I stared at Jax.

Jax stared at me.

My upper lip twitched. His left eyebrow slowly lifted.

“So, we’re in agreement, then?” I said, finally.

“I think so, aye,” he conceded.

Wanting to delay this for as long as possible, I took a long pull from my beer tumbler. Coughing roughly, I continued, “She’s a pervert.”

Almost exasperatedly, he spread his hands wide, “I been tellin’ ye that from the beginning.”

I sat silently for a while, thinking. With a frown, I asked, “But why would she ask me about a random… well, okay, yeah, let’s call it a fetish. And then ask me to kiss you?”

Jax began signaling for another beer frantically. I looked at him with a degree of concern. He was well past a round ahead of me. Finally deciding to face me again, he said, “Just so we’s clear. I ain’t happy ‘bout this.”

I blinked, “Do you honestly think that I am?”

He shook his head, “No, I know you ain’t.” He tapped the side of his head, “I be an empath now, if ye be ‘memberin’?”

I grimaced. That must be weird. Even if it was from someone you in no way wanted to be intimate with, no one would want to actually feel the disgust at the idea from them.

Jax looked at me aghast, “Why the fuck are ye feelin’ guilty, now?”

I closed my eyes. Fuck me… This was going to take some getting used to. “I… I’m sorry, Jax. I was just feeling… sympathetic to your, “ I gestured at him vaguely, “condition.”

He looked at me incredulously, “Yer feelin’ guilty that I can sense ye do nay want to kiss me? Even though, ye know I also do nay want to kiss you?” He shook his head, “By the three. Y’are a poof.”

I rubbed my face in my hands, “I don’t know. What do you want me to say?”

“Y’ain’t got to say nothin’, mate,” he said. “We be of an accord on the matter. So stop punchin’ at yerself an’ gimme yer hand.”

I looked up, “What?”

“Well, She did nay say I had ter kiss ye on the lips now did She?” he said, a cocky grin slowly forming.

My eyes clouded over, and I gazed into the distance. The moron bell had been rung soundly on the stupidity high-striker of my brain. One of these days, I would convince myself to stop wielding the hammer… if only the damned thing was not glued quite so firmly to my palm. Head lowered in shame, I limply held my hand out to him. He did not hesitate in the slightest, I think just wanting to get it over with. The feeling of his moist lips on the back of my hand was… unsettling but mercifully brief.

Congratulations!

Your [Lilim] has gifted you with access to their native tongue, [Laoi’na].

Due to only technically meeting the conditions of the task, your initial skill level has been set to Low Intermediate [25].

Also, @)#(*$$&

I looked at the message in befuddlement. What in the…

I tried tapping at the weird error, but the box did not respond to my probes. In defeat, I eventually dismissed the message and sat back. Yet another thing to ask someone about. I need to start writing these down. I’m forgetting my questions faster than I’m getting answers.

“Well? Did it work?” Jax asked.

Brought back to the issue at hand, I looked inward. The library in my mind had been expanded in one particular section. It was now conveniently labeled [Laoi’na] and had its own shelf, though there seemed to be a lot missing.

Experimentally, I tried to say something, “Uh… I be of the thinking the speak now I can.”

Jax clapped a hand over his mouth, “Oh, mate. No. No no. What happened?”

I grimaced, “Lady pervert giving the language bad saying do task stupid way.”

He sat back with his eyes closed, his shoulders shaking with mirth, “Mate. Mate, stop. Please.”

I smirked in a teasing way, “You look now, see! I listening you pig stab English all times! Now turn of you!”

Unable to hold it any longer, he guffawed just as the barmaid returned with our latest round. I addressed her as Jax was currently beside himself, “Time of the last one, thinking me am.” I jerked a finger over at my wheezing companion, “Drinking all the much this one. Wanting room, now. Yes?” Jax started limply slapping at my shoulder.

She looked at the two of us with a very confused expression, “Alright, sure, honey. I was just about to cut you off, anyway. But… wanting room?”

I nodded, “Yes, key of room not having. Sleep bed. Very good.”

Her eyes lit up in comprehension, “Oh! I see. Yes, I’ll bring your key in a minute. Do you want that bath soon?”

I shook my head, “No. Bath want time of the sleepings. Darkness, yes?” Jax had his head buried in his arm on the table, his fist lightly pounding on it.

“Uh… at dusk? Okay, sure. We’ll fetch you when it’s ready. Bye now,” she said as she sashayed away.

I looked over at Jax. He had been laughing through the whole conversation, and was now starting to limply slide underneath the table.

“Oh, stop,” I said, switching back to English. “It’s not that bad.”

The bath was heaven.

After so long in the cold winds, freezing forest streams, and the seemingly inescapable caked on mud, I was now soaking in comfort. I never wanted it to end. Doggedly, I decided to ride out this bath until either the water cooled, or I was so pruned up, I hurt.

The bathing room was pretty neat, too. The inn actually had three of them for their customers to rent out. Each was equipped with a large barrel that was tall enough to come up to my mid-waist. I was not certain how it all worked, but I could see some kind of downspout overhead from where they must have filled the thing. They must have rigged up some form of running water, and from the look of it, I assumed it was gravity fed. The bottom of the tub had a spigot for draining it out onto the floor, from which there was a further grille where the water could flow off somewhere. There was even a convenient set of stairs to help customers climb in and out of the tub.

The whole thing was situated over a bed of coals or something which heated the water. Or at least, that was my assumption. I could not see exactly what was going on under there. Whatever it was, the bathhouse was thankfully smokeless, and the warmth from below was palpable. I wriggled my toes, comfortably.

The inn must have been a fairly major hub of some kind to have a place like this. I was not sure exactly what it was a hub for, but my hunch was that the Allenwood had to provide some fairly major resources for the locals. But if that were the case, why had we not seen anyone the whole time we were out there? Off-season?

I shrugged at myself. I was going to get few answers soaking in a barrel. A lovely, lovely warm barrel. Idly, I submerged my head and blew bubbles.

My eyes snapped open at the muted sound. Hovering in front of me but distorted by the water, was a new message box. Standing up again, I scrubbed the water from my eyes so that I could read it properly.

You have received a new Quest!

Travel to the Stele of the Fourth Creation, and place your palm thereupon.

One Question may be asked.

One Answer may be given.

Time limit: None

Reward: Variable

“Uh… what?” I said, blankly. The sound echoed oddly in the little room.

Reading it through three times, I still did not know what to make of it. I mean sure, the meat of it was pretty easy to understand. Travel to place, get reward. But why? And since when did I start getting quests out of nowhere? Who had given it to me? I scrubbed my fingers through my hair in frustration. This game made no sense! If quests were a thing, then why had I not gotten a quest like… escape from the Dungeon? Or get to civilization without dying? Maybe those were just obvious things that anyone would do given the situation?

Resignedly, I slipped back under the water. Shit. Now, I needed to get out and talk to Jax. I closed my eyes. Five more minutes…

A half-hour later, I opened the door to our room. I was wearing one of the provided towels I had found in the bathing room around my waist. When I had finally convinced myself to abandon my watery sanctuary, I had discovered that my clothes had been absconded with. The bath attendant outside explained that my laundry would be cleaned and returned in the morning. Honestly, I was quite impressed at the level of service an inn at the edge of a wood provided its guests. I would need to make sure everyone here got a nice tip. If that was a thing.

Our room was on the third story and at the very end of the hallway. I had left wet footprints all along the way and was quite self-conscious about my near nakedness, but no one that I passed gave me a second look. Or rather, I should say that they were not looking at my towel. Mostly, I was getting looks of curiosity. One woman — one of the maids actually — had even asked if she could feel my beard. That had been awkward, but I did not say no. I knew from experience that it was a patchy, ridiculous looking thing, though I had yet to look it over, not having access to a mirror. She seemed to like it, however. I grinned to myself. It had been a struggle to contain my… excitement at the attention. Of all the times to be caught out in a bath towel…

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In any case, I arrived none the worse for wear and found the room to be quite spacious and clean. There were two twin beds placed at opposite sides of the room and a nice gabled window in the center with a bench set into the wall for you to look out onto the square. I looked at the opening with a degree of consternation. There were no privacy curtains. Well… who would want to look in on a couple of naked guys anyway? Drawing my attention away, I saw that there was a chest of drawers and a trunk at the foot of each bed. It would seem that extended stays were normal for this place. Jax, I discovered, had claimed the bed on the right for himself and was passed out cold. It was well after dark, so I did not blame him. Still, I had assumed he would want to get cleaned up. Also, I really needed to discuss the development that had arisen in the bath, but his soft snoring convinced me to leave him be. It could wait.

Shrugging, I dug into my pack for my spare set of clothes but found them to be missing, as well. I searched through all of the drawers and found them all to be quite empty. Looking over at Jax’s sleeping form, I saw his exposed bare shoulders peeking out from his sheet. He must have abandoned all of our clothes to the laundry collector. It was probably the smart thing to do. They were filthy, after all, but that did not keep me from being self-conscious.

Seeing nothing else for it, I hung the damp towel over a bed post and snuggled into the bed. The mattress, I discovered, was filled entirely with feathers. This was a completely new experience for me, although to be fair, most things recently were. The feathers were soft as could be, and I sank through them almost like a liquid. The sides of the mattress rose up around me, snuggling me in with a warm and soft hug. Shifting contentedly, I reveled in the sensation.

If only I could carry one of these around on the road. My bedroll had been welcome, but hardly comfortable. The many nights on the hard and often wet ground had been trying, however I was slowly getting used to it. I had always been something of a night owl, preferring to get my gaming on in the wee hours of the night, but around here, everything just sort of shut down once darkness came. Then again, I was getting way more exercise than I was accustomed to. That helped a great deal. Closing my eyes to the darkness, I fell asleep swiftly, despite the occasional poke of a feather coming through the mattress cover.

I was sitting in a pottery class I had decided to take over the summer. It was one of those random decisions that you sometimes make out of the combined need to improve upon oneself and the ever present sense of encroaching boredom. The class was being taught at one of the local high schools, in the art room. The too-small desks had been arranged in a U-shape around a central table where the teacher had been showing us various techniques a person could use to form our projects into something presentable without the need for a pottery wheel.

He was a lovely man, quite honestly. He had been very eager to show us all sorts of things and just seemed excited to be there. I had been enjoying myself immensely. That, however, was not what was drawing my attention.

Over the past few days, I had been doing my level best to assemble a little teapot for myself. The teacher had told us that we could keep the finished product, after all, and I wanted something that was at least usable. That was being made more difficult than it should have been because of the individual sitting to my left. This complete asshole of a gorilla had been talking trash about my ability as a potter, or the lack thereof, the entire time. And for some reason, the guy chose to speak entirely in iambic pentameter. Like it made him sound smart or something. I mean, he wasn’t wrong, of course, but it was an amateur class, for goodness sake! It wasn’t like the 1:12 scale Leaning Tower of Pisa he had been making was that impressive.

I frowned at my little teapot in dismay. The spigot looked okay, but I just could not get the handle to look right. A hand waved in front of my face to get my attention. The crazed looking woman sitting on the other side of me had been paying no heed whatsoever to my own little drama. Between the two of them, it was a wonder I had managed to get anything accomplished, at all.

“Does this look right?” she asked.

I shook my head, “No, no. The neck needs to be much longer.” She had been picking my brain the last few sessions about loads of different animals and sculpting them out of clay. Honestly, I was inclined at this point to just refer her to a nice nature documentary, but in full disclosure, I enjoyed the attention. She was good, too. The lion she had made last time looked pretty damned realistic despite her having no visual aid.

She was, I decided, the most unusual looking person I had ever met in my life. A tallish woman who looked to be in her early twenties, she was wearing lots of loose, flowing clothing, rather like the flower children from a few generations ago. She was also sporting a set of sunglasses, today, with purple lenses. I thought they looked cool as hell. Actually, come to think of it, she was wearing just what you might expect someone sitting in a pottery class to be wearing. Meanwhile, her hair was a complete riot of curls and braids and dreadlocks, all in various colors and lengths, like she had gone to the beautician and simply asked for the works. Meanwhile, she seemed to have a set of four horns, like a Jacob sheep, poking out in several places through it all. I didn’t know if they were real or some kind of headpiece she had thought would look interesting with… all the rest of it.

“But that’s insane!” she said. “How can it support a neck like that?”

I shrugged, “I am not the person to ask about that, though I think that they have the same number of neck bones as every other mammal.” I had been rather fascinated with the topic of evolution as a young man and knew more than my fair share of tidbits on the subject. That had been a long time ago, though, and it was starting to fade now.

She shook her head, “That seems inefficient.”

“Your teapot, if that thing is what you say, is really shit you must admit, today. If…”

“Can it, Carl,” I said. Nine hundred pound ape, or no, I was done with his crap. Plus, that line was shaping up to be something close to Vogon poetry, and no one deserved to be subjected to that.

“What did you say this thing is called again,” she said, drawing my attention back.

“A giraffe,” I replied. “But how is it you don’t know what a giraffe looks like? I don’t think I’ve ever been to a zoo without at least one.”

“Never mind that,” she said, looking up at the wall clock. “We don’t have much time left.”

That was true. Next session, we were supposed to go over glazing and the teacher needed to fire our submissions before then. Sighing, I ripped the handle off my pot to try it again.

“My sister told me something interesting about you,” she said, changing the subject. She had a sly grin on her face.

“Your sister?” I asked, sweating. “Do I know her?” Lawmaiden’s smothering backside, it was hot in here. I pulled off my shirt.

“What are you doing?” she asked in shock, the thread of our conversation lost.

“I’m going for a swim, of course,” I said, wading into the river. The jungle we had been sitting in may have been a verdant wonderland and an absolute riot of colors, but it was hot as all hell. Plus, the mosquitoes were eating me alive!

She looked around, “Balls, this is frustrating!”

“What is?” I asked from the water. The river’s coolness was quite a shock to my system. I needed to pee, I realized.

“Oh, never mind!” she said, hastily collecting her sculptures to protect them from the water. I really didn’t know why she was messing around with that right next to the river, anyway. Pulling a cloth sack from somewhere, she gently placed her statues inside, and hung it from a nearby branch. “I don’t know why I bothered with this.”

Suddenly, Carl burst through the trees, trailed by a pack of his buddies. “Today, you’ll get what you deserve, you pest! I’ll see that you regret with whom you’ve messed!”

Ugh… that was awful! Seeing a log floating my way, I jumped aboard. “Quickly! Climb on!” I shouted at her.

She looked from the troop of gorillas to me incredulously, “You must be joking.”

“No time to argue!” I yelled. “They’re out for blood!”

Grabbing her hand, I pulled her onto the log behind me. Carl and his cronies hooted in rage and started throwing logs into the river to follow us. “This is insane!” she shouted.

“It’s not my fault his poetry sucks,” I said over the rising sound of the river. The rapids were picking up quickly, churning the water to white. Hurriedly, I dipped my paddle into the water in a hopeless effort to try to keep us from crashing into the rocks.

“Where did you get that?” she yelled.

“You’ve got one, too!” I replied. “Now, help me before we go sideways!”

She looked down at the paddle in her hands in confusion before throwing her head back and laughing. “This is hilarious!” she yelled, her voice almost drowned out.

I certainly didn’t think it was very funny. I looked back. Carl was bearing down on us hard, his hands held high by the handlebars of his chopper-log. His crew, uniformed in matching yellow bandanas, was not far behind.

Whipping back around in determination, I expertly began steering our improvised craft through the rapids. The spray of water beat upon my face, unforgivingly, as I desperately wiped at my eyes to try to see ahead. My companion did her best to help, though she was beside herself with laughter. She was crazy, I decided.

Suddenly, the end of the line came. The river had chosen that moment to cut itself off cleanly, ending in the mother of all waterfalls. I looked around, trying to find any avenue of escape. Carl and his troop were already crawling out to the shore. He looked back with a smirk and gave me a mocking salute. I flipped him off.

By then, it was too late. The sound of the river crescendoed as we neared the edge. Still laughing, the woman grabbed me from behind, her breasts crushed to my back. Unfortunately, it wasn’t something I could let myself enjoy right then. “Hold on, Donum! Here we go!” she yelled.

And then we were in free fall. All sound dropped away as we fell, seemingly forever. The wind, the water, everything simply dropped away in a heavenly calm the likes of which only seem to come at the most unexpected of moments. But then it was over, and we were plunged into the water. Down and down we went, pushed below by the thundering weight of the waterfall. End over end, I tumbled through the water. I had no idea which way was which. Up was down. Left was right. But as my tumbling came to an end, I saw a light.

Desperately, I swam toward it. Each stroke took more and more of my air reserve. My lungs were burning before I broke through the surface. Gasping for breath and coughing up gallons of water, I crawled onto the bank. The woman, I noticed, was still right beside me, collapsed onto her back and breathing heavily. Her loose clothes were plastered to her body, outlining her glorious figure for all to admire.

Shaking my eyes from the oh-so-lovely yet uninvited view, I looked around. We were in a cave of some sort, though I could see just fine. The ceiling was well over twenty feet high, and the cave curved off into the depths far beyond the range of my vision. The sound of the waterfall was still audible though muted from here.

Chuckling lightly, the woman spoke, “You sure know how to show a girl a good time.”

I snorted, “At least one of us was having fun.” I looked around again, “I’m sure Carl won’t find us here.”

“Forget Carl,” she said softly, running her fingers along the ridges of my hard muscles, yet glistening from the water. I looked at her again. Her glasses had been lost somewhere in the fall, and her eyes, mismatched in color just as her hair was, were narrowed into the predatory slits of a cat. I realized that I knew her from somewhere.

“You are so beautiful,” I whispered. She looked up at me in surprise and drew back, as if she were only just noticing what she had been doing. I grabbed her retreating hand and pulled her toward me, “I want to kiss you… if you’ll let me.”

Her eyes widened. “W-what?” She resisted for a moment, but then her eyes fluttered, “Oh~ Donum! You smell wonderful!” Roughly, she grabbed at my bulge, the contact causing it to rapidly tighten in my still soaked blue jeans.

My breath catching, I lowered my lips to hers, and she met me, hungrily. Our kiss went on and on, seemingly without end, the fervor of our passion ever rising. My hands greedily roved over her soft curves, while her own had found a grip in the hair in back of my head which she leveraged to crush herself to me. Finally, we broke away, panting. Her patience was at an end.

Ripping my pants away like they were tissue paper, she drank in my body, her eyes glued to my pulsing erection, as a starved woman promised salvation, “Oh, I am going to enjoy this. I haven’t indulged in over a thousand years!”

“What?” I asked, but then she was naked. I hadn’t even seen her undress, much to my sorrow. Her breasts were large and rode high on her chest, her hips enticingly wide, and her naked sex almost shimmering in the faint light of the cave.

“Lie down,” she instructed me in a soft whisper. Hastily, I laid back, my veined rod thumping in time with my heartbeat. She licked her lips, and shook out her still dripping hair from around her horns. Lightly grasping at one of her nipples, she distractedly combed a lock of blue hair around a pointed ear and stepped over me. And slowly, ever so slowly, she descended.

My eyes opened. I was staring at the wooden slats of a ceiling. Just then, I heard a crack of thunder in the distance.

Blinking in confusion, I realized that I had been dreaming. Ah… damn it! I always seemed to wake up just before the good part.

As the details of the dream faded, several things crowded to the forefront of my mind for attention. One, I was soaked with sweat. The feather mattress, while exceedingly soft and comfortable, was also quite the sweat-box. Two, I needed to pee like a racehorse. All of the beer from the night previous had run its course and was now ready to exit with all due haste. But that led me to number three. I was rocking a raging hard-on. And it was not going away.

With a groan, I sat up. The morning light was streaming through our window, illuminating our room nicely… which struck me as odd, given the thunder I had just heard. Looking over, I saw that Jax was sitting on the edge of his own bed, his bedsheets draped over his middle. He was looking at me intently.

“Had a bit of a dream, I take it?” he asked, a grin on his face.

I flushed, “Why? Was I talking in my sleep?”

“No,” he replied, “nothin’ like that. But I could feel sommat comin’ off o’ ye strong. Woke me up, it did. Like ye was excited?”

If I was blushing before, my face was practically pulsing now. “Uh… yeah. Yeah, it was an… exciting dream, all right.” Awkwardly, I shifted in an effort to hide my tent pole. I failed.

His eyes widened in realization, and he started laughing. “Ah, so that’s how it be? I might o’ known.”

I looked away, self-consciously, “Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up.” Looking back, I asked, “You’re not grossed out?”

He shook his head, still smiling, “Nah, mate. Ye got nothin’ to be shamed of. How long ‘as it been since ye’ve rubbed one out, anyway? It be no wonder yer dreams took a turn.”

I closed my eyes and scrubbed a hand through my tangled mop. “Believe it or not, in my culture, we don’t make it a habit to discuss our masturbation routines.”

He spread his hands wide, “All’s I be sayin’ is yer pent up, is all.” Setting his elbows to his knees he continued, “So, were it anyone I know? The barmaid, maybe? She were makin’ eyes all night.” He wriggled his eyebrows suggestively.

“No!” I said immediately, but then more slowly I continued, “I don’t know who she was. She was beautiful, though.” Her features were already beginning to fade from my conscious mind. It was a pity, I would have liked to remember her.

Right about then, there was a knock at the door. “Laundry!” a man called.

“Why don’t you get it?” I suggested. “I’m still a little… uh…” I indicated my situation.

He cackled.