Jax surveyed the scene beneath us, axe in hand. Faintly, I could see the glimmer of my Detonating Sap coating the blade as the first rays of early morning sunlight struck its edge. I had needed to recast the buff once she had summoned it, and even with the small amount of Energy she had provided me, that was all she was going to get. Everything else depended on her.
Glancing at me, she nodded. She was ready.
Quickly, I cast a buff combo to give her some camouflage and an accuracy bonus. Then she was away.
We were at least fifteen to twenty feet in the air, suspended by thick strands of webbing attaching us to the tree canopy above. So when she dropped, it was with the force of a meteor.
Slamming into a great insect that had heretofore been minding its own business with all the subtlety of a brick through a church window, she cleaved right through its head, burying both axe and bug into the dirt below. It died instantly, and a rush of Life Energy flooded into me. Far more than had ever come from that ability before.
I grinned. I had some gas in the tank now!
Ripping the axe away, she made a snap decision and leapt. The rest of the beetles in the room had frozen in shock, and their bulbous heads traced her naked form arcing through the air only to witness her axe cleaving into the dip before the wing casing of another. And as the Sap entered its body, it began to pop and steam, cooking it from the inside.
That was all the head start she would get. As the other three vermin rushed forward, the one at her side rolled away onto its back, trying to dislodge the horrible burning thorn that had been jabbed inside of it and consequently ripping it out of her grasp.
Shit. There went that buff.
Ducking as a spat wad of sticky webbing passed overhead, she quickly dove back to the one she had killed. Pulling up the wing casing for a bit of cover, she resummoned her axe and waited for them to come to her. The beetles had no head for tactics, instead coming in a wave and trusting in their numbers and their admittedly formidable weapons to win the day.
She caught another two hurled sticky masses on her makeshift shield before they were on her. Skipping to one side, she split the foreleg of the one to her left before it managed to catch her ankle in its mandibles, and she fell. Brutally kicking its head away, she rolled back over her shoulder. But the paralyzing poison was already doing its work, and she tripped back to the ground as her leg refused to straighten again.
Of course, we were ready for that.
Quickly, I hit the mental switch that allowed me to convert the poison into raw debilitating Lust, and Jax gasped. In that moment, her eyes snapped to my own, and she seemed to pulse. Immediately, several astonishingly dark Jax-shaped shadows sprang out of her, and the room erupted into chaos. Beetles and shadowy clones scattered about everywhere and globs of webbing filled the air as the bugs entered into frenzied illusory combat.
And then the Life Energy started to pour into me. We did not have the time to incrementally allow the poison to dissipate, so I had left the aura on at full blast. And she was converting it with equal abandon. But it was too much for me to absorb all at once. My skin almost tingled with steam and tracers, and gooseflesh pimpled my arms as it escaped into the atmosphere.
Realizing that I needed to put it to use before it was lost, I dropped her buffs to snap out the most powerful Renewal of Consumption that I could in the hopes that the regeneration effect would both mend her ankle and protect her from further injuries. When it hit her, she threw her head back and moaned, pushing out another duo for her shadow army. It was a sound as powerfully erotic as it was inhuman. And then more Life Energy came, though perhaps not as much as I had spent on the spell.
Watcher’s Eye… Seeing her down there, her back arched in pleasure… Maybe for the first time, I realized that when she got worked up, Jax was starting to get pretty damned hot. And despite the tense situation, I found myself stirring. But unlike her, I could not function like that.
Giving my head a quick shake, I closed my eyes for a moment to center myself again and began to prepare another Detonating Sap Varnish.
Once… twice… there!
My eyes snapped open as the spell fired away, and quickly scanning the field, I immediately fell into the cadence for my held buffs. Jax had tucked herself into a ball, trying to remain innocuous until they had time to reassert themselves. And when she noted the speckled shade of the leaves forming around her again, she gathered her feet under her, ready to leap into action.
Suddenly, one of her shadows fell to the ground, pantomiming injury right in front of her. The beetle that it had been in combat with immediately went to finish the job, and just as it pounced, Jax did the same. Cleaving the air in a sizzling horizontal arc, she sliced all three of the legs on its near side in twain, bringing it to the ground. Thrashing about, it quickly rolled onto its back in confusion as its legs failed to support its bulk, exposing its comparatively unarmored underside.
It did not live much past that.
The remaining two beetles, perhaps sensing that the tide was turning, took to the air and began firing bolt after bolt of sticky webbing, trying to pin their many assailants to the ground. But the shadows could be just as agile as they wanted to be, and for the most part, they easily dodged the projectiles as they skipped and flipped about. They looked for all the world like a kicked-over anthill as they ran past one another in a confusing array of light and dark.
Jax, meanwhile, made use of her camouflage and took cover beneath the corpse of the creature she had just downed. All she had to do was wait. The bugs, big as they were, could not stay in the air forever, and each time that one of her duplicates went down, she would casually summon another.
Eventually, their endurance came to an end. One, conspicuously missing a foreleg, attached itself to the ceiling, while the other dove towards an apparently oblivious clone. The bug Jax had injured earlier, agonized by its boiling insides, was pushing itself in mindless circles, and the clone was pantomiming out a gloating sort of coup de grâce The shadow even acted out its shock at being tackled to the ground from above.
As the beetle cast about for the prey that had just been in its mandibles, Jax rocketed forward in a dead sprint, ready to bury her axe just as deeply as she could. However, the one attached to the ceiling quickly spied the deliberate motion and reared up to spit at her. My eyes widened as I realized what was about to happen, and not really having anything else that I could do, I clicked my tongue just as loudly as I could.
For an instant, both of the beetles froze, and then Jax’s axe came sizzling down upon the one below, slicing through its abdomen right between the split of its wing casing. The vermin bucked in agony and somersaulted over its head. Landing on its back, it began scrabbling at its own backside, apparently trying for all the world to chew the poison out of its body.
Before she could recover from the swing, a wad of webbing exploded against Jax’s left shoulder, expanding rapidly to bind her arm in place. The beetle on the ceiling had quickly shaken itself out of its stupor and gotten a shot off while she was distracted. Spinning to face her sole remaining healthy foe, she danced out of the way just as another wad splatted to the ground before her.
With a cheeky grin, she choked up on the grip of her axe and burned the webs away. Giving her now freed arm a shake to try and dislodge the remaining webbing from her skin, she struck a sultry pose and opened her arms wide, “Come down and face me, ye wanker! Or are ye just gonna gob on me all morn?”
She had to jump clear of the beetle’s reply.
I frowned. This was a stalemate. With her strength, the accuracy to make sure her blows landed, and the Sap to penetrate their armor, she had done remarkably well. However, the one thing she did not have was range. Technically, she could probably hurl her axe, but that would be a hell of a throw. And it was a heavy chunk of steel. It was unlikely that the blade would maintain much momentum at that height. Hess, no doubt, could have done it, but Jax was not that strong. Not yet.
Meanwhile, the beetle had absolutely no reason to come down until it had her thoroughly immobilized. And it was making every effort to do just that. Every few seconds, it would lob another shot at her, and she would have to dive away.
Slowly, I nodded in understanding. The camouflage did pretty well with the canopy above, but it could not make her invisible during the day. While that beetle had her in view, it would just keep spitting until the numbers lined up, and she was caught. Of course, that just meant that she needed to change the equation.
I inhaled and whispered fiercely, “Break it’s line of sight! Use the shadows!”
As she once more rolled to her feet, she shot me a confused look for a moment before dawning realization overcame her. Quickly throwing her head back, she loudly breathed out another of those strangely inhuman moans, and three of her clones broke off from her in different directions. However, when I looked back, Jax herself was not there anymore.
What the…
Rapidly scanning the battlefield, I could find no trace of her. However, strangely, one of the clones had ducked back behind the corpse of her first kill for a moment before continuing on its way. And when it ran on, it was just a shade lighter than it had been before. Quickly focusing back on the dead beetle, I noticed the telltale points of her horns sticking up from behind it.
Genius! She had overlaid a clone on top of herself to run for cover! I had no idea she could do that!
Now that it no longer had a clear target, the confused beetle began to randomly fire into the field once more, hoping that something would stick. However, the clones had no plans to just keep the stalemate going. Instead, they rallied in the center of the room, passing through each other, and then they ran, full out, toward the densely packed and webbed tree trunks that made up the walls. And when they got there, they kept running. Straight up.
I sucked in a breath as I realized what she was going for. Crap. Hastily dropping everything, I began the process of refreshing her Sap Varnish. She had killed and injured a couple of beetles since the last time, and it had probably worn off. I should have done this earlier!
As they continued up the walls, the duplicates each made a show of flashily forming a shadowy axe, twined to Jax’s own. Coming to the upper branches of the room, they then raced along the ceiling with no regard to logic or gravity and converged on the rapidly panicking insect. Firing off a couple of easily dodged wads of webbing, the beetle quickly decided that it had no intention of being surrounded, and it dropped, swiftly expanding its wings and fluttering to the ground.
Apparently frustrated at having their target flee, the clones promptly reversed course, this time conspicuously opposite Jax’s position.
Shit! I was on my fourth attempt at getting the thrice-damned spell out, and I was running out of time! Fucking new spells!
Back on the ground, the clones ran forward once more, slowly merging into one another as they came, as if they were only now coming into focus. The beetle, finally able to lock on to a single target, reared up onto its hind legs in a display of threat.
And then Jax closed her trap.
Darting out from behind the corpse, she ran low to the ground, mirroring her shade almost move for move. The beetle was completely unaware.
Damn it! No! In one last desperate attempt at casting, I opened my mouth and shouted the words almost like an epithet to the idea of magic in general. Weirdly, that seemed to help.
Just as her axe crested its arc into the insect’s exposed back, and its mandibles closed around the neck of her dark twin, my spell liquefied around the blade.
With a sickening pop, the axe sank through its exoskeleton, and the beetle spasmed. Rigidly thrusting all of its legs out, it seemed to stand upright for a moment, held in balance only by Jax’s grip on her weapon. But then, slowly, it began to tip backward.
Sensing the inevitable, she abandoned it there, and stepped away just as the huge vermin crashed to the ground, burying the corrosive edge beneath it.
Some minutes later, Jax had ended the suffering of the injured. Contrary to my expectations, creatures in agonizing pain did not put up much resistance. It was almost like the entire concept of hit points was bullshit or something. I mean, I had fought through a few injuries in my time, but they had been relatively minor. Certainly nothing on the level of having an poisoned axe carving out pieces of my back.
In any case, even without my buffs, a few well-placed head shots was all it took. Not many things could function without a head, after all.
Finally finished, her chest heaving from her exertions, she tossed her axe away and glanced up at me. The look in her eyes spoke volumes. She had been held away from me for far too long, and she meant to end that condition. Making a run for the trunk nearest me, she began scrabbling up rather like a cat, grabbing on with her claws and jerking herself up for another handhold.
As she ascended, I shook my head a bit and smiled. I was fairly beaming with pride for her. And once she was of a level with me, I called out, “That was superb, Jax! You could not have done better if we had planned it! And that bit where you hid yourself in your own clone? Beautiful!”
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She had begun scooting her way towards me underneath the branch, using her hands and knees to support her weight, but when she heard my words, she paused. Glancing down at me, her head upside down, she seemed surprised, “But it were yer idea, Master. I just did what ye said.”
“My idea?” I parroted. “All I said was to break its line of sight so that my shadows could camouflage you properly.”
Letting her legs drop, she shifted her grip to face me, and then wrapping her legs around my cocoon, she slid down so that we were face to face.
“Oh, them shadows,” she said indifferently before hastily claiming my lips.
For a long while, we remained there, swinging with the wind in impassioned embrace. Finally, however, Jax became impatient and began trying to break me loose of the webbing, but her claws were making slow work of it without chemical reinforcement.
Frustrated, she pulled away for a moment. “Master, cast yer spell. I want ye free of this,” she breathed and then instantly resumed kissing me.
Of course, by that point, I was more than eager to comply, but there was only so much I could do with her tongue in my mouth. And she was not letting me go. After a moment of struggling and getting no where, I exasperatedly blew into her mouth, puffing her cheeks out like a balloon.
She jerked back with a wounded look, “Master?”
“Do you want me to cast the spell or not?”
She seemed genuinely confused by my question, but then her eyes widened a bit as realization set in. Licking her lips and still breathing heavily, she actually considered it for a moment before finally nodding, “Aye… that… I be sorry. I…” There was a moment of hesitation, and then she shook her head, “Go on with it.”
I quirked an eyebrow, unsure as to what had just passed behind her eyes. Not for the first time, I wished that I could sense her emotions. But… there was a certain value to the privacy of thought. I knew that I often wished I could better hide them from her, after all.
But before I could finish the thought, she poked me on the nose, “I ain’t feeling terrible patient here, Master.” Then, embracing me once more, she began restlessly nibbling at my ear.
I smiled helplessly. Alright, Jax. You can keep your secrets.
Interestingly enough, while trying to cast a spell with a massively horny lilim attached to you is next to impossible, it did make for fantastic practice. Well before I managed to successfully get the thing going, I achieved my final skill level for the day, and even then, Jax did not relent. Honestly, I think she found my mounting frustration amusing.
“Damn it all!” I swore finally. “Leave off, woman!”
Giving my cheek a final lick, she sighed, “Oh, alright.” Climbing up, she swung herself over the branch above and sat there, dangling her feet, “And do nay call me such. Ye know better.”
I harrumphed, “Better than half the things you’ve called me when you’re pissed off.”
“And how would you know?” she asked lightly. “Ye don’t even know what a fanny is.”
“I do so!” I growled indignantly. “It’s a buttocks.”
Just then, I felt something warm drip onto my forehead and very slowly run down between my brows. Glancing up, Jax was sitting directly above me and grinning mischievously, “Wrong.”
Frowning, I slowly put two and two together and groaned, “You’ve been hanging around Hess too long.”
“Ha! I’d like to see her do that a purpose, I would,” she smirked. “She be only a woman, after all. Now be on with it.”
On purpose? That implied…
Curiously, I glanced back up, and as our eyes met again, her grin widened knowingly. Blinking a few times, I set to with renewed purpose, and within a couple of minutes, I finally got the blasted thing out again.
Jax shivered as she watched the shiny substance form around her nails, and giving them a bit of a whiff, she lightly touched her tongue to one of them. At the contact, her eyes fluttered closed, and her expression gave every indication that she had just sampled something absolutely wonderful.
“What does it taste like?” I asked, in equal parts concern and curiosity.
Swinging down again, she wrapped me firmly against her and whispered, “Ye.”
Then she cut the webs attaching us to the branch, and we dropped. Jax shifted me into a cradle as we fell, and as her legs thudded to the soil below, she cushioned my fall so that I felt next to nothing. Wordlessly, she laid me to the ground and hurriedly began burning my bindings away.
It was then that I had a sudden… concern. “Uh, Jax… Just as a fair warning, I have been encased in this thing for a while. So, I mean…”
But before I could finish my sentence, the cocoon popped open and Jax jumped back, “Oh, Donum! NO!”
Some time later, we were stealthily making our way through the labyrinth of wood and webs with no real idea of which way to go other than forward. As we walked, an unfamiliar weight thumped against my chest, and I reached up to steady the Coin Pouch. Jax had given me her now useless waistband as a necklace, and we had attached it there.
Coming to an intersection, she cautiously looked around for a moment before glancing back at me. And then her gaze dipped. Lightly, she began to work her bottom lip with her teeth.
Covering myself self-consciously, I said, “Would you stop?”
“Can nay help it,” she replied. “It do draw the eye so.”
“It wouldn’t if you had let me keep the loincloth,” I grumped.
“Out of the question,” she pronounced with an air of finality. Then, turning back to her scouting, she asked, “Now which way?”
I sighed, “Just keep turning left. Most mazes can be solved if you keep to one direction.”
“Most?” she asked, glancing back. “How do we know if we be in one that don’t work that way?”
“In that case, we’ll end up back where we started,” I explained. Of course, that was not exactly true. But the level of bullshit required to make it not true was not something I felt we needed to consider. Not yet, anyway.
And so we went, turn by turn, occasionally backtracking but steadily progressing. We did not run into all that many beetles, although there were a few hairy moments. And interestingly, when they were converted, they even dropped Minor Rank Two Gems! Although, neither of us had the courage to actually try one. Hess had warned us that Gems of higher Rank were much more powerful, after all. Besides, my own Core was already primed for condensing, and we still had plenty of Rank Ones left… even though I had lost that Greater Gem. It had been buried in the dirt somewhere during the fight.
Curiously, what we did find was an awful lot of damage. Most everywhere we went, scarred up trees, ripped up webbing, and debris accompanied us. In particular, the webbed chute covers that the beetles liked to ambush from were quite often either punched through or ripped off entirely.
Frowning down at one, thoughtfully, I began, “Do you think…” But Jax quickly shushed me.
Holding very still, we listened intently, and for a long while, I heard nothing. Not even the chirping of birds. Just as I was about to speak, she quickly pushed me toward the bolt hole, “Inside! Quick! Something be coming!”
“What? I don’t hear anything,” I whispered fiercely as I squatted down. The hole in question sloped gradually upward and was dim and cramped enough to be a thoroughly unwelcome hiding place. But I went anyway.
“Keep going!” Jax breathed shakily as she followed me. “Far as ye can!”
I did not ask what had her so spooked. I just crawled. It turned out that this particular hole was not overly deep. Toward that back end, there was just enough room for a fairly large creature, namely a beetle, to turn around. And fortunately, nothing was in there to greet us.
“Jax, what…” I started, but she clamped a hand over my mouth and pressed me bodily against the far wall.
For a several heartbeats, nothing happened, but then I finally heard it. It was some kind of clacking noise, like two hollow blocks of wood knocking against one another. Curiously, I glanced down at her, and she nodded. I was impressed. Those long ears of hers were good for something, after all.
The sound came again, closer this time. But that was all I heard. There were no accompanying footsteps. No crashing through trees nor any other indication that something dangerous might be nearby. Jax, however, looked terrified. And when she held her breath, I knew it must have been close.
TOCK!
The sound thudded into us loud enough to be physically felt, and I would have jumped clear of my skin if I had not been so practiced at keeping still. Jax, however, jerked and clamped her hands over her ears, wincing in pain.
Brrrrooooog…
The low menacing sound, almost a purr, was deep and loud enough to be felt through my boots. And then, slowly, some kind of fleshy mass began to creep up into the tiny room with us. Jax bared her teeth and pressed her back against me, refusing to let the thing anywhere near me. Whatever it was, it began to feel around, slowly flopping around the perimeter of the room and then feeling the walls and even the ceiling.
Finally, the thing seemed to stretch, trying to reach to the very back with us. Jax pressed herself as far against me as she could, compressing the air from my lungs. The mass inched forward, quivering slightly in the air for just a moment, almost touching the hollow of Jax’s stomach. But she was sucking it in for all she was worth, and it did not quite reach.
Eventually, finding nothing, the thing zipped out of the room in a blur. Just as I dared breathe, Jax twirled around and clapped her hands to her ears again.
TOCK!
Ready for it this time, I reacted with the stoicism of a slab of granite, and Jax barely twitched. We waited, not a single breath escaping our lips for some heartbeats before finally another sound came.
Mruuu…
It almost seemed disappointed. And then, imperceptibly to me at least, it left.
We stayed there for quite some time, listening intently. For a while, I would hear it still, making that bizarre wooden sound, but then even that faded.
“What the hell was that?” I asked finally.
“I dunno,” she replied, shaking her head. “But from that noise it were making, I think we just found out what them beetles is so afeared of.”
Slowly, I grimaced. The implication was clear. If they were afraid of it, then so should we.
Several hours later, it was getting toward the late afternoon, and we had not seen a trace of whatever that thing had been. Meanwhile, Jax had just finished off another pair of vermin. It had been a particularly difficult battle. The two of them had gotten the drop on us, and when we did not have the benefit of surprise or preparation, the insects were still a significant threat. But we had the tools for the job. Even if said tools made us want to ‘celebrate’ each victory a little too enthusiastically for safety.
As I laid hands to Jax’s shoulders, gently knitting her torn flesh back together, I sighed. Not for the first time, and certainly not the last, I pondered the choices I had made that had led us to this point. Really, it had gone sideways when we had run into Hess. The fact that her skills needed her to experience various aspects of hedonism was the whole reason I had even chosen to focus on lust so heavily. And where had that led? Well… a lot of sex, of course.
But we were also becoming more powerful because of it. And I did not dislike that part. Really, I could not say that I disliked any of it. Maybe that was what was bothering me about it. It might have been a simple matter of my social upbringing, but this whole thing just felt so… wrong, somehow.
“What are ye brooding about, me Master?” Jax asked, resting her hand over my own.
I grimaced at my lack of mindfulness, “Sorry. I was just thinking.” Folding my legs crosswise, I sat next to her, “About this whole thing that we’ve been doing. Wielding lust as a weapon and all. Something about it makes me uneasy. Or… I dunno. When I think of a proper wizard, I think of hurling lightning bolts and causing fire to rain from the sky. Not… whatever the hell it is that I do.”
Jax regarded me silently for a while, thinking about how best to answer. When it came, it was quite simple, “What ye do is to wield me. I be yer weapon.”
I frowned, “I don’t like thinking of you that way. You’re not just some tool. You’re my friend. And… and more.”
“Quite a bit more, I’d say,” she quipped, nudging me with her shoulder, though I noticed a bit of an odd expression briefly pass over her face. “But that don’t change what be. Besides, nothing saying ye can nay do them things ye said. It just has to be me what be the er… conduits. Or something.”
I snorted, “Oh sure. But at this rate, it’ll probably be pink lightning that makes you come every time you shock something.”
“That sounds fun!” she laughed. Then, with a grunt, she rolled onto her knees and stood, “Come on. Up with ye. Time enough for yer funky moods when we ain’t got beetle guts all over us.”
“Practical as ever,” I said, accepting her hand. Coming to my feet with a wry grin, I tenderly ran a hand over one of her horns, “Ah, Jax. Whatever would I do without you?”
Shivering in delight from my touch, she smiled, “May as well imagine the world without air, Master.” Then her eyes widened, and blushing, she turned and started to walk away.
“Why, Jax!” I called after her, smiling grandly, “That was awfully poetic.”
“I did nay mean to say that!” she said hotly, still walking. “Got me all flustered, ye did.”
“I thought it was sweet!” I said, jogging to catch up.
“It were mush talk,” she said with her fists balled up. “Ye made me head go funny. Rubbing me horns like that?”
“I thought you liked it when I…”
Before I could finish, I abruptly felt my aura lightly brush up against something and I froze.
“Of course, I like it!” Jax growled, still in the middle of our conversation. Then, sensing that I had stopped, she started to turn around, “Be like yer touching me very… Donum? Master, ye look spooked.”
I shook my head, “I don’t know. I felt something…”
Slowly, I began to backtrack, trying to get a sense of whatever it had been. The problem was, there was no sense of direction attached to the sensation. So I had no idea which way would improve the signal.
“Can you hear anything?” I asked.
Jax shook her head uncertainly, “I hear a lot of things. But nothing nearby.”
Sighing in frustration, I started forward again, “Ah, maybe it was my imagination. The Lady knows how this damned thing is supposed to work. There isn’t even anything in the description that says I’m supposed to…” I stopped. There it was again. And stronger this time.
“Master?”
I nodded, “Yes, hold on.” Carefully, I began to lean back and forth, trying to get a sense of where was strongest. Eventually, I determined that it was coming from slightly ahead and to the right, and I started in that direction, weaving searchingly like a drunkard until I came to the edge of the path. I sighed, “Whatever it is, it’s coming from the other side of the trees here.”
Abruptly, Jax gasped, “Master, I hear…”
“Do…m…!”
I shared a glance with Jax.
That had been Hess. I was sure of it.