“Hold up,” I said, holding up a hand to make sure my point was getting through. “You’re telling me to work your magic you have to have sex with people?”
“Something like that,” she muttered. “At least for the bonding.”
“Whoa,” I said. “I guess we’re visiting a world that’s straight out of some fifties pulp porn masquerading as science fiction!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “All I know is you don’t have much time. If you don’t…”
I hiccuped again, and this time something definitely happened. Something that was so intense it got the attention of everyone around us as the magical screen Leila put up shimmered and shattered. The whole world seemed to shift and shake all around us. I blinked a couple of times as I stared.
“Was that me?”
Leila pulled back from me. Which was definitely not an improvement over what we’d been doing. I wanted her to be right against me again, damn it.
I tried to reach out. To pull her towards me, but she avoided my grip easily enough. It didn’t help that I couldn’t quite get my fingers to work the way I wanted them too. Maybe that strange glowing filling them to the point that I thought I could see the outline of my bones through the skin had something to do with it, though that dark glow pulsed in counterpoint to the flickering white glow in the crystal.
Weird. Talk about one hell of a trip!
I hiccuped again and the world shifted around me. I stared at the table rattling and watched as the mug that’d held my poison beer went rattling right off the edge.
“What the hell is that?” I wondered.
“You need to focus,” Leila said. “The connection is about to be broken. When you get to the other side you need to remember that…”
Whatever she was saying slipped across my mind and disappeared as the whole world swirled around me. I tried to catch little sparks of light that seemed important, but it was like I was trying to catch them with my mind and my mind didn’t know what it was doing.
“This was fun,” I said. “I don’t know what’s happening here, but this was fun.”
“You need to focus!” she said.
Something hit my face and the world shook. All through the tavern I could see that people were upset about something. Things were getting tossed this way and that. The orc at the bar didn’t look nearly as pleased with himself now for some reason.
It might be that he was trying to avoid having all the bottles of alcohol behind him hit him something vital. Some of those bottles looked like they were made out of thick glass that could do some serious damage if they shattered. Hell, they were probably heavy enough to do some damage even if they didn’t shatter into shrapnel.
“You need to…”
Whatever Leila said disappeared as the world faded. It was like my mind was trapped between two places at once. There was the tavern with all the chaos on the one side, and there was a massive dark and forbidding forest on the other side.
That forest didn’t look particularly inviting. In fact it looked like something straight out of someone’s nightmares. The kind of thing I definitely wouldn’t want to go near under normal circumstances.
Only these weren’t normal circumstances. I tipped towards that forest and felt myself gathering speed. At least it seemed like I was gathering speed. It was difficult to tell for sure, but the place was getting closer and closer.
I thought I could almost hear Leila screaming something, but then even that turned to a buzzing noise as this new world opened up before me.
I was given one incredible view of the strange new world. One incredible look from on high that told me this was like nothing I’d ever seen before. Massive mountains scraped the sky in the distance, and spread out before those mountains was that massive dark and forbidding forest that seemed to spread out before me.
Though there was something odd about the forest I was hurtling towards. Lights spread out through the trees. As I moved closer I realized I wasn’t looking at a forest. I mean I was looking at a forest, but I was also looking at a city within the forest.
Ewoks eat your heart out, because the place was massive. And there was something dark around the edges. A roiling mass of anger and malice and hatred beating at the walls of the city while desperate elves used swords, spears, and bolts of pure light to drive them away.
I saw it clearly, as though I was looking down at the tactical view in Kingdom Builder, complete with countless red circles surrounding the orcs and blue around the elves, and then I was too close to see it all.
I figured this was going to hurt, but before I could hit the branches of the massive trees that made up that city a darkness reached out from that teeming mass of orcs and surrounded me.
Well shitballs. That couldn’t be good.
6
Dungeon Core
Darkness. All around me.
I wondered if there was something fucked up going on. Like maybe I was in a hospital connected to a breathing machine or something after the fight went wrong with those assholes, and this was my mind’s way of filling in the blanks.
If that was the case then all I could do was hope this fantasy scenario would be enough to get the brain scans pumping just enough that they decided to keep me alive.
Even though there was a part of me that was whispering there wasn’t much chance any of this was the result of some fantasy my body was making up. No, this was all too elaborate and real for it to be a hallucination, no matter how nice it might’ve been if my biggest problem was that I’d had the shit kicked out of me by a couple of frat douches in a back alley who put me in the hospital.
“Um, so does somebody want to tell me what the fuck is going on here?” I asked, staring into the darkness.
A glowing point appeared and drew closer and closer, finally resolving into a beautiful woman standing before me.
Her entire body was suffused with light, and she looked like the kind of woman I wouldn’t mind getting to know. She had bright red hair that shone in the dark glow around her, a beautiful face, and a body in tight leather armor that looked more cyberpunk than high fantasy that showed off amazing curves I’d like to meet up close and personal.
As I looked her up and down she smiled a sad smile.
“So you’re the replacement,” she said.
“Excuse me?” I asked.
I didn’t like the sound of that. Leila said something about me being the new champion for her and her people. I figured if I was going to be the champion, my friends, then that meant I was going to be the only champion damn it.
Only here was this girl floating before me with something glowing over her chest in a very Tony Stark sort of way, only I was pretty sure Robert Downey Jr. never had a set of tits like that.
Though most of the Iron Man and Avengers movies would’ve been a hell of a lot more interesting if that was the case.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“I’m Rachel,” she said, holding out a hand. “Nice to meet you!”
I took that hand, feeling electricity at her touch.
“Um, so do you want to tell me what the fuck you’re doing here?” I asked.
“I’m here because I failed,” she said with a shrug that was surprisingly fatalistic for all that she was admitting she’d fucked up.
“You failed?” I asked.
She took a deep breath. Let it out.
“They brought me to this world to be their savior, their champion, and I did a terrible job,” she said.
Her eyes were welling up in the darkness. I reached out to comfort her more on instinct than anything, and I was surprised to realize that as I approached her my body started to appear. Like there was a sphere of reality around her, and within that sphere my body took on a physical form.
It was a head trip, but I’d had plenty of books, movies, and video games that helped me to be ready for something like this.
She glanced down at that and arched an eyebrow. “You’re taking this aw
fully well.”
“What can I say?” I said. “There’s a lot of cool stories that prepared me for something like this.”
Rachel let out another long sigh. I guess if I was meeting my replacement after I’d failed in whatever the hell chosen one test I was supposed to pass then I might be in a pissy mood too.
“Look,” I said, keeping my hand on her shoulder. “I know things might’ve gone to shit, but maybe you could still do something?”
She looked at my hand and smiled. Then she really surprised me by leaning her cheek over and pressing it against my hand.
I mean it’s not like I was a slouch with the ladies, but it’s also not like I’d had much luck lately. I’d been too deep in a funk over everything that was going on with Physics and my grades and my scholarship and all that stuff.
Having two insanely attractive women getting up close and personal with me in such rapid succession was definitely doing something to remind me of what I’d been missing, though. I felt a stirring between my legs, and when I looked down I realized that part of my anatomy actually was far enough out of her sphere that it didn’t exist.
I quickly pressed the disembodied part of me forward to the point that my favorite bit of anatomy was solid and real.
She glanced down and the side of her mouth quirked up. “It certainly looks like someone is excited to see me.”
I cocked my head to the side. Not exactly the response I was expecting from her at seeing that. I mean sure she’d been getting up close and personal with my hand, but it was a far cry from someone putting her cheek against my hand in a moment of comfort to someone getting all excited to see that I was excited to see her.
“You’re taking this a hell of a lot better than I would’ve thought, all things considered,” I said.
She took in a deep breath, then let it out in a long sigh.
“Yeah, well I’m not exactly happy about how things turned out,” she said, a wistful smile coming to her face. “But I get to go back to my world and my life with the choice I made, and that’s a lot more than most of the Cores who lose ever get.”
There was something ominous about that. Something that brought to mind a bunch of humans being dragged to a world to act as the chosen one and then getting nothing for their trouble but their bones rotting away in the depths of some dungeon on a world far from the one they’d been born in.
“The choice you made?” I asked.
She surprised me again by leaning in to kiss me. It was a short kiss, not at all what I’d expected, but another one of those jolts of electricity passed between us that couldn’t be explained by a simple kiss, no matter how good it was.
“You’ll learn more about that world when you get there,” she said, then frowned. “There’s something odd about you, though. When I kissed you I almost felt…”
She put her hand to her lips and shook her head. Frowned. “Never mind. It’s not important. The important thing is you’re going to your new world, and I finally get to go back to mine. It’s all I’ve wanted since this whole thing started.”
“Where are you from anyway?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I was at a summer camp up in the Catskills when I was approached by this beautiful man. My mom would kill me for getting with him, but whatever. Part of the fun of being a camp counselor away from home is having the kind of fun your parents wouldn’t approve of.”
“And it turns out that sexy blonde guy was actually a creature from another world who wanted to drag you along to save that world?” I asked.
“Something like that,” she said, her face clouding over. “I’d rather not think about it, to be honest. I just want to get back to my summer camp and my life.”
“Right,” I said. “And when do you come from?”
“Why would you ask that?” she asked.
I thought about telling her that summer camps weren’t really a thing anymore. I was also pretty sure that summering in the Catskills wasn’t something people had done since air conditioning became cheap and ubiquitous.
“No reason,” I said.
She smiled a sexy little smile that sent a shiver running through me. The girl was beautiful.
“You know my mother probably wouldn’t approve of you either,” she said. “The way you dress is like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
I decided to keep my mouth shut. I wasn’t sure how this worked. Would the magic of this place send her back to her time? Or did this thing operate on San Dimas Standard Time where time kept marching on, and she was going to find herself in an empty field that’d been a summer camp once upon a time but had grown over in the decades since it was abandoned?
I didn’t know, and I figured I probably shouldn’t panic her with thoughts of what might be waiting for her when she finally got back to her world. To our world.
Not to mention if it turns out she did get sent back to her own time it’s not like I wanted to tell her anything that would give her a hint about what might happen in the future. I didn’t want to fuck with the timeline. Though the fact that she hadn’t fucked with it would seem to indicate there was a good chance she was going back to my time and not to hers, but what the fuck ever.
“So are you ready?” she asked.
I realized that she was standing a hell of a lot closer to me than she’d been a moment ago. I was definitely well inside whatever sphere thing surrounded her, and her body was so warm and so inviting.
“It’s been so long since I’ve been with someone from our world,” she said. “Not since…”
Her breath caught in a hitch again, and I got the feeling there was a lot here she wasn’t telling me. I also got the feeling there was a lot here she wasn’t going to be telling me.
“Well there’s only one way to do this properly,” she said. “So we might as well get it over with, right? I’m not sure where your high priestess is, but this is all a little out of the ordinary anyway so…”
I frowned. I had a pretty good idea of what she was talking about, but it’s not like I wanted her doing me any favors. So I pulled back, which earned me a frown.
“Is there a problem?” she asked.
“Don’t do me any favors,” I growled.
Though even as I was playing hard to get I couldn’t help but give her another once over.
“It’s not like that at all,” she said, taking a step towards me and moving a hand down my chest. It didn’t stop until it was between my legs and she was cupping my cock in her hand.
She looked down and licked her lips, then looked back up at me. Her eyes were lidded, and her breathing was picking up. Oh yeah, she was just as excited to see me as I was to see her.
Then the thought of her coming from a camp hit me and another question came to mind.
“Um, so you were definitely a counselor? In college?”
If it turned out she was a camper then we were going to have some serious trouble here. I mean sure we were sort of in a weird liminal space between worlds where I didn’t think the cops were going to try and track me down, but I also didn’t want to have anything to do with this girl if it turns out she was a camper.
“Counselor for sure,” she said. “A sophomore in college, and I can’t wait to get back.”
“Just make sure to keep an eye on little boys who can’t swim in the lake,” I muttered. “Might end badly for the counselors if you don’t.”
“What?” she asked, clearly confused.
“Ahead of your time,” I said, and I pressed against her and pressed my lips into her.
Hey, what can I say? I was still worked up thanks to everything I’d been doing with Leila in that strange tavern, and I was more than willing to indulge those frustrations with this beauty.
So I pressed my lips into hers and moved my hands down to cup her ass. Oh fuck yes. This leather she wore was nice and supple and I got a good feel.
I gave her ass a squeeze and she let out a gasp as she started grinding against me. Oh yeah. This girl was ready to go, and I was ready to giv
e it to her.
I kissed her hungrily. Her taste was intoxicating. Not quite as weird as the mixture of tastes I got from Leila, but it was still a nice feeling. And that ass. Nice and firm and begging for me to give it a little slap, so that’s just what I did.
“Fuck yeah,” I hissed.
I had to taste more of her. Sure we were floating in this weird void, but I got the feeling we could have some fun being in this weird in between space where there wasn’t an up or a down.
I picked her up and held her in the air. Though I might as well be lifting a feather. Her eyes went wide and she scrambled like she was trying to right herself or keep from falling, but then she seemed to realize the same thing I had moments ago and she laughed as I held her up like she weighed nothing.
I pulled her pants down quickly, far faster than I would’ve imagined it’d take to get her out of leather pants, and I got my second surprise of the evening.
“No underwear? What is it with you ladies tonight?”
“With you ladies tonight?” she asked, her eyebrows shooting up. “Where did you… Oh. Right. The Conduit.”
“Whatever you call her,” I said. “She wasn’t wearing anything down here either, and she had a pretty good time because of her clothing choices if I do say so myself.”
I looked between her legs. She was slick and wet. I’d worried she was only doing this because it had to be done to seal some magical whatever the fuck it was, but one look between her legs was enough to tell me she wanted this as much as I did.
Maybe more than I did. She was the one who said it’d been awhile since she’d been with someone from her world. Which seemed to promise plenty of fun with the locals when I got through to the other side, but that could wait.
“What are you… oh fuck!”
She seemed surprised as I ran my tongue along her slit. I watched her for any signs that I was doing something wrong, but from the way she clenched her eyes shut even as she squeezed her legs around my head, it would seem I was doing something oh so very right!
“Oh God,” she shouted. “What the fuck are you doing? Guys never do this!”
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