by A. J. Markam
By myself – even with Alaria and Stig helping – the wolves would have been a huge problem, maybe even causing us to wipe completely and sending me back to the village’s graveyard. But now I had 30 pirates with supernatural abilities on my side.
I moved quickly through the ranks of pirates, assigning teams of three to individual wolves. I also told them that as soon as they killed one, to join their crewmates’ assault on any surviving members of the pack.
Once everyone had their instructions, I ran back to the center with Alaria, Stig, and Dorp.
“Get ready,” I whispered to Dorp.
“This is so exciting, Master – it reminds me of that time when – ”
“And SHUT UP,” I hissed.
“O-kaaaay…”
The wolves had pulled within 50 feet, fangs bared and growling.
I didn’t wait for them to attack. “FIRE!”
A fusillade of fireballs, lightning, chunks of granite, sonic blasts, and force beams hurtled out across the icy plain.
As soon as the wolves got hit, they yelped in pain – and attacked.
I was already casting Doomsday as fast as I could while Alaria and Stig flung fireball after fireball. As soon as the wolves rushed forward, I yelled, “NOW!”
Dorp did his Professor X thing, and suddenly a large creature appeared in front of the pack. It looked like the wampa out of Empire Strikes Back – about 15 feet tall, with shaggy white hair, massive paws, and giant ram’s horns curling from the sides of its skull. When it roared, it sounded like a lion mixed with a foghorn.
The wolves immediately skidded to a halt and backed up, the hair on their necks bristling as they snarled.
Meanwhile, they were getting hit by a constant barrage of fireballs and electrical strikes. Mere seconds later, Doomsday started kicking in, and the first wolves fell to the ground. The demon pirates who had killed their targets switched to other wolves, and then those started falling like flies.
Sixty seconds after the first shot had been fired, it was over.
A string of ‘300 XPs’ floated up, 3600 points in all.
Awesome! Even though I’d probably only hit five or six wolves, I’d received experience points for all of them. I realized that even though I had no control over the pirates, I still accrued any experience points they received for killing an enemy. Freeing them might’ve been my smartest choice yet in leveling up, and I hadn’t even realized it at the time.
Getting to Level 13 was going to be a blast.
As I walked amongst the wolves’ bodies, snapping off their canine teeth to give to Mo back at the fishing village, I heard one of the demon pirates remark, “Well, that was easy.”
Krug scowled. “Don’t say things like that. You’re only inviting it to get worse.”
He was right. It got much worse, and very quickly.
Not only was it bitter cold, but it began to snow. First a light dusting of flakes, then swirling curtains of snow that dropped our visibility to less than 50 feet, making it impossible to see anything other than looming shapes in front of us.
And looming shapes were exactly what we got.
The first yeti crossed our path about a mile into our trek. It had evidently been lying in wait, buried in a snowbank, because it burst up out of nowhere and startled us with that foghorn roar.
After I finished the Hershey squirt in my pants (not really – but almost), I selected the yeti as a target.
50K hit points.
Shit.
Still, we’d just taken down wolves with a cumulative 36K in damage in less than a minute.
“Everybody focus on the one target!” I yelled. “FIRE!”
It was like fireworks exploding in the middle of a snowstorm. The torrent of white flakes lit up with fireballs, lightning, and the blue hue of my Soul Suck beam.
Shee let loose with a scream that slammed the yeti’s shoulder and sent it staggering backwards.
“Dorp – ”
“On it, boss!”
A row of tiny warriors appeared in front of us, decked out in rusted, battered plate armor and spiked helmets. What little I could see of their exposed skin was greenish-blue.
Ice goblins.
They were only about three feet tall, but they were fierce as hell, and rushed at the yeti with a guttural war cry.
The shaggy monster immediately began swiping its giant paws at them – but its claws passed right through them. The yeti seemed bewildered, but kept swatting away at the phantom ice goblins, ignoring me and the pirates.
Meanwhile, we were inflicting massive amounts of damage. Since we didn’t have to switch targets like the wolves, we wasted no time, and it was dead in less than a minute.
3000 XP.
This was going way better than I thought it would.
I picked up the loot from the creature – its giant horns snapped right off, getting me that much closer to Mo’s offer and Krug’s ten gold – and then we continued on our way.
“I was wrong about your little blue friend,” Krug said. “He’s actually quite useful.”
I was about to answer when Dorp jumped in.
“All I ever wanted to do,” my illusion demon said resentfully. “was tell you about the battle of Abaddon, and how we all owe my master our allegiance, and – ”
Krug grabbed his sword and looked over at Dorp threateningly.
Dorp shut up.
“The only question is, does his usefulness offset how annoying he is,” Krug grumbled.
“Not really,” Stig said.
Dorp hadn’t annoyed everyone, but others were unhappy for different reasons.
“Goddess, this is miserable,” Alaria said as she shivered in her coat.
“I don’t understand – I thought you could control your body temperature,” I said.
“It’s easy in heat. I thrive in heat. I just despise the cold.”
“Can’t you, like, just set yourself on fire or something and get warm that way?”
“For a while, maybe, but then I would end up torching the jacket,” she pointed out.
“Give me the jacket,” I said, motioning with my hand.
“But it’s so cute,” she pouted adorably.
“You’d rather be cold and look ‘cute’ than be warm?” I said in complete disbelief.
“You don’t understand. I never get to wear new outfits, and I like this one.”
I had to admit, human girls did exactly the same sort of thing all the time. I couldn’t count how many times I had driven by clubs at night in the wintertime, only to see women wearing tiny little black dresses as they shivered in the cold, waiting to get into clubs. I mean, it was Los Angeles, not New York – but still, they were standing half-naked in 50-degree weather.
Just one more mystery about womankind I couldn’t fathom.
“How are you doing, Stig?” I asked.
“C-c-c-cold, boss,” he whimpered.
He had on his own jacket, which made him look like a fur-lined Jawa trudging through snow instead of sand. I thought about what I could do to help him, and couldn’t come up with anything. It wasn’t like I was going to tuck him inside my own jacket.
Actually, I considered that for about half a second, until I thought of him getting over-excited and popping off a fireball while he was still inside my fur coat.
…naaah. Never mind.
But the snow had to be way harder on him than everybody else. The monkey-demon with the accordion had stayed on board, so Stig was by far the shortest member of the group, and he was usually half-buried in snow.
“Hey Krug,” I said, “would you mind carrying Stig on your shoulder?”
“Yes, I would,” the grey demon rumbled.
“Do it and I’ll knock 50 silver off of what you owe me for the provisions when we give the teeth and horns back to Mo.”
Krug considered for a second – then snatched Stig out of the snow by the hood of his jacket and deposited him on his mountain-like shoulder.
“Thanks, boss!” S
tig whooped gratefully.
“What about me?!” Dorp whined. “I’m cold, too!”
I sighed. “Krug, will you do the same for Dorp for another fifty silver?”
“A hundred and fifty,” Krug demanded. “So two gold total.”
“Stig was only 50 silver!”
“But he’s annoying,” Krug said, pointing to Dorp.
I groaned. “Fine. Two gold.”
Krug snatched Dorp up and deposited him on his other shoulder.
“Aw, man,” Stig grumbled as he gave his riding companion some serious side-eye.
“Thank you, master!” Dorp cried. “You’re the best master in the whole wide – ”
“I should remind you,” I interrupted him, “that you’re sitting on the shoulder of the guy who’s going to kill you if you keep talking.”
Dorp went silent.
“That was quite generous of you,” Alaria said.
“Do you want me to get Krug to carry you, too?”
“No, I’d rather not be that close to the Annoying Demon Brigade.”
I grinned. “I’d carry you, but I think I’d only last twenty feet.”
“What if I hike up my jacket, take off my thong, and ride with my thighs clamped around your face?” she smirked. “Or better yet, we undo your pants, I circle your waist with my legs, and we walk around with you inside me?”
Suddenly things got a bit tighter in the crotch of my pants.
“I might be able to last more than twenty feet,” I said.
“Speaking of sex – ”
I groaned. I knew what was coming, and it wasn’t going to be me. “Not now, Alaria.”
“Why not? What else are you going to do for the next Goddess-knows-how-many miles of snow-covered hell?”
It’s not like I could use cunnilingus or sex to distract her this time. Despite my previous bravado, I was pretty sure I’d only make it two feet before toppling over. And I wasn’t kinky enough that I wanted the pirate crew to watch.
So instead I bit the bullet and hustled her ahead of the others so we could talk in private.
“Look, I just want it to be the two of us, that’s all,” I whispered.
“But why?”
“Because I love you, that’s why!”
“You can love me and still be with other women.”
“You don’t understand,” I grumbled, “because you’re a succubus.”
“Oh, I understand completely. You don’t want me to sleep with other men because you’re jealous and insecure and afraid of losing me.”
“I am not!” I raged.
“You could lose me just as easily to a woman,” Alaria pointed out.
“I don’t want you to sleep with other women, either!”
“But that doesn’t threaten you nearly as much, does it?”
I didn’t say anything.
“What are you worried is going to happen if I sleep with other men?” Alaria asked.
Out of nowhere, Shee appeared behind Alaria and mouthed, Anal.
I stared at the short, lemon-colored demon in horror.
“Just so you know, we can hear everything you two are saying,” Shee sneered, then dropped behind us once more.
“Jesus,” I said, glancing over my shoulder in mortification.
“The Mage who walks on water?” Alaria frowned. “What does he have to do with any of this?”
“Nothing. I just don’t want a bunch of strangers all up in our business.”
“They don’t care,” Alaria said dismissively. “Unless they’re succubi or incubi – which none of them are – they don’t even have genitals.”
“They don’t?” I asked in shock.
“No, they don’t. Take Stig, for example – he doesn’t have anything down there.”
“I thought he was the exception.”
“No, he’s the rule. Now, back to what I was saying – ”
“I’m done talking about this,” I growled.
“Why?”
“Because!”
“Because why?”
I snapped. “Because I don’t want to be the guy you just love, I want to be the guy who – ”
“Makes me come over and over again? Does things for me that no other man ever has, like go down on me? Congratulations, you win – you do all those things for me on a regular basis. Can you stop worrying about it now?”
“Yeah, but – ”
“The problem is, you want a monopoly on this,” she said pointing down to her parka-covered thighs. “Not because you care for me so much, but because you’re scared of losing me. That’s what this is really about.”
“So what if it is?” I snarled.
She sighed. “If I never have to choose between you and my freedom, then I can have some fun here and there, then come back to what’s most important to me: you. You can do the same. You can sleep with all the women you want and I’m not going to get jealous.”
“I don’t want anyone else!”
“Maybe not now, but what about the future? What happens when you meet a hot woman who’s totally infatuated with you? Are you going to deny yourself that pleasure just because you’re afraid of losing me? Do you really want to lock both of us up in the same prison?”
“I just want us to be happy together!”
“So do I – but I’m a succubus. I’ve never had any sort of feelings about anyone before, other than ‘Oh, that was fun.’ I did whatever and whoever I wanted – until I got enslaved, that is. Then I had to be at others’ beck and call, no matter how repulsive and vile they were. I did that for a long, long time. Now that I’m out, I don’t ever want to go back to that again, with or without a collar around my neck. I don’t want to be told to stop unless I want to stop – and right now, I don’t.”
“So you’re going to do whatever you want, and to hell with my feelings?” I asked angrily.
“So you want me to do whatever you want, and to hell with my feelings?” she asked, just as angrily.
I sighed in resignation. I was going to have to talk about his whether I wanted to or not.
“Look – you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met, and I’m – I’m not.”
She gave a half smile. “You’re definitely not a woman, no.”
I scowled. “You know what I mean. You could have just about any good-looking, rich, famous guy you wanted. Why the hell would you ever choose me over them?”
“So what you’re really asking is, why the hell do I even want to be with you at all.”
OW.
I was silent for a long moment, then mumbled, “Yeah, something like that.”
“Because my heart is the most important thing, and my mind is the next. You should worry more about those two than what’s between my legs.”
“Alright, fine,” I grumbled. “Can we just stop talking about – ”
She stopped me and cradled my face in her hands tenderly. “Ian, I’m a succubus – a sex demoness. I’ve been with many, many men – ”
I winced. “Ugh – ”
“– and you are the only one I ever fell in love with.”
My eyes and her eyes bugged out at the same time as we both realized what she’d just said.
Her face grew panicked. “The only one I ever liked a lot!”
“So you do love me!” I crowed.
“I care for you deeply – CARE for you – ”
“Noooo, you just said you fell in LOVE with me!”
“I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT THIS!” she shrieked, and went running off through the snow.
Huh. That ended the conversation pretty damn quick.
Next time she brought up having an open relationship, I was going to immediately use the L word again.
And not ‘lesbians.’
11
We fought our way through several more wolf packs and a dozen more yetis without incident. The nearest thing we came to a challenge was when three yetis attacked at the same time. We kept two at a standstill, though one reached the group and
started sending pirates flying through the air. In the end we killed all three without losing a single demon, plus I reached Level 13. I didn’t pick up any new abilities, but my stats – Intellect, Stamina, Mana – all increased.
Having a raid party of 30-strong was definitely the way to do these adventures. Easy peasy.
And then we got to the ice goblins.
Seven or so miles from the village, a 200-foot-tall cliff of ice rose up from the plain. Like a smaller version of ‘the Wall’ in Game of Thrones, it stretched to the right and left as far as the eye could see.
At the end of the path was a dark cave mouth that sloped down into the belly of the glacier. I sent my All-Seeing Eye into the darkness to try to figure out what was down there. One benefit of the Eye was that it could see in pitch black – it’s just that the images looked ghostly green, like what you would see with a night vision scope.
There was nothing in the cave but large skeletons embedded in the ice. Probably yeti by the looks of their horns and skulls.
When the Eye gave out after 60 seconds, I had seen nothing but an endless cavern strewn with bones.
“Well, the good news is that I didn’t see any goblins,” I said.
“The better news is,” Alaria said as she stepped into the mouth of the cave, “the wind’s not blowing in here.”
It was true. The wind moaned as it blew past the mouth of the cave, but once the Eye had gotten deeper inside, there had been no sound whatsoever.
“Then I’m all for it,” Krug said, and motioned his crew to enter the cave. Stig and Dorp got down from his shoulders, and Stig darted ahead of us like an excited chimpanzee.
“Don’t get too far ahead,” I warned him. “I only saw 500 feet, so I don’t know what’s coming after that.”
Stig paused, then waited for the rest of us to catch up.
“This could be a great battle,” Dorp started to rhapsodize. “This could be like Abaddon all over again – ”
“Dorp?”
“Yes, boss?”
“See these bones everywhere?” I said as I pointed to the yeti spines and skulls jutting up from the ice.
“Yes, boss.”
“If you don’t stop talking, Krug’s going to turn you into one of those.”