Watch captain Jenkins was having the worst nightmare of his life.

Present thoughts and memories blurred together as fever took hold of his mind, coming into focus as minute tidbits of knowledge. Though it all started when he’d taken Lord Liam’s advice to heart and joined Eldred’s Raiders “to earn some valuable experience”.

Marching back to Petra had been fine and dandy with a dozen wagons and the scores of people to protect. Far better than sitting around in Sintra watching Lord Liam and Lady Nyota blast away with lightning. Even the wizened sage was sniping monsters across town with the occasional fireball, leaving Jenkins and his men with garbage duty, picking up the electrocuted monsters and dragging them to a warehouse for Petran “packaging”.

Eldred’s raids were the only things keeping Jenkins from getting plastered and streaking naked through Sintra. After all, such madness would be in line with the madness of monsters. A mere drumroll to the insanity of two Lightning Lords in his home.

Fortunately, for the ladies of Sintra, Jenkins was busy raiding pantries. Especially with this current raid being the largest and most successful one yet. Their mission was the standard raiding mission, guarding a caravan of laborers as they brought in the harvest, while searching nearby farms for trapped survivors or foodstuffs. A plan so simple in concept that numbskulls like Yarrick and Malachi could grasp it fully. Yet, in practical terms it required a dozen commanders to fulfill their individual objectives, each farm required five or six men to safely search it, while the farmers had to be protected by a dozen militiamen. Monsters seemed to have no fear of death and lurked nearby, eagerly picking off any solitary individuals they encountered. If a farmer so much as tried to take a piss alone, they would find more than their bits ripped apart. Forcing a practice of hand holding that they termed ‘pissing partners’.

This is worse than being married! Even adults don’t watch each other excrete! I can’t even make shitty jokes about pissing partners, it’s just too foul! Thought Jenkins, wandering forward through his fever memories.

Fifty militia had accompanied the farmers. Divided into groups of five and led by an officer, with Jenkins and Eldred in overall command. Jenkins had been skeptical at first but had come to realize how quickly the small groups responded to unknown threats. Altering their tactics to overcome hellhounds or the enormous armored hulks with insectoid faces that had appeared in great numbers during the trip.

Not even the strange shadow cats who could disappear into one shadow and emerge from another could outmaneuver Eldred’s raiders. Though they stalked the humans, never approaching closer than a hundred feet, and never straying more than two hundred feet. Eerily consistent, as if they were intelligent, or something more than animals. Nor could they be slain, for even when a dozen of Eldred’s men ambushed one, it parried their spears with pawswipes and vanished into Eldred’s own shadow!

Three days of fighting had resulted in a dozen wagons full of grain and freshly picked fruit. Four farmhouses had been turned into supply caches for grain they’d been able to harvest and thresh, but unable to find space for on the wagons. Eldred had taught them how to board up the windows and chimney, then bar the door from the outside, keeping the grain safe until a smaller mounted force could be called upon to retrieve the supplies. An eventuality Lord Liam had promised since his return from King Aldric’s court.

Consequently, Greenwood’s fate was looking brighter every day, leading Jenkins to become overconfident. Four days without casualties would do that to a sergeant, and he had foolishly split from the group, taking a raw recruit with him as he searched a nearby farm, hoping to retrieve several horses.

He should have known better.

As soon as they lost sight of the caravan, hellhounds ambushed them. Jenkins had held his ground, slaying one of the burning dogs with a spear to the throat and fending off two more. They would have been able to fight their way back to safety but the recruit lost his nerve and ran. Foolishly thinking he might be able to outrun the hellhounds. As if a man had any chance of outrunning a dog, let alone a horse sized wolf. They caught him almost immediately, tripping him with a bite and savaging his legs. Jenkins had tried to save him, earning a bite to the thigh for his troubles. But he gave as good as he got. By leaving his dagger in the hound’s eye, and his sword buried in the heart of another curr before checking on the recruit. Only to find the former Petran farmer dead, having bled out of both legs, and already cold to the touch. Jenkin’s retrieved the man’s spear, withdrawing into the nearest building, a low stone farmhouse. Where he planned to wait for rescue, barricading the door for safety. Dripping blood across the farmhouse. The caravan had deliberately planned to take a different road home, no one was coming to rescue him. He’d seen hundreds of wounds in his years as a mercenary, and inflicted hundreds more in his wars on foreign soils, that experience was clear. And held little hope of recovery without Lady Nyota’s healing magic.

Just as all hope dripped down his pantleg, the nightmare had begun.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

One of the medusas appeared, slithering through the window and dressing her human half in an awful yellow dress, though the lacy blue dress she slithered over it was no better. Garish colors made for a sickening contrast against the dark brown triangles of her scales. Gleeful yet horrendously venomous in appearance. Then the queen of vipers had toyed with his body like a young girl might play with a doll, lifting and swinging him with nary a care in the world.

Jenkins rubbed his eyes, groaning as he worked the sleep out of them. “What a nightmare. Best get to the command post or they’ll think I actually found a lass to sleep with.” He grumbled trying to roll out of bed.

Heavy blankets stopped him, holding him in place. He pushed on the blankets, fingers touching armored scales. Warm, armored, scales.

“You live. Good. Ssspeak of Medussa.” Hissed a voice that sent shivers down his spine.

Jenkins twisted under the serpent’s tail, facing the woman of his nightmares.

“I thought you were a dream.” He gasped, seeing the female medusa who still wore the blue and yellow dresses over her female half.

She brandished a knife, resting the tip above his midsection. “Sspeak.” She commanded.

With his entire body pinned, and warm, Jenkins had never felt more terrified or more protected in his life. No woman had managed to make peace with his violent profession and remain at his side. Yet here was a female creature who dominated his body and mind like a galleon full of bricks. He flopped like a limp fish, hiding beneath the blankets he now realized were the woman’s lower half.

This isn’t how drowning in a woman’s thighs should go! For starters, she should be holding my knife instead of that iron poker.

“Uhm, I don’t know much, Lord Liam calls your kind Medusas. Hey, how can you speak when the others couldn’t?” He asked, unsure of how to address the creature on top of him.

“Our daughterss sspeak with their eyess.” Hissed the woman. Her accent was heavy but it was getting noticeably better since he had last spoken to her.

Did she practice talking while I was out? Thought Jenkins.

“My name is Jenkins, I am the babysitter, or- uhm. Captain of Sintra.” Said Jenkins, trying to make a joke and then realizing that this medusa probably had no idea what a baby was, and he dared not imagine what a medusa considered to be ‘baby-sitting’.

Wait, what’s a baby medusa? Is it just a snake? Or is there a nest of babies somewhere with human torsoes? Thought Jenkins, finding the thought repulsive and somehow wishing medusan babies were just serpents.

“Captain Jenkinss. You command hundredss?”

“Uhm, yes, well technically more, since I coordinate all companies in Sintra.” He said, confused by the question.

“Good.” She said simply, sliding off of him and slipping the knife into a bag at her waist.

Jenkins shivered from the cold as his ‘blankets’ now resumed their main duties as a mythical woman’s lower half. He sized her up, taking in every inch of the woman as slithered off of him, from the serpents connected to her skull, to the steel bow and long arrows on her hip. A dozen of her teeth were sharp and a faint green glow emanated from beneath her eyelids, which remained tightly shut. She was well muscled, and her shoulders were wider than his own, making him slightly jealous. A dozen of her snakelocks focused on him, occasionally testing the air with flicks from their forked tongues.

Oh no… This is real… What will Nyota think when I tell her the medusa jerky can talk?

His mouth went dry. What would this woman do when she found out about the Petrans smoking her daughters? Today she wore an unusual burlap sash across her bosom, large enough to cosplay as a hammock and carry a man. Before he could ask what the sash was for, she slipped her arms under him, lifting him from bed and nestling him into the sash, tucking a blanket around him like a swaddled infant.

“Take me to Lord… Liam.” She said, slithering towards the door.

“Oi! This aint right, I’m a grown man and you‘re carrying me like a babe!” Shouted Jenkins.

She ignored him, handing him a shield and backpack. His spear remained in Phaedra’s hand.

“Hey! Listen to me, the hellhounds will run us down, we need to wait for help to arrive!” He implored.

“Phaedra.” She said, opening the door to the farmhouse and slithering through it.

Evidently, she had cleared away his barricade while he slept. Nothing remained, not even the plank of wood that served as a deadbolt was present. Jenkins tried to protest again, but she held a clawed finger to his mouth. Slightly crooked to avoid slashing open his nose.

When she turned to close the door, he saw why she did not fear the hellhounds. A dozen new statues had appeared around the house, perfect replicas of hellhounds.

“Did you do this?” He asked.

“Bad dogss did not lissten. Open eyess. Good dog closse eyess.” she said, running her fingers through his hair.

Is she calling me a good dog? Oh hell no! I’m not a snake’s dog. But why am I so aroused right now? No! I am not enjoying her joke! Not one bit! –Is this how Arlet feels?-- No!

A serpent just showed up, healed me, rescued me, killed my enemies, and is now carrying me home! I should be pissing my pants, not pitching a tent!