Maaren finished. She had her back to us and fiddled with the medal on my dresser.
“Yes, and we can’t tell Hasen because he won’t take us seriously,” Ariette said quietly as she looked around the room at each one of us. “In fact, he’d probably have our badges if he knew we were planning this.”
Her blue eyes landed on me last, and I knew exactly what she was thinking.
“We’re not asking any of you to join us unless you want to,” I finally said, and the three women looked up at me. “I’m the Racmoth. This is my battle. But if you don’t want to go to the nether realm and take off on some harrowing journey where we all just might end up six feet under, I totally get it.”
There was silence for a moment, and then Kalista burst out laughing. She was still flat on her back on my bed, with Storm on her chest, and the puppy jiggled up and down as the dwarf laughed.
“Milton,” she finally said breathlessly as she lifted her head to look at me. Her violet eyes danced with mirth. “You seem smart, but sometimes, you are really, really dumb. We’re all coming with you.”
“Are you guys sure?” I asked and made sure to make eye contact with each one of them. But I was met with confident, fiery gazes.
“We are absolutely sure,” Maaren replied evenly.
Silence fell over the room, but my heart swelled with love and appreciation for the women before me. They had plucked me from my boring mundane life, and they had been by my side through every hairpin turn, every evil scientist, and every fateful prophecy. I loved them all.
“Thank you,” I croaked, and then I cleared my throat. “Really, thank you.”
“Please,” Danira said as she rolled her lone eye. “This has been my job since before your father was born, boy.”
We all laughed, and some tension left the room.
“So when should we leave?” Ariette asked.
My heart gave a lurch, but then Danira spoke up.
“Why don’t we all enjoy the feast first, and then we can hash out the gory details of our prophetic quest in the morning?” the commander offered.
And for the moment, we all took it. The feast was a chance for a reprieve, for celebration. A night to eat well and have fun. For now, the Phobos were tomorrow’s problem. They weren’t going anywhere, and they had no idea that we were coming. I was going to celebrate a job well done, and then I would deal with the new problem tomorrow.
“I second that idea,” I said with a grin. “We’ve worked hard enough the last few days. Now, let’s go celebrate.”
And I was so glad I did.
The moment we walked into the dining hall we were met with uproarious applause. Even the pixies in the chandelier flitted about and squeaked with excitement.
“Milton and team!” Sal exclaimed as we strode into the dining hall.
The dwarf’s joyous, round form stood behind the buffet table with his hands in the air, and a huge carving knife in his right. As he greeted us, his arm swung about, and one of the young kitchen elves dashed around him to avoid becoming the knife’s next victim.
“Hey, Sal!” I smiled back at him as we approached the feast. A huge pig had been roasted whole and was set up in front of Sal with a classic red apple stuffed into its mouth.
“Have some of this pig, you guys,” he ordered as he busied himself and carved out slabs of meat for us. “I made it myself, and it is damn good!”
“Yes, pork belly!” Kal’s eyes lit up as she snatched a plate from the counter.
“Congrats on the arrest, you guys,” the dwarf continued. “I hear all those baby animals were saved.”
“All the non-psychotic killer ones, yep,” Maaren grunted back.
I shuddered as I remembered the hydra and kraken.
We all grabbed our own plates and sat at our usual table. During the whole feast, people came up to congratulate us on a job well done. Even Arendor swallowed his pride and shook my hand.
“Good job, Milton,” he choked out before he strode off, much to my surprise.
“I guess he’s decided to tolerate you,” Ariette whispered as she leaned in close to me.
“I think he just wants to get into your pants,” I hissed back as I wrinkled my nose.
“I can’t blame him,” the elf said with a shrug and a wink. “It’s very nice down there. You’d know all about that, though.”
I almost spit out the giant sip of wine I’d just taken when the elf lowered her lashes seductively at me and wiggled her hips. Quickly, she went back to her food, a giant smirk on her face.
“I’m going to bed,” Kalista announced with a sigh as she pushed her plate away. “We should get some rest before we figure out how save the world.”
“We’ll figure it out tomorrow,” Danira ordered as she stood up and followed the dwarf out of the dining hall. “I vote we leave in a week. Give ourselves some time to work out the details first.” Before any of us could cast a vote of our own, the hardened commander stood briskly from her seat and strode out of the dining hall with her head held high.
“And so the adventure begins,” Maaren mused darkly. Her blue lips were pursed, and she ran a hand tenderly through her snow white hair.
“Nothing wrong with a little adventure,” Ariette joked softly to try to lighten the hunter’s mood.
“Besides, not even the Phobos stand a chance against our team,” I added jovially. “You have the triathlon winner at your disposal, don’t you remember?”
“Oh yes, and thank God for that,” Ariette smiled as she rolled her eyes jokingly. “What would we do without you?”
“I think I’ll get some sleep, too,” Maaren responded, and then she trodded off to her room.
Ariette and I sat in silence for a moment as we cleaned off our plates before we simultaneously got up and walked out of the dining hall. We nodded our thanks at a satyr who congratulated us, and we smiled at a fairy who almost dropped dead at the sight of me. Then, in the hallway, Ariette pushed me roughly up against the wall until we were nose to nose, and her blue eyes stared into mine.
“I don’t want to be alone tonight,” she said softly.
“Well it’s a good thing you don’t have to be,” I teased as I tangled my hand in her soft blonde hair and pulled her mouth to mine. Our lips crashed together in a kiss that was both tender and rough all at once. I guess the mutual realization of our own mortality made us all the more horny.
I unlocked my door with our lips still pressed together before I turned Ariette around and shoved her gently toward the bed. She collapsed on all fours and wiggled her hips back at me. Her supple ass was in my face as I yanked her pants and panties down all at once, and then I stared at the beautiful pink of her vagina. She already dripped with arousal, and she sucked her bottom lip into her mouth as she watched me pull my pants down and let my cock loose. I was rock hard, and the throbbing arousal was almost painful as it begged to be inside of her.