I took a peek at the sea below. The three girls were still there at the surface and they were beckoning me to go to them. My eyes swelled with tears. I was seeing stuff.
“Danor,” I said to the big man, not taking my eyes from the girls, “do you see them?” I pointed at the girls with a shivering finger.
“Whom?” Danor said, puzzled. I felt weak, the fever was building and my wounds were on fire.
I let out a laugh. I sounded hysterical.
“You know,” I said, “I am seeing girls with horns on their heads all around me. I am losing my head.”
All three of my friends gasped.
“It must be because of the bite,” Lana said, concerned.
“We must hurry,” the dragon said. He beat his wings hard. I sat in between Danor and Lana so that I would not fall off, for at that moment I felt like I was losing all control over my body. And off we went, I closed my eyes.
When I opened them again, I was lying in the middle of a forest.
Beside me there was a man with a snow-white flowing beard. He was bare chested, and he just wore a cloth below his waist. He had a small pitcher in his hand that seemed to contain a liquid.
“Drink this,” he said to me, bringing the pitcher to my lips. Though he was an old man, his voice was surprisingly youthful.
“Where are my friends?” I asked.
“Don’t question,” the man said, “drink this fast before they come. You must fight.”
I drank the liquid that was in the pitcher. It was very much saline.
“Good,” the man said. “The drink will help you to beat their charm, but only you can actually beat them. Good luck.”
The man smiled. And he disappeared.
Had he been one of my hallucinations?
I looked about the place. At least the place felt real. I hoped it was real. I stood up. I was quite astonished that I could do so without experiencing any of my previous pains. I touched my cheek and I couldn’t feel the wound. My heart leapt in joy. And then I remembered the words of the man.
Something or somebody was coming and I would need to fight them.
As I moved about the forest, I realised that I was in a small island; the sea which surrounded it was very calm. I ran to the shore and walked over the sand, even as the tide splashed at my feet. Where were Lana, Danor and the dragon? Had they left me here alone?
I decided to move around the island. I went along the shore. A light breeze was blowing and it kissed my neck. I had never felt so good in a long while. The island was more or less tear shaped and as I made it to the other side of the island, I saw that there was somebody sprawled at the shore. They seemed to be calling for help.
I ran up to the person, and as I neared them, I saw that it was a girl. One with the tail of a fish. She also had horns on her head.
Horns.
She looked up at me. Though there was a very radiant beauty about her, she seemed to be in distress.
“Please help me,” the girl said.
But I was not to fall for her charms. Whatever the man had fed me earlier was helping me to keep a clear head.
I bent down near her.
“Why do you want my help for?” I asked her.
“To stand up, please,” the girl said, not letting go of her pained expression. I glanced at the calm sea and then at her tail.
“You seem more like you are made for the sea,” I said to her, matter-of-factly. “Why fight for the land?”
The girl seemed taken aback.
“If you cannot help me, then leave me here to die,” she said and made a sad face. She was really trying, wasn’t she?
I sighed.
“I know who you are and what your main motives are,” I said. “You just want to bite me, don’t you? And spread the seed of evil in me?”
The girl stared at me. Her face was slowly changing from sad to angry.
“You see, I have already been bitten once,” I said, “If you bite me again it would be quite useless really. The last succubus bit me quite a few times but it was the first bite that really mattered.”
The girl’s face was slowly losing all beauty.
“See? What’s the point of this fake charm? Are you even real?”
Just then two more mermaids with horns on their heads washed up at the shore a few metres away. I realised the mermaids couldn’t really get human legs and harm me in any way as I was on land. The first girl had lost all her beauty and had acquired the face of a demon, yet she remained on the sand, lying in a helpless manner.
These two mermaids also pleaded me to help them.
I laughed at their faces. I pointed at the first mermaid.
“Come on, show me your true faces like her,” I said to them, “why hide behind the pretty faces? They won’t have much effect on me.”
They didn’t disappoint. In a short while the other two mermaids also took demonic forms.
I bent down near one and grabbed her horns. She let out a shrill cry. I tried to enter her mind. The moment I did so, she vanished. I laughed. The second one vanished as well the moment I grabbed her horns and tried to enter her mind. Then I approached the first one who had showed up at the shore. I was about to grab her horns when I realised that the girl wasn’t there and instead of her there was the man with the flowing white beard.
“You have done well,” the man said with a smile, “now help me get up.”
I almost fell to the trick. But my eyes fell on the horns and the tail of the man. I smiled.
“Nice try,” I grabbed his horns and he disappeared.
The moment the man had disappeared that the sea went from very calm to very violent in a heartbeat. A giant wave, hundreds of metres high came. I at once broke into a run away from the shore. But there was no point in running for in a moment the wave was upon me, having swallowed the entire island.
Blackness.
I opened my eyes. I was lying on the ground in a jungle. Beside me was the same old man from earlier. He patted my shoulder.
“You did well,” he said. I observed his head suspiciously. But he had no horns.
“This is real, right?” I asked the man.
“As real as anything,” the man replied.
“Where are my friends?” I asked.
“At the shore.”
“Will I be turning into a demon?” I asked the man.
The man laughed.
“Young man, you ask too many questions.”
“I am not young,” I said. “I have lived ninety years in the real world and sixty years in this one. I was an old man until a few days ago when a fairy turned me young again.”
“All worlds are real, young man,” the man said, “and I have live fifteen hundred years. Do not boast of your puny age to me. And you are a young man now, doesn’t matter what you were before.”
The man, who had been kneeling, stood up and he left the spot towards the shore.
I stood up. A message appeared in my vision, accompanied by a feeling of well-being.
Congratulations!
You level up!
You receive a new spell: Air Blast
To use the spell, point your palms towards a target and say ‘Blast’. The target will be hit by a powerful blast of air. Note that the spell would consume mana every time you use it.
I couldn’t be happier. It was the very first spell I had received in a long while. I hoped I could use the spell to good use soon. I wanted to try it out at that very moment itself, but I didn’t want to spend precious mana without a good reason.
I made my way towards the shore as well. The dragon, Lana and Danor were waiting there for me.
Lana and Danor came running to me and both of them hugged me deeply.
“Okay, okay,” I said, finding it difficult to breathe since they were hugging me too tightly.
Lana suddenly kissed me on the cheek.
“You survived, captain!” she said.
Danor patted my back.
“I knew he would survive,”
he said proudly.
There were several other people at the shore. Besides the man whom I had met earlier, there were others, all of whom seemed to be brothers of the man. Like him they too had white flowing beards. And they were bare-chested and only wore a cloth below their waists.
“Who are these people?” I asked Lana.
“Meremen,” she replied. “The dragon dived down under the sea and he requested them to come up to heal you even though today was not the typical day for them to come to the surface. They come to this island on particular days to gather fruits and other commodities that cannot be found under the sea.”
“But they have legs,” I said.
“Well, they can get a tail covered with scales the moment they enter the water,” Lana replied, “I myself saw them transform as they came out of the water. It was a sight to behold.”
I recalled the mermaids in my dream or whatever it had been. The mermaids had not been able to transform their tails into legs. Was it because they were not true mermaids? Or had it been because they had been purely the creation of my own mind? Maybe, since I had not known that merepeople could get legs when they came to land, the mermaids had also not been able to transform their tails into human legs.
“I hope you don’t see any girls with horns, sir?” Danor asked me.
I looked around the place just to be sure.
“Nope. None at all.”
I went to the man who had healed me and held his hand.
“I did not thank you earlier,” I said to him.
The man patted my shoulder.
“You don’t need to,” he said. “Your friend the dragon has told us of the noble quest that you pursue. Humans and merepeople have always been friends, although we mostly prefer to live in the seas where few human ever come. But I would like that the humans do not suffer. Go free everyone from the curse of the succubi queen!”
The merepeople went back to the sea. Once they were in the water, their legs merged together and scales grew over them until they had been completely transformed into tails much as that of a fish. The merepeople waved at us and dived into the sea.
I walked over to the dragon.
“You are lucky,” the dragon said me, “that they agreed to help. Only a medicinal concoction of plants that grow at the bed of the sea could have ever saved you.”
“So where do we go from here?” I asked the dragon.
“The maelstrom that leads to the centre of the earth,” the dragon answered. “It’s a good distance from here to the south. But if the weather remains as nice as it is, then we should reach it in a day. I have never seen the maelstrom of course, only ever heard of it. But I am positive that it exists. There are favourable factors that guide us in each and every quest. And in this quest the maelstrom, I believe, is one such favourable factor, very much like the merepeople without whom you would have turned into a demon by now.”
***
Lanak Tanor
Class: Succubi Tamer
Race: Human
Sex: Male
Level: 12
Strength: 668
Health: 990/1100
Mana: 512
Intelligence: 140
Mental carrying capacity: 595/650
Youth:285
Chapter 28: The Succubi Queen
Tomorrow shall me my day, I thought, even as I looked down at the thousands of succubi who were busy arranging themselves into the strict pattern. Even if a single succubus stood just an inch or two away from her correct position, it would be enough to ruin everything. But that shall not happen. I had trained the succubi extremely well.
The volcano had been smoking for the past few days and I knew that an explosion in the very near future was inevitable. I couldn’t wait for that to happen. Had I not found the dragon diamond, I could have never been able to gather the courage to go forward with the ritual.
But I now feared nothing. With the dragon diamond in hand, I would be able to speed up the ritual by a great degree. It also would allow me extra stability when I spread my soul over the three vessels and the body of Ranik, the man who had offered himself by his own will to me.
I grew happy at the very thought that I would take a rebirth in a day. I was excited unlike never before. I was going to finally have a new heart that would be as young as my outer body.
Just then one of the succubi flew up to me. She seemed to be greatly concerned, a deep frown set over her forehead.
“What is the matter?” I asked.
“It’s the dragon diamond,” she said and she hesitated to say anything more.
“What about it?” I demanded. I feared the succubus brought some bad news about it. I had left the dragon diamond in the tent since the morning, leaving Ranik in charge of it. I could have absorbed the stone into my mind, but I feared that the powers of the stone might degrade if I did so. Some magical objects when absorbed by a player into their mind lost a certain percentage of their powers. And even though the percentage was a small one, it might be succeed in degrading the dragon diamond enough that it would fail in sufficiently speeding up the ritual for me. Ranik was someone whom I trusted. I had given him enough that I had bought his trust. “Tell me what happened to the dragon diamond?” I demanded again, since the succubus was not replying.
“I heard a strange sound in your tent,” the succubus said, not meeting my eyes, “although you had ordered everyone to never venture inside your tent without your permission, my curiosity took over me and I entered your tent because I felt there was something about the sound that was not right. When I entered your tent, I saw neither the human nor the dragon diamond.”
At that moment I almost felt like my heart had stopped beating. I descended down towards my tent from the clouds. In half a minute I had reached it. When I entered the tent, I found to my horror that the succubus had spoken true.
There was neither my valued stone, nor Ranik, the human who had so willingly offered himself to me. It was as if someone had hit me on the face and for a moment I felt dizzy and weak.
I realised I had made a terrible mistake in putting my trust on the human. I wanted to sob, but I held back my tears. Even in this dire situation, I didn’t want to show myself as weak to the other succubi. Just then, my eyes caught a gleam of a green power on the ground. I squatted and touched the powder with my hand. At once I knew that the powder had black magic in it. Black magic was my friend… actually it was my only true master.
I set to work at once. I knew that if the human had used this magical powder to somehow teleport himself away from the tent, I could at least know of the place where he had gone. The last time I had asked him how he had been successful in first coming to my tent, he had told me he used a magical powder, one that was ridden with a curse. Every time he use the powder he aged. This effect increased with the increase in the distance over which he teleported himself. I had thought Ranik would never have the guts to use the powder again because of its ill side effects, yet he had. He had turned up to have more guts than I believed him to possess.
With my black magic I inquired the powder where the person that had used the powder had gone. Initially the powder tried to resist answering my questions, but when I told it of my own relations with black magic, it gladly disclosed where Ranik had gone.
A short fifty kilometres from Mount Succubus.
He had been crafty. He hadn’t teleported himself over a large distance and had taken the risk of being sighted by the succubi or by the demons for they were more or less well spread over a radius of a hundred kilometres. Ranik had taken the risk and made a mistake. He shouldn’t have betrayed me.
I set off at once. At the same time, I alerted all the succubi who were around the fifty kilometre spot to keep a lookout for a human.
It took me an hour, but I reached the area where Ranik had teleported himself. There were a lot of trees about the place and I could see why Ranik had picked up this spot.
I called all the demons and the succubi who were near the plac
e and told them to extensively search the woods. The human had to be somewhere, I could almost feel him. I flew over the woods, my eyes scanning the trees as well as possible spots beneath the trees where Ranik could be hiding. I doubted he had made a lot of progress.
Suddenly, as I was passing over some trees, I felt like I had seen something move over the branches of one tree. I went back to it. I peered and saw there was what seemed to be a strange ape with grey skin.
In a moment I realised it was a human wearing a grey robe. Ranik wore a grey robe. I descended down to the tree.
“Do you think you could have actually fled and thought I won’t come for you?” I said from just a few metres above the man. Ranik peered up from between the branches. My eyes caught his. Maybe it was the sudden fright, but his grasp on the branches slipped and down the man fell and hit the ground hard, letting out a cry in the process. I informed the other succubi that I had found Ranik and that they could return to whatever chores they were previously doing. I would deal with Ranik myself.
I flew down to the ground. Ranik was in the process of getting up. After using the powder, he seemed to have aged just a little more than the last time I had seen him. Perhaps he had added six months or a year to his age. But it was a fact that he was past the age that humans considered their prime.
Ranik grunted and finally he was up on his feet. He stared at me, a smirk playing at the side of his lips.
“Why did you have to do this?” I asked Ranik. “Have I not given enough to you? You wanted the ability to see stats, I have given it to you. In the future when I am more powerful, I could have given you youth as well, for you my friend look like you are in much need of it after you prematurely lost it.”
Ranik grimaced.
“I do not need to answer you,” he said. There was a certain amount of defiance in his tone. I didn’t understand this, for he wasn’t in any position to defy me in any way. I looked at him with a smile. I should have tried to see past his promises when he first had come to me.
Chains of a Succubus Page 24