At some point, perhaps a week later, or maybe it was only hours, I gave in. I felt the red shame of my defeat in my face as Hikari played her song again, and I collapsed to the ground, my muscles unable to support my body after being still for so long. Another note from her flute and she pulled me up with invisible strings like a puppet, to stand before her. Even after all the time spent looking upon her while frozen, to behold her beauty inches away was an entirely different experience. For the many years of my journey, I had only my imagination of what Lyra looked like, made real by my imitation sketches of the drawing I had found. But this woman, if she could be called that, threatened to wipe all of that from my mind.
She did not immediately bring my lust to the forefront, but instead cultivated it like a vigneron tending crops of precious grapes. This began in earnest as soon as she freed me. She led me along to the back of the disgusting cavern, Hauteclere still imprisoned where she had thrown it, and as I wiped the muck from my eyes when we passed through the threshold, I gasped at the startling new wonder that lay just beyond.
Somehow we were standing on a gorgeous tropical island. I turned my head to see the mouth of a small cave, no trace of the enormous dragon anywhere. Ahead was a path through palm trees, the sun shining down on us. I had come across very few maps of the Southern Archipelago; they were a curiosity that one day I had hoped to visit. But it couldn’t be possible that I had somehow been transported there now by Hikari.
I followed my warden through the swaying fronds until we reached a white sand beach, turquoise water lapping at my feet. She knelt down at the beach’s edge, cupped her hands as a wave crashed, and then quickly ran over to where I stood, still tethered to her strings. With no choice in the matter, my lips opened to receive the water, and rather than the harsh salt I was expecting, instead a sweet nectar flowed into my mouth. A moment later, I felt my strength and my freedom of movement return.
“Come, mighty warrior,” said Hikari. “Let me show you your new home.”
“No,” I said. “I need to-”
“What you need” she said, “is to serve Hikari no Kesshō. Is that not why you healed the Pergamon? Is that not why you ventured through the Melinian Forest and into the bowels of that cursed dragon? To free me from my bonds with your sword? And I am so grateful for it. So now you will be rewarded.”
Her words sounded wrong, but before I could protest, again the flute was at her mouth, and a moment later, what she said sounded almost perfectly in tune with everything that floating around in my head.
“Yes,” I said. “It has been a long journey. I am glad it is over.”
“Me too,” said Hikari. “Now, before you get to work, let me give you a kiss.”
She closed the gap between us, and put her soft hands on my cheek and the back of my head. I looked deep into her magnificent blue eyes, which were somehow even more beautiful than the translucent waters of the island. She smelled like nothing I had ever come across in the rugged regions of the Dominions, like a rare flower whose name I would never have learned. And her lips, they were luscious as the red silk gown I had seen the Dowager Princess of Porrezan wearing during her processional. Taken together, her presence, her being, overwhelmed me, and all I could do was stand there and accept her seal of approval.
But for some reason, when she was only inches away, I tilted my head to the side.
“What is it?” asked Hikari, her eyebrows raised. “Do you not wish to receive my kiss?”
“I do. It’s just that… I feel like I still haven’t earned it yet. I mean, we simply walked out of the cave and onto this island, right? Doesn’t seem like I did anything that extraordinary.”
“I told you, Mati,” said Hikari, slightly annoyed, “you freed me from my bonds. Without you, I still would have been trapped in that wretched place. But if that is not enough valor for you, I can see to it that you sufficiently earn my love.”
The weeks that followed were a confusing blur of hard labor mixed with succulent decadence. I would spend my days chopping trees, clearing land, and building what Hikari said would be our home on the island, only to be greeted at sunset with the most opulent collection of food I had ever seen. It seemed strange to me that not only had Hikari been able to craft such a meal each day, but that I never ran into the exotic animals whose meat I enjoyed each night. And after every meal, the Crystal-turned-Woman would ask if she could finally bestow her kiss on me, and each time, something held me back from accepting.
One morning, when I was out catching our breakfast from a small pier I had built as Hikari slept blissfully, I happened to catch my reflection staring up at me from the water below, and I was shocked at what I saw.
My boyish looks was completely gone, and in their place were the hardened lines of a man. I knew that I was no longer the kid who started this journey, but how could so much time have passed along the way and now on the island? I rushed back to a small area of the still-incomplete hut, to where I had secretly been marking off the days, only to find that the scratches were gone. Outside, I found Hikari, now awake, her hands around the clasp at the back of her chiton. She released it, and the garment fell to the ground.
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“As you have offered your body to me through your labor,” she purred, “I now offer my body to you.”
I stood there, slack-jawed, staring at the now-naked Hikari. While her chiton had never left anything to the imagination, seeing what was actually underneath made my heart beat faster than I thought possible.
“Why … what do you mean ‘offer’?” was all I managed to say, before Hikari sauntered toward me, a rapacious smile on her face. There was something in the way she moved that shouldn’t have been allowed. Her pendulous breasts swayed in concert with her wide hips, and I couldn’t decide where to focus my eyes. Before I could do anything, she was mere inches away. I felt my entire body tense as she caressed my bearded face with her soft hands, before tracing her fingers down my chest to my pants.
“What I mean is that you can do with me as you please. Now kiss me.”
Our eyes locked for what seemed like an eternity. She was waiting for me to make the first move, and I wasn’t sure why. I thought back to all the nights I had spent sleeping beside her, and how many times I had wanted to stir her from her slumber and take her. But something had always stopped me. And now, when she was leaving no doubt about what she wanted me to do to her, still I held back.
“Why do you hesitate, Mati?” she asked, as if reading my mind. “This is what you want, right? To kiss your way down, from my mouth, to my chest, and then between my thighs? To mount me and prove to me and everyone else that you have conquered the great Hikari?”
“I …”
The wind on the island suddenly shifted, and instead of the tranquil serenity of the chirping birds and swaying trees I had grown accustomed to, I heard a discordant note sound from somewhere.
Hikari broke off from my gaze, and looked behind me, as if there was an intruder on the island.
“What is it?” I asked, and Hikari looked back at me, a false smile on her face.
“Nothing, Mati. Nothing at all. Now, as I was saying, are y-”
A bolt of lightning hit the tree not a dozen feet in front of me, and we were both thrown backward onto the sand. I somehow landed on top of Hikari, and she quickly took the opening to wrap her legs around my back and press me forward.
“Kiss me,” she said, the sweetness in her voice now completely gone.
She pushed her lips upward toward mine, and it would have been the easiest thing in the world to close the gap, and fall into her. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Because in that moment, the one thing I heard through the swirling maelstrom that had descended on the island was another voice, this one sweet and tender and kind and so, so alone.
“Help me!” it cried.
I looked to my right, and saw the outlines of a shimmering silhouette that was there and wasn’t there. I reached out to touch it, but Hikari’s legs dug into my back even harder.
“Eyes over here, boy,” she said, and I complied. They were so beautiful, how could I have forgotten?
“That’s it, drink it all in, and then you just need to-”
“Mati!”
Lyra’s voice shattered Hikari’s hold over me only for an instant, but it was enough. I shot my arm toward the silhouette and pulled Hauteclere free from the sand.
Only there was no more sand, there was no more island, and instead I stood before Hikari back in the dank cave where I had first found her all those years ago.
“Do it, now!” yelled Lyra, and I didn’t hesitate as I drove the blade into the Crystal’s heart.
“No!” Hikari cried. A bright light appeared where I had stabbed her, and the woman looked up at me with venomous eyes, her rapturous beauty fading until a demon, skin as gray as cooled magma, stood in her place.
“You fool!” she said. “You’ve doomed us all! If Hikari no Kesshō is allowed to join with the others, it-”
“Mati,” said Lyra. “That foul woman was no crystal at all, but a succubus who nearly devoured your soul. It’s time to silence her for good!”
I withdrew the blade from Hikari’s chest and sliced her head clean off in one fell swoop. The rest of her body disintegrated into ash, but the sword drew her horrid essence into its core, like I had done with so many demons before her. Beneath the gray pile lay was a shining, sparkling, Crystal.
“I don’t understand,” I said, as I went to pick up the real Hikari no Kesshō from the ground. It looked like the others I had found over my travels, except this one had a faint red sheen to it.
“Don’t touch it directly,” said Lyra. “Who knows how much of the succubus is left inside.”
I nodded, and withdrew a linen shroud from my pack, which had been resting only a few feet away this entire time. After slowly wrapping the glowing rock, I gingerly picked it up and placed it in one of the outer pockets of the pack.
“She joined herself with the Crystal,” said Lyra. “Formed a new body around it, one that hid her true form. And it allowed her to acquire powers beyond that of a mere succubus. The music from her flute was an expression of that.”
“But the island, I-”
I brought my hands up to my face to find no trace of a beard, only smooth, young skin.
“You were here the whole time,” said Lyra. “After she froze you, she just closed her eyes and stood there, next to you. She must have trapped you in a mirage, to get you to submit to her. For that is what gives a succubus true power.”
“How long has it been?” I asked.
“Only an hour,” said Lyra.
“An hour? I lived with her on that island for years!”
I slumped to the ground, ignoring the disgusting rotting dragon carcass, my time in paradise starting to fade inside my head.
“I tried to reach you, but the demon silenced my voice,” said Lyra, quietly. “You should have seen the look on her face. She thought she had you. I thought I’d lost you for good.”
“I’d never let that happen,” I said. “Even when I was about to give in, somehow the thought of you, buried deep within my mind, wouldn’t let me.”
“You are truly my hero,” she said.
“I won’t be until you are finally freed,” I replied, holstering the sword onto my back once more. “And with the final Crystal now ours, it won’t be long now.”
The dragon corpse suddenly shook, as if the earth wanted to reclaim it, and I scrambled back the way I had came, until the bright light of the sun hit my face. It was not a moment too soon, for just as I stepped past the last row of teeth did the entire putrid thing sink into the below, hopefully never to be seen again. My vanquishing of “Hikari” had seemingly altered the entire forest, and it only took a few hours along a serene trail until we reached the nearest Waystone.
Preparations for the Moon Fair were hitting their peak as we entered Guardial later that day, and when I collapsed onto a bed in an inn near the Grand Library, I felt for the first time in a while that I could finally rest easy.