by Noah Layton
She opened her legs, exposing herself shamelessly to me. With one hand she drew the tip of her finger to her lips, biting her nail with her teeth, while her other hand slid down across her slender, toned navel between her legs to tease herself.
‘Take me, Master Jack. Bring yourself to completion…’
I was still caught in my clothes, but my desire for the dryad was too powerful to bring me to pull them off.
I dropped to my knees, positioning myself between her legs and guiding my cock to her soaked lips. I teased her for a moment, trying to hold myself back, but there was no point; I couldn’t resist this exotic woman any longer, and she wasn’t responding to my touch.
She wanted me deep and hard.
I pushed into her, filling her up to the hilt. Her back arched and her mouth fell open, her eyes fluttering as her open mouth extended to a smile.
I planted my hands into the earth and began to fuck her, building quickly into a hard, fast rhythm. She wrapped her slender emerald legs over my back, drawing me into her as deeply as she could take it.
‘More, more…’ She groaned viciously. ‘Show me what you can really do.’
All of the anger, the frustration that I was feeling – she was letting me pass it to her, to absorb it.
My fingernails dug into the dirt as I thrusted into her again and again. Her own fingernails dug hard into my back, evoking a pain that I couldn’t help but enjoy.
Her hands slid down over my shoulders, then to my arms. I hardly noticed when she grabbed hold of my biceps, but I damn well realized it when she pushed me back from her with a deft mustering of incredible strength.
I slipped from her and fell onto my back. My fall was cushioned by an abundance of greenery that had swarmed up from the ground.
As I collapsed onto my back she kept her hands pressed against my wrists, pinning me to the ground.
‘Can a man be fucked?’ She panted, staring down at me as she filled herself up with my cock and began to grind her hips slowly against me.
‘Looks that way to me,’ I replied.
The dryad grinned and moved her hands to my chest, riding me like a wild beast. My hands free from her grip, I pressed her hips down to mine, filling her with my cock as she ran her hands sensuously over her body, into her dishevelled hair and over her face.
‘Yes… That’s it…’
Her green skin and exotic form only drove me crazier, and in the hazy, spore-filled confines of the abandoned church I felt my body tense up.
‘Are you sure that you wish to see?’ She moaned.
I couldn’t even respond. I was indulging too hard in the feeling of her wrapped around my dick.
At that moment I peaked, the sensation of the orgasm flowing through me as I came into her.
My head pressed back hard against the mossy earth, and-
CLUNK.
My orgasm subsided, and I opened my eyes. Darkness surrounded me. I moved to run my hands over my body, but there was nothing there – not just my hands, but my body too.
I was just a pair of eyes floating in the abyss.
What the fuck just happened?
Through the darkness a light appeared in the distance. It grew larger and closer, until whiteness filled my entire field of vision, and-
A scream shot out, piercing my ears like a blade.
An overhead view of a battlefield appeared. Men and creatures and beings moves in droves, slamming into each other and striking out in their thousands.
I was a bird, witnessing something from far above. Destruction. Death. A war.
The war.
I was seeing the old battle that had destroyed the world twenty years ago.
Screams and shouts and spraying waves of blood splashed through the air. The devastation was incomprehensible in its magnitude. Entire forests were flattened, some in smouldering ruins of fire and cinders, as the beings of the land fought relentlessly.
My line of sight was not mine to control, though. My view was forced.
My eyeline was forced up to the sun. I couldn’t blink, couldn’t look away – the pain of the sun’s light burned itself into my retinas, until the light was all-consuming.
The light was suddenly replaced by a view of smouldering fire. I was now standing upon the ground, among the ruins of the land.
There were no fighting forces, no bodies – just myself.
The fire burned and smouldered powerfully, crackling and booming all around.
‘Jack… JACK!’
On the breeze of the fire I heard my name. I recognised the voice immediately.
‘Santana!’
My mind screamed out her name, but my mouth and my voice did nothing; they didn’t exist. I was powerless.
‘Help me!’
An unparalleled horror arose within me, a raging panic that I couldn’t escape from. There was no blinking or looking away or clasping my hands over my ears. I was forced to see the fire and to hear her voice.
Then, among the fire in the distance, something huge shifted. At first I had thought they were rocks, the shadows moving across and between them, but there was something else.
There were other shapes, curves and arches, and-
A gigantic hand reached up from the fire, flying towards me, its fingernails clawed and its skin charred and blackened.
It blocked out the fire, the fingers clasping around my non-existent body, and-
‘NO!’
The hand, the flames, the sound of Santana’s voice, they all vanished.
I jolted awake, sitting up sharply and looking around.
I was no longer lying in the church with the dryad. I was back in the cave, sitting exactly where I had been.
I looked over to the fire, hearing the echo of Santana’s voice in my mind, and saw Lara and Elera sitting by the fire.
‘Are you all right?’ Elera asked, crossing to my side and kneeling down.
‘Yeah…’ I lied. ‘Yeah, I’m fine… What… What are you doing here? You were…’
‘You fell asleep several hours ago,’ Lara said. ‘You have exhausted yourself. We thought it best not to wake you.’
‘Right…’ I replied slowly. I could no longer be sure whether or not what had just happened was a dream.
No, there was no way that it could have been real. The girls had been here the entire time. They would have seen me leave, and when I had awoken previously they had been missing.
None of it had been real.
‘How are things out there?’ I asked, standing and stretching my arms.
‘They have been quiet for just a short time,’ Elera said. ‘I journeyed into the river a short while ago. There are no wood-elves to speak of. Not nearby, at least.’
‘Then we need to get moving,’ I said, the sound of Santana’s scream still echoing through my mind. ‘If it’s a straight shot south then we’re only a few miles from their tribal land. And…’ I paused for a moment – even if I did feel wide awake, what I was going to say next was beyond difficult. ‘I need to say something to you both. This place, where we’re going… If even half of what Artrix said about the wood-elves is true, then there’s a decent chance that we’re walking to our deaths, and all that considered, it’s me who’s leading us.
‘You saw how quickly Ralos died. All it takes is a single hit from a spear or a sword, and you’re gone. We’ve fought against monsters and rival tribes, and I respect you both as fighters, but I won’t be responsible for leading my wives to their deaths. So if you want to stay here, or walk away, you can. Just know that I would put myself before both of you no matter what.’
Elera looked out of the entrance to the cave contemplatively, then looked back at me with the smallest of smiles at the edge of her mouth.
‘I have seen more of the world in my time as your wife than I had done in all my life before I met you. You have been nothing but a blessing to me, and to leave you at a time such as this would betray my beliefs, even if they are usually devious.’
She nuzzl
ed into my chest, the ferocity of her dedication matched only by her warm, nurturing body as she pressed herself to me.
I looked to Lara. She was staring into the fire, her eyes reflecting its light.
Slowly, she turned to me.
‘You’re right,’ she finally said. ‘There is more than a reasonable chance that we are about to die. But in my mind… We are simply hunting another form of prey. But this time I can shirk my usual mantra.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Kill quickly and without pain.’ She stood, checking her bow, tightening her belt and swinging her bag of arrows over her shoulder. ‘These bastards have taken one of our own, and we’re going to make them hurt.’
Within minutes we extinguished the fire and readied our supplies. We moved to the entrance of the cave and looked out into the darkness of the wild forest.
‘What’s the plan?’ Lara asked.
‘We’re going without Potions of Haste,’ I replied. ‘Our speed causes too much noise, especially when we know there could be more lookout posts around here. We move quickly and quietly until we reach the border.’
‘There is a trench that I spotted not far from here,’ Elera said. ‘We can move through it without being seen, at least for some time.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘You lead the way, Elera. Once we’re within sight of the border, we’ll figure out how we’re going to get inside.’
‘There’s also the problem of how we’re going to find Santana and Mariana,’ Lara said. ‘If their land truly holds as many citizens as is told, it could be difficult to find them.’
‘I’m not sure. They took Santana and Mariana for a reason. If we follow the commotion, we should be able to find them. I just hope we’re not too late.’
‘They will be fine,’ Lara replied. ‘The wood-elves… Perhaps not so much once we are finished with them. Are we ready?’
Ariadne’s face suddenly came to mind, and the last thing she said to me before we parted ways.
‘Bring my her back, and kill everything that gets in your way. I do not care if they are men or women or innocent civilians. If they block your path, cut them down.’
She was my first wife, the one who had been my side since my first night in Agraria, and there was no way that I was going to let her down, or any of my wives for that matter.
‘Let us make haste,’ Elera said, moving from the mouth of the cave and dropping down quietly into the river.
Lara followed her, then myself. I glanced around quickly, checking for any sign of pursuing assailants that had been waiting for us, but everything was still and quiet.
Everything except for the glowing green ball on the upper bank of the river, ten yards back, hovering in the air.
What the fuck…?
I rubbed my eyes, but it remained.
I stared back at it for a moment before the sphere disappeared into the forest, vanishing from sight.
‘Jack?’
‘Yeah,’ I said, returning to the girls. ‘Yeah. I’m ready.’
Chapter Thirteen
We stayed close to the riverbank, wading through the water until we reached the trench that Elera had spoken of.
It was like a small ravine, cutting through the land and keeping us out of sight as we moved up and into it. The ground was puddled with murky water, and the walls crawled with insects, but they were nothing in comparison to what lurked outside of this small zone of safety.
Even down here, though, the noises of the forest seemed ever more prescient. We were hidden, sure, but we were on the low ground. Hell, we were beneath the ground.
‘Does it feel warmer to you?’ Elera whispered back to us.
‘Yes, actually,’ Lara said. ‘I thought it was just the trench, but it seems to be getting worse.’
My mind had trained my body to shove off the hot and the cold of the environment – I could only focus on saving Santana and Mariana right now – but my wives were right. The humidity had risen out here, even more so than it usually rose to in the forest.
We continued through the trench until the noises became clearer, and they weren’t just insects or beasts lurking in the undergrowth; they were the familiar howls of the wood-elves.
Intermittent and random, sure, but they were still happening.
And they were getting closer.
The trench suddenly became shallower, our heads peering over the parapet of the top. We kept our heads low, hurrying on, until we saw it.
The tribal land of the wood-elves appeared like a hellish fire on the landscape of the forest. Its glow lit up the night even hundreds of yards away through the dense thickness of the crowded trees ahead.
The trench sharply tapered, and the ground levelled off. I and my wives came to a halt and crouched at the exit of the trench, looking ahead to the burning light of the land.
‘It is like a city,’ Elera said.
‘You have cities in Agraria?’ I asked. It was a thought that had never come to mind.
‘Once, centuries ago,’ Lara added. ‘They were much bigger than this. Now they are nothing but ruins in far-away lands.’
‘We need a closer look. Just keep an eye out for the lookout posts. If there any in the trees we’ll be dead before we even get close to the border.’
I moved first from the trench with Elera right behind me and Lara following, her bow and an arrow at the ready.
There was something wrong, though. The further we progressed past trees and around bushes, the quieter things seemed to get in our immediate surroundings.
The tribal land was abuzz with light and faint shouts, but the lookout posts over our heads were still and silent.
The wood-elves were stealthy beings, though I didn’t get the impression that they were watching us.
Either that or they were just really good at their jobs.
There was no tactical approach to this situation that allowed us to move quickly. We were exposed, and it was a reality that I had to deal with, but the closer we got to the perimeter the more it was getting to me.
‘This isn’t right,’ I said back to my wives, looking up into the moonlit trees and occasionally spotting the flat panels of a lookout post. ‘Where the hell are they all?’
‘Perhaps they have moved their defenses inland,’ Lara said, scanning the treetops. ‘They are safer clumped together and forming a solid perimeter line than being scattered about. They will likely be expecting an army.’
‘Dispersing attackers in the trees would thin an army’s numbers at least a little, though,’ I said. ‘This doesn’t make sense.’
The trees began to thin, and the fence came into view.
In contrast to the flat panels and lookout towers that both I had installed at our own lands, the wood-elf perimeter looked like it was holding hell inside.
Sharpened logs and sharpened spikes were ingrained into the base of the fence, pointing outwards to face off against any prospective attacker that might approach. It would have been akin to the land of the sun-elves, but the fence itself was a jagged, uneven mess that reflected the feral nature of the wood-elves.
I had no doubt it was deliberate. It may have been uneven, but it was tall and inverted slightly towards the forest, making it all the more difficult to cross.
Still, there were no wood-elves on patrol to be seen – none atop the fence, and none guarding the exterior.
The fires within the land continued to burn, lighting up the sky, and from somewhere deep within there were screams rising.
I prayed to whichever god was listening that they belonged to the wood-elves, and not Santana or Mariana.
Either way it was likely part of some sadistic ritual, and one that unquestionably involved our kidnapped women.
‘My power stone can blast through the fence,’ I said, ‘but it would make too much noise for a stealth approach. It seems like all of the wood-elves are inside the fence for some reason… I just hope they aren’t doing anything to the girls.’
‘What is the plan?�
� Elera asked. ‘We are outnumbered two-hundred to one. If a single one of them is alerted to our presence, we will be slaughtered like hogs.’
‘That presents a problem,’ Lara said. ‘If the wood-elves are clustered together, Santana and Mariana are likely with them. They will be watched. The moment we attempt to get near them, they will converge on us.’
‘I’ve got an idea,’ I said, bringing up the inventory screen. ‘I might need some of these explosives that they gave us back at the sun-elf land to take out some of the wood-elves, but we can use the rest as a distraction.’
‘Why do I feel like this is going to go badly?’ Lara muttered.
‘Because we’re planning to set off improvised explosive devices invented by people who live in fields in a feudal society,’ I said, running a hand nervously through my hair. ‘Right now it doesn’t matter. It’s our only way to deal with this many enemies, and it’s our only shot at getting the girls out. Are you with me?’
‘Stupid question,’ Elera said. ‘So how do we do this?’
A few minutes later we emerged from the forest and rushed to the fence. We surmised the safest way over the top; while cutting through would make too much noise, we could form a bridge over the top of the peak using some of the looser logs.
These defenses were designed to hold back the approach of a battalion of attackers caught among each other while they were picked off easily by the wood-elves on guard, but with time to calculate our movements and make our way over the top, as well as no wood-elves in sight, we could do it without being harmed.
‘Help me with this one,’ I said to the girls, finally finding two that could be pulled loose.
With both pulled from the ground, we manoeuvred them one after the other against the peak of the fence to form a ramp.
The sharpened ends dug into the ground, giving our makeshift structure enough resistance to ensure it wouldn’t collapse.
I moved first, creeping quickly along the creaking wood and crouching at the top of the fence.
I looked out onto the tribal land of the wood-elves for the first time.