by Logan Jacobs
By that time, my other two selves were on their feet tensed for a brawl, Lizzy had pulled two daggers, and Elodette was pointing her bow at all the other Sanctimians in the vicinity who had stood up from their chairs to discourage them from getting involved.
“Stand down,” I hissed to the women through all three mouths despite the fact that two of them were still full of food. I handed the very agitated Willobee off to Ilandere for soothing. To the man who had shoved him in my face and then nearly dropped him, I said calmly, “Explain yourself.”
Once the man, a tall fellow with a bad case of acne, managed to recover his composure a little, he gulped, “That creature has… corrupt ways.”
“Er, corrupt ways?” I repeated. “I don’t follow.”
“He invited us to play cards,” the man confided in hushed tones as if he were referring to some kind of deviant sex act.
“Damn it, Willobee,” I groaned. I had some previous acquaintance with the gnome’s dishonest habits at the card table. “All right, how much did he cheat you out of?”
“What?” the man looked taken aback. “You think we played?”
“… Um, what are you mad about then, exactly?” I asked.
“Gambling is an offense-- ” he began.
“Against Monomachus,” Florenia deadpanned. For someone who didn’t know her, it would have been impossible to judge from her tone whether she were in agreement with or contempt of the statement. The surrounding Sanctimians were clearly unsure how to react. The duke’s daughter continued, “Dearest brother, I find myself rather wearied from the travails of our day. Perhaps you would be so good as to escort me to our room?”
“Wait,” Lizzy said. “I wanna know.”
Florenia, Willobee, the centaurs, and all three of me looked at her warily.
“Why does this Monomachus guy get pissed off so easily all the time?” the she-wolf asked.
For several moments there was dead silence.
Then one of the Sanctimians blurted out, “Because we are constantly transgressing his laws,” and hunched over sobbing into his hands.
“Er… he ever tell you that?” Lizzy scrunched up her pretty, freckled nose.
“Yes,” the sobbing one gulped out. Other heads nodded.
“Oh! You actually met him then?” Lizzy brightened. She pointed at me. “Vander’ll fight him for you, then you won’t have to worry about his sorry ass no more and you can do whatever you want!”
I coughed. Luckily, none of the Sanctimians seemed to have paid much attention to that second part. They were hung up on the first part.
“He has expressed his displeasure with us of late by destroying our livelihood,” explained a man with hunched shoulders and deep bags of exhaustion under his eyes.
“Of what does your livelihood consist?” Florenia asked.
“Mainly sheep,” the tired-eyed Sanctimian replied. “And we have erred so often that Monomachus has started sending wolves to decimate our flocks.”
“Wolves don’t obey gods,” Lizzy scoffed. “I mean, unless they really like them.”
“Well, the wolves of this region have never behaved in this way before,” the Sanctimian retorted. “To be sure they have stolen a few sheep here or there over the years and left little more than bones and fur behind. But now? They slaughter half our flocks and leave the carcasses lying in the fields without as much as a bite missing. What else could that be but a sign of Monomachus’ displeasure? What natural wolf does that kind of thing?”
“Don’t sound like wolves to me,” Lizzy snorted.
The Sanctimians did not immediately contradict her. Instead they squinted at her pointed, hairy ears, the long, shaggy tail for which she had cut a hole in her gown, and the furred hind paws into which her human legs tapered. I guess they weren’t quite sure whether to interpret her wolfish features as signs that she was an accomplice of the beasts that were killing their sheep, and not to be trusted, or as evidence that she might potentially be something of an authority on the matter of wolf behavior.
“But we’ve always found wolf fur and claw marks and such around the scenes,” the tired-looking man sighed finally. “So what else could it be?”
“How the hell should I know?” Lizzy asked.
The Sanctimians looked at her so dejectedly, without even mustering up the energy to object to her irreverent language, that for the first time since we’d arrived in their village, I felt sorry for them instead of feeling annoyed by their uptight ways.
Lizzy, to my surprise, must have had a similar internal reaction. “All right, I guess I could go sort it out for y’all sorry asses,” she grumbled. “When was the last time these beasties attacked? Whose flock was it? Show me the field.”
“Who are you people?” whispered a large-eared Sanctimian.
Lizzy rolled her eyes. “Upstanding fucking citizens,” she replied. “Now you want me to fix your wolf problem or nah?”
The Sanctimians around us exchanged glances. They still didn’t approve of us. Not the way we looked, talked, or acted. Not one bit. But if they kept losing their sheep, they were going to be pretty well fucked over. Families would starve. And all of their efforts to be virtuous enough to appease the god they presumed responsible for their present troubles were clearly not working. So what did they have to lose?
Finally the tall pimply one who had forcibly ejected Willobee from his table for attempting to initiate a game of cards spoke up. “Er. That’d be Joshua’s flock from his field north of the mill. That was just last night. I could show you the spot if you like.”
Chapter Three
I looked over at Florenia, Ilandere, Elodette, and Willobee. “We’ll go upstairs and settle in for the night now,” I told them. One of my selves placed a hand on Florenia’s shoulder and another self took Ilandere’s hand in mine.
My third self looked over at Lizzy. “And I’ll come with you to check out this wolf situation.”
“No,” she said unexpectedly. “I got this one, Vander.”
“But what if there’s some creep like Hakmut lurking around?” I asked. At first I hadn’t thought that the necromancer god Hakmut actually existed. I didn’t want to make the same mistake with Monomachus. Besides, what if the villagers themselves ambushed Lizzy? They seemed interested in her help, but I didn’t trust these people any more than they trusted me and my companions.
“Then I’ll run back and get you,” she said with a grin. “But if it’s really got something to do with wolves… they ain’t gonna trust me if I show up with a man-shaped god. Things will go a hell of a lot smoother and more peaceful-like if it’s just me by my lonesome, especially in about twenty minutes, eh?”
She winked at me. My worries faded. If Lizzy was only twenty minutes away from gaining her nocturnal morphing ability, then anything that wanted to mess with her tonight would have to take on a four-hundred-pound wolf with human intelligence. There were very few entities that could pose a serious threat to her in that form.
“You sure you don’t want me to come?” I asked. I still would have preferred to go. But it was a rare occurrence for Lizzy to decline my company, so I figured that she must have solid reasons and that I should respect her judgment.
In response, she pulled a red ribbon from her tawny hair and tossed it to me. “Just tie that around the handle of the door to the room that’s yours and mine, so I’ll know where to find ya when I get back, all right?”
“If you don’t come back soon--” I began.
“I know you will,” Lizzy interrupted with a grin. She wiggled her clawed fingers at me and sashayed off with a trio of Sanctimians, including the tall pimply one who’d first offered to lead the way.
The sting of watching her step off into potential danger without me like that, as minimal as it might be, made me realize how incredibly important Lizzy had become to me. She and Willobee had been the first to join my little band. I had met them on the road while she and her crew of bandits were busy attempting to rob the gnome of his carriag
e, ponies, and other belongings. After I intervened and stopped them, which involved burning Lizzy’s former mate to a crisp, Willobee had pledged ten years of faithful service to me for saving his life in accordance with gnomish customs, and Lizzy had sort of just invited herself along for the ride. Even back then, I’d never had any objection to her voluptuous figure and impishly pretty green-eyed face, but I’d had a lot more doubts about the ethical framework she had based her previous lifestyle upon. Yet she had proven herself my right-hand woman in the weeks that followed, as she stuck by me through bloody battles, a supernatural plague, and the addition of the two centaurs to our party, with whom she not infrequently had a clash of opinions.
The bespectacled innkeeper, who had been hovering just within earshot as he cleared dishes or refilled mugs at nearby tables, called over one of the barmaids dressed like vestals and instructed her to show us to our rooms.
Ilandere hated climbing stairs and seemed psychologically incapable of descending them, but Elodette, despite her likewise horse-shaped bottom half, seemed to have no such phobia. After her handmaiden clattered up without flinching, the princess took a deep breath and followed. I wondered if I would have to carry her back down the stairs like last time. At least if that was the case, I’d have three selves to share the load now.
I had expected the barmaid to be timid like pretty much all the other Sanctimians we had met so far, but once we got upstairs, and she had handed me the keys to four rooms that she pointed out to us, she squeaked happily, “You all are the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to The Traveler’s Providence.” Then before any of us could respond, she scurried back downstairs again.
“You’re the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me, too, Qaar’endoth,” Florenia murmured as she pressed her hand to one of my chests.
“Me too,” Ilandere agreed as she clasped her hands together beneath her pointed little chin.
Elodette sighed. “This whole adventure is the most ridiculous thing that’s ever happened to me.”
At least she’d called it an “adventure,” not an ordeal or a disaster. Elodette was decidedly less enthusiastic about my company, my mission, and human affairs in general than the rest of my party, but in times of real crisis, she pulled her weight and then some. So I didn’t let her acidic remarks get to me too much. I handed her one of the room keys.
“Come along then, Princess,” Elodette said. “We’ll need our rest to have the patience to deal with these Sanctimians in the morning. They are even more annoying than the usual sort of human.”
“Good night, Vander,” Ilandere said to me as she blinked her huge eyes shyly, and then the two centaurs retreated into their room.
Willobee yawned hugely and mumbled, “I’m still thirsty. Good night, Master,” and waddled off into his own room.
That left Florenia in the hallway with three of me.
My self that had Lizzy’s ribbon held it up and said, “I’m going to wait for her,” and I tied it around the door handle of the third room before going in.
But at the same time I scooped Florenia up in my arms and carried her into the fourth room. My remaining self followed.
I threw her on the bed and started unlacing her dark gold gown while my other self started stripping off my own clothes. As the gown came off, her slender body was revealed in all its glory. Her waist was so tiny that I could practically encircle it with my hands, but her shoulders and hips flared out in a willowy hourglass, and full breasts rode high on her ribcage. Her long legs kicked themselves the rest of the way free from her skirts and wrapped themselves around my hips. But that self was still fully clothed, so I disentangled myself in order to work my way out of my leather temple novice’s uniform. Florenia growled and wriggled her body with impatience.
My other self that was already undressed stepped in to take my place standing in front of the bed while I crouched down to unlace my boots. Florenia propped herself up on her elbows and looked up at my standing self expectantly. She stretched out one leg to run her foot up my thigh and then along the length of my erection. I could have climbed onto the bed and mounted her immediately, but that was what she expected me to do. So instead I reached over, caught hold of her, and flipped her over onto her stomach with her head facing the edge of the bed.
She yelped with surprise when I tossed her around, but then I took hold of her glossy chestnut hair and guided her head to where I wanted it. She took my shaft eagerly between her lips and used one hand to keep herself propped upright while she used the other to reach between my legs and lavish attention on all of my parts that could not fit inside her mouth at once. At first she licked slowly and thoroughly and left every inch tingling, then she took me in all the way to the back of her throat and struck the precise rhythm to bring me to orgasm. My knees almost buckled as she swallowed my seed.
Florenia hummed deep in her throat with a smirk on her exquisitely beautiful face and stretched her limbs. She probably thought I would need a few minutes to recover. She wasn’t wrong exactly, not about that self at least.
But my other self climbed onto the bed behind her, knocked her knees apart, and gripped one of her hips with one hand to hold her in position while I used the other hand to insert my cock into her entrance from behind. She was already soaking wet from the time she had just spent playing with my other self’s cock, and she cried out in ecstasy as I grabbed her hips with both hands and slammed my cock into her hard and fast, so deep that I struck the end of her tunnel.
I paused and leaned over to growl in her ear, “Quiet. Remember where we are.”
“If all of Sanctimia could see us now, they would abandon their god in favor of you,” she panted out. Still, she bit her hand in an effort to be quiet, but that didn’t completely muffle the cry that escaped her when I brought her to a shuddering climax.
We used to have to take intermissions, but with two of my bodies in the game, I was able to spend almost every minute of the night with a hard cock buried deep between Florenia’s legs.
“After tonight I could die happily,” she sighed at one point, “except that then we couldn’t do this again tomorrow night.”
My other self in the neighboring game spent a significantly less enjoyable few hours pacing back and forth waiting for Lizzy and trying to analyze what could be taking her so long. I was confident that the Sanctimians themselves did not pose any significant threat to her, not in her giant wolf form anyway. But I didn’t know anything about whatever kind of god or monster was devouring their sheep. Or rather, killing their sheep and declining to devour them afterward, which made the whole situation a lot stranger and somehow more sinister. It didn’t seem like something the Thorvinians would do, anyway. If they had come through here and wished Monomachus and his followers harm, they would have simply slaughtered everyone in the village and burnt it to the ground. Subtlety was not Thorvinius’ strong suit. Subtlety wasn’t Lizzy’s strong suit either. As the hours wore on I started to feel less like her strong, confident lover and leader and more like a worried mother hoping that she would make good decisions while we were apart. At that point I decided it was time to go track her down and figure out what the hell was going on.
Just as I took a step toward the door, it opened and the she-wolf sauntered in. She was back in her human form and fully clothed in her new red dress from the baron’s castle, although she hadn’t bothered to relace it properly. I was relieved by that because it meant that, in the first place, she must have kept the situation reasonably under control if she was able to store her dress somewhere safe prior to morphing and return for it afterward, and in the second place, she was less likely to have led a mob of outraged pitchfork-wielding Sanctimians back to our doorstep by strolling through their village stark naked. It wouldn’t have been entirely out of character for Lizzy to pull a stunt like that. Partly because she usually didn’t give a fuck what other people thought, but also partly because I suspected she sometimes got a kick out of riling people up.
; “Lizzy!” I exclaimed.
“Who else would it be?” she purred. “You got another half-wolf mistress around here somewhere?”
“There’s no one else like you in the world, Lizzy,” I replied. “Besides, you’re not half-wolf. Don’t exaggerate. You said great-great-grandmother… so that’s like… one sixteenth?”
Lizzy shrugged. “More than most people can lay claim to.”
“Yeah?” I said. “How about these sheep-killers then? What percentage wolf are they?”
“Zero,” she replied.
“Zero?” I repeated. “Well what the fuck are they then? Don’t tell me it’s really this Monomachus fellow. I don’t want to share the Fairlands with any god who’s actually that lame. And a recreational sheep murderer on top of it.”
“No, no, they’re about the farthest thing from gods you could think of,” she chortled as she wriggled out of her dress and threw it on the floor. Lizzy had managed to make tatters of the sturdy leather surcoat she’d been wearing for a few weeks before receiving the dress, so I didn’t have high expectations for how long the red velvet was going to hold up to her usual level of wear and tear.
“Do tell?” I said and tried to focus on the answer instead of the she-wolf’s body. It was spectacular in a completely different way than Florenia’s. Lizzy was overflowing with curves, but in between, there was lean athletic muscle instead of plumpness. Her freckled face was cute in a girlish way, but all her wolf features around the edges reminded you that she was dangerous. She was overall an unforgettable sight as well as an unforgettable tactile experience.
“I’ll do you one better and just show ya in the morning,” she replied.
I was about to insist on more details, but then Lizzy came up and kissed me with her usual animal ferocity, and I too, decided that Sanctimia’s sheep problem could wait until morning.
In the morning, of course, more than half the party had barely slept, and even Willobee and the centaurs didn’t seem like they’d had such a great night’s rest, but everyone perked up with interest when Lizzy made her announcement.