[Edited] Chapter 8 - Foolin' the Hooligans

Original w/ editorial notes in the attachments

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The next morning, we awoke just before the dawn to a chill wind sweeping unchecked through the plains. Combined with that storm the other day, it was clear the first vestiges of winter would be upon us within the next few weeks.

Now more than ever, I regretted our complete lack of clothes. If you have never awakened to that peculiar ache in your bones, as if your life force is being slowly drained away by the very air around you, I envy you your innocence. Of course, on being confronted with this issue, it did not take me long to realize I had made a painfully obvious mistake.

Oh, Watcher’s balls! The tarp! There had been an absolutely enormous felt tarp covering the mirror back in the Dungeon, and we had just left it sitting there .It would’ve been perfect. Just a few quick adjustments with Arx’s knife and we could have whipped up a set of crude togas in no time. Maybe even some traveling cloaks. What a bunch of absolute boobs…

I could argue that I had been so anxious to finally escape from the place it had slipped my mind. Or that I had been distracted by actual boobs, the owners of which had absolutely no desire to hide them even now, but that was no excuse. I needed to be better than that if I expected to survive.

I sighed regretfully into my cupped hands, trying to reflect some of the escaping heat onto my nose. Of course, if it came to it, we had ways of dealing with exposure related Conditions but, given my recent bout with Hypothermia, I had no desire to repeat the experience in anything but a controlled environment.

Nothing like good ol’ Mother Nature to remind you what an idiot you are. At least we remembered the rope. Arx had taken charge of it and been carrying it like a sling across her shoulders as we traveled.

Predictably, my lilim seemed totally unfazed by the weather—at least until they realized how much it was affecting me. Then they began hovering over me like a couple of mother elephants with their sole surviving calf. And unfortunately—or not, if you are a complete degenerate—we had used up what fallen branches we could find underneath the one tree in the area for the previous evening’s fire. It being long dead, the pair of them gleefully decided their only recourse was to ‘transfer body heat.’

So while we waited for the sun to come up, and hopefully cast a bit of warmth on the situation, we had formed something of a lilim sandwich. As such, I was once again pressed into intimate familiarity with Arx’s latest developments. It was not as if anything particularly surprising had happened overnight. She was simply a degree… more than she had been. Again.

She was stronger, more agile, already beginning to encroach into that inhuman physicality she had once possessed. You could feel the impossible muscularity lurking beneath the silken façade of her skin. She felt… solid in a way that most women never achieved, but you would never know it just from looking.

Her horns and hair were longer. Her face, more mature and elegant. Her gaze that much more piercing. Her lips more enticing.

Softer. Rounder. Lithe…

“Chebs…” The word escaped my lips in a pained whisper as I struggled not to lose control of myself. I could barely remember anymore why I bothered to maintain my discipline. Maeve… Hand of Mercy… give me strength.

Of course, if the two of them had their way, I would be traipsing about at full mast, 24/7, but once we actually met anyone, I certainly did not want to be saddled with an uncontrollable hard-on! It would be like middle school all over again! So with almost Herculean effort, I fought back my instinct to rise to the occasion.

Arx chuckled throatily, evidently amused by my internal struggle. “Yes, they certainly are. I think they’re bigger now than even before I was reborn! What do you think? You like it when I’m pressed against you like this?” She inhaled deeply with the question, spreading her mass against me just that bit more.

My right eye twitched, the effort not to think about it all but impossible. She had never been particularly well-stacked and, even with all the recent changes, I could have pointed toward plenty of women back on Earth with far greater assets. Like Jax, she had encroached into my personal territory of ‘just big enough.’

What was rare was how incredibly fit they were while maintaining those curves. It was as if their bodies had never heard of the toll intense cardio can have upon adipose tissue.

Fucking hell… So nicely rounded and perky… and bare. Right against my skin.

However, the question did give me pause. “Wait a minute… is that what chebs means? Breasts?”

“You mean you didn’t know?” Arx asked in surprise. “This whole time?”

Jax scowled into my shoulder. “Drat. I were hoping ye would nay cotton to that. It were cute to have ye swearing to me paps, ere and anon. Just wish it weren’t when ye was thinking about hers.”

I chuckled helplessly. As pranks went, it had been rather mild, and I did not mind a little good-natured teasing. Still, I had been saying that for a couple of weeks now! Can’t believe Jax would do that to me. She must have been rolling, the minx!

Shifting in my girl-sandwich, I turned to grasp her breast firmly in retaliation, though from her surprised gasp and the way she began arching her back to press herself all the more wantonly into my hand, I doubted she minded. “You jealous little shrew,” I needled her. “Why can’t you just be happy for her?”

“I be… I be…” she breathed, her voice quavering even as her eyes remained locked on my hand. “She be yer own. Her strength be our strength. But… I want to be stronger for ye, too, Master.”

“Oh?” I replied doubtfully, lightly jiggling my handhold. “No other reason?”

She went still at the question, her quivering falling away like an unnecessary garment. And then she looked at me. When our eyes met, I found within their shining depths a look of pure and primal desire. Absolute. And unending. She did not often let me see that. It was the deep place within her where her shadows lurked. She did not answer. She did not need to. She had made her wishes plain to me many times.

She wanted to be the blueprint. The apex. The axiom against which I compared all feminine beauty. I thought she was probably crazy, but… it might be possible. Eventually.

However, the last few nights had wrought no visible changes in her that I could see. Unless they had slowed to the point that normal people had to contend with—that humdrum, weekly glance in the mirror—it seemed her development was inexorably tied to her Layer. So we would never know her full potential until Arx caught up.

Still… for her to show me that and not have her clone shadows break loose from her? “Have you been practicing?”

A slow smile spread across her face. It was answer enough. Apparently, I was not the only one who had decided to spend the long hours on watch productively. Of course, given what I knew of how those clones came into being, I was quite curious to find out exactly how she had been practicing.

Before I could ask, though, she wordlessly flicked her gaze over to Arx, drawing my attention to my other companion, and I almost did a double take. She was staring at my hand, still grasping Jax’s breast, with the fixation of a cat at a mouse hole.

“Arx?” I prodded gently.

“Mmm?” The sound was more an automatic acknowledgment of her own name than a reply.

“She found it,” Jax whispered into my ear. “But she don’t know what it be yet, so she don’t want to break yer mood.”

“It?” I repeated curiously before the dots connected. Surprised, I turned to Arx, unthinkingly letting Jax loose. “Really? The emotion you like? You—”

“No!” she cried. “It was there! Hold her again!”

“Oh, sorry…” I muttered, taken aback, before replacing my hand.

Jax licked her lips and grinned toothily. “Ooh~ Liking this game, I be.”

However, Arx growled in frustration, “’Snails and damnation! It’s gone! Why is it different now?!”

Jax just sighed and shook her head. Covering my hand with her own, she began rubbing her breast against my palm, boldly yet nonchalantly using me to masturbate. Yet from her tone, you would think she was sipping a cup of tea. “Ah, ye poor thing. Ye be looking for something subtle-like. Master don’t take to such feelings as them ‘less he be quite comfortable. With ye. And in the moment. Ye’ll not get such while yelling at him.”

“Why is this so easy for you?” Arx whined, only scarcely taking note of Jax’s actions. “This isn’t fair!”

“Master and I was connected for weeks afore ye joined us,” Jax explained easily as she tickled her nipple with my fingers. “And what body did I have to snatch at his desire? None, says I! So it ain’t difficult to see how I got the experience. I had the time to know me preference for what it were, whenI tasted it. Ye can nay expect to learn him in a span of days.”

“But I am learning,” she protested. “I know lots of emotions now. I know when he’s happy or uncomfortable. I know confusion and frustration. I can even pick up lies most of the time. And lust? ‘Stits… I mean… it’s wonderful, but it’s so basic! Why couldn’t I have developed a taste for something like that? You’re so lucky!”

Jax shrugged even as she guided my hand down between her legs. “To that, I can nay help ye. I like what I like. As to why ye be different… Eh… What other lilim have we met to ask such?”

“None. Obviously,” Arx groaned in exasperation. “I’d never even heard of them before I met the two of you. But at least we know they must exist somewhere. That’s what Ahnbe said, right Dearest?”

I grunted in the affirmative.

“Right…” she mused thoughtfully. “If only we could find one. There are so many questions I’d like to ask.”

“Where would we look?” Jax asked, idly tucking a lock of hair behind her long, pointed ear. “Ain’t none ‘round these parts. I tell ye that sure.” Then, without missing a beat, her head descended, taking my now very erect manhood between her lips.

Arx blinked in surprise. “Hey! We were having a conversation here. And when did that happen? I was sure he was trying not to let us get to him.”

“He were,” Jax explained lightly after releasing me with a wet pop. “Naught but stubborn foolishness, that. I decided to… push him along.”

“Dammit Jax…” I moaned, “I told you not to do that!”

“You mean that thing where you can manipulate his emotions?” Arx asked curiously.

“Enhance,” Jax corrected as she came up once more. “Only enhance. Not manipulate. Anyhow, ye know ye was gonna break eventually, Master. And I were hungry from… practicing all night.”

As she descended once more, I screwed my eyes up from the pleasure of her tongue twirling about my swollen head. At least I now knew one thing.

Jax had been practicing with more than just her shadows.

*****

Sun up and lilim fed—Arx was sated by not satisfied, that emotion of hers had proved elusive—we again gathered our meager belongings and set off.

After only the few days we had traveled, I had already identified most everything with my spell, Divine Engraved Will, though I did not understand all of what I had discovered. My boots definitely had some sort of natural muffling component to their enchantment, plus something that I assumed was making them more durable. I could not be certain, of course, but that was the feeling I got from them. However, unlike Arx’s knife, there was no built-in self-repair function.

There was also Jax’s arm guards, which I had attempted to identify prior to leaving the Dungeon. I still had little clue as to their function, however after the revelation with the knife, I suspected something would happen if we could feed them a little Life Energy. They had a similar vibe to them. But as I had been doing this while Jax was asleep—and she was wearing them—I did not want to take the risk to find out.

As for the infinite Coin Pouch hanging around my neck, I already knew what it did as Arx had explained its function in some detail. So, when I had cast the spell, it had been relatively simple to associate what went with what despite the complexity of the feelings I had gotten from it.

For the most part.

It was sort of like trying to read someone else’s computer code when they had not bothered to notate anything. But with emotional feedback instead of machine logic. I could not even begin to describe that one sensation… but it haunted me. I had not even known a human being was capable of feeling that way.

Suppressing a shiver, I considered the contents of the Pouch. Besides the various assorted Gems and Coins, we had found a trio of Pills. Arx had explained they were something like my concept of potions from D&D, so I was quite interested in what their effects might be. I had only gotten to two of the three of them thus far. They were all roughly the same color of white and about the size of a pea, so when I had first started in on them, I had assumed their functions would be similar.

I was quite wrong on that front.

“Master,” Jax said in a low voice, breaking me out of my musings. Pointing, she indicated something off in the far distance. We had just crested a bit of a hill along the path, affording us a view some hundreds of paces along the way. Squinting, I could just make out what looked to be a couple of carts and horses surrounded by a number of indistinguishable humanoid shapes. They had stopped.

“What do you suppose they’re up to?” Arx wondered aloud. “They can’t be just starting out. This time of day, you’d figure a caravan would be well on its way.”

Jax grimaced. Taking a long breath, she informed us, “That be a hold up. Sure as I’m standing.”

“Bandits?” I asked sharply.

She shrugged. “Can’t say from here. Not all as take to the life be Cursed. Thieves and robbers anyway.”

My lips pulled back into a considering grimace. I was hardly the most upstanding, righteous personality, but still, I did not like the idea of doing nothing while people were being threatened. On the other hand, not liking it and actually doing something about it were two different things, especially when you are actually confronted with it. Plus, Jax had once been a Bandit, if unwillingly. It was hard to know how she would react to a situation like this.

“Any chance you might know any of them?” I asked probingly.

Jax lightly expelled a puff of air from her nose. “I wouldn’t say ‘know.’ More like to have crossed blades than that. I were under the King of the Allenwood. His territory weren’t joined to this, but it be near enough. Mayhap I met one or two in parlay.” She spat to one side before glancing at me significantly, “But I got no loyalty to such as them no more. I’d gladly carve out the heart of any what threatened ye, my Master.”

I nodded carefully, a bit put-off by her choice of words. I had not doubted her. Still, I did not want to force her to confront her own friends—particularly given what she had just said.

“Whatever you want to do, we had best do it soon,” Arx informed us. Pointing, she indicated a man in the far distance. I could not be certain from here, but it looked like he was holding a torch. However, once he tossed it into the open bed of one of the caravan carts, the fire that spread from it was all the confirmation I needed.

I grimaced again. That’s not good. “Okay…” I muttered, scrubbing my fingers over my scalp, thinking it over. “Okay… it might be too late now, but at the very least, we need to try and rescue anyone we can.”

“Those be kind down there, Master,” Jax reminded me. “Not Gobs nor Goblins. Even Abandoned of Power, such as them be a threat. Especially in numbers. We ain’t so strong yet as to swagger in with our tits out.”

I nodded, not quite sure whether she meant that literally or figuratively. Or both. Jax and Arx were stronger, faster, and tougher than any mortal could achieve on their own, and Jax at least had a few skills to back that up. But that did not mean much against a group of armed people if they were ready for us. Something as simple as a net could easily take either of them out of commission. Or half a dozen arrows. We would need strategy.

Arx growled in frustration. “‘Snails… Used to, I wouldn’t think twice about wading into a bunch of thugs like that. I’d just throw back my old hip-flask and charge! Heads would fly! Now?” she sighed, shaking her head.

I had to agree. That was old Arx. New Arx just had an arrow, a knife, and a basic load out really only designed thus far for tolerating my presence. But she had accumulated a couple of skill points over the last few days. Just traveling as we had been, we had not found the need to spend them but, seeing the threat down below, I decided it was high time we started exploring this new Class of hers. She was a Scout-type, and with a name like Elusive Siren…

“Alright, Arx,” I began…

*****

With the tall grass to cover our movements and Fortunate Shadows to camouflage us, it was not particularly difficult to sneak up on the party. Having just successfully completed their raid, the Bandits were clearly not expecting a counterattack from out of nowhere.

And they were Bandits, too. Or mostly. Some of them had other monikers instead, like [Outlaw], [Marauder], and one guy even had the title [Despoiler]. I would need to ask Jax about those, but she had at least explained that the title reflected the nature and severity of the crime they had committed. Outlaws were your basic types who had committed minor violations of the Law like theft of Gems. To be a Bandit, you had to have murdered someone for the sake of that theft. For the others, I had no idea.

By my count, there were fourteen of them—terrible odds for just the three of us. They were scattered about in twos and threes, talking amongst themselves and arguing about who would be getting what from various piles of loot they had spread out. Each of them was armed with short swords, cutlasses, or clubs. There were even a few with bows. As for armor, most had done without, however there were one or two with some leather or a simple chain shirt.

There had been three wagons, though two of them were now in the process of burning. As for the victims, there were only the three that I could see, likely the drivers for their respective wagons. I had no idea why they had ventured out here with no guards. It was like they had been serving themselves up for the slaughter. The three of them looked to be simple merchants or some other type of civilian, and were despondently sitting next to the final wagon, bound and with loose bags over their heads. They did not look injured though. They seemed to have surrendered without a fight.

Having surveyed the scene, I took a considering breath. This is gonna be tough. Still… we have a few tricks up our sleeves.

Fidgeting slightly, I rolled one said trick between my fingers. It was the pill I had yet to identify, so I was holding it back in case of emergency. I had given the other two to the lilim with instructions to swallow them once our quarry discovered our antics. We were going to try to stealth this for as long as possible, but such things rarely went to plan. I almost always had to reload my games dozens of times in order to pull off perfect stealth runs. If by some miracle it did go well, we might not even need the pills, but I was not going to hold my breath.

The first, I had given to Arx. I was not totally certain what it would do, but when I had attempted to identify it, the thing had given me the jitters… sort of like a caffeine high or a sugar rush. It was an uncomplicated feeling, but not particularly helpful in determining the pill’s function. My knee-jerk reaction was to assume it was some sort of stimulant, but I had dismissed the idea immediately. There was simply no way the Dungeon would provide a recreational drug as a drop in a chest. My next best guess was that it might help her reaction speed.

The second pill was even worse. The feedback I had gotten was most definitely pride. But for what? That was the hard part. Pride was indicative of accomplishment, but that could be any number of things. Personal growth. Defeating your enemies. Seeing your kid take a dump in the toilet for the first time. The list went on. In any case, I had given it to Jax in the vague hope it would be helpful in some way. Arx, at least, seemed confident that they would be, and that was reassuring.

Of course, Jax had not been particularly happy when I had divulged this admittedly scant knowledge during our planning session—owing to how I would have needed to obtain it—but as time was of the essence, she had yet to give me the expected earful about it. I was dreading that inevitability, but for now I put it to the back of my mind.

Besides, it was not as if the Goddess who had made the pills had ever shown any signs that She was upset by my probes into Her Will… as far as I could tell. Other than the incident with the dagger, She had not bothered to speak to me, though I had certainly felt Her presence. I could not say whether it was a sign of the degree of Her interest, or if it was simply an artifact of dealing with the divine, but for some reason, it always felt heavy.

Suppressing the desire to roll my shoulders at the memory, I sent a glance at my two companions. They were just about in position. Jax was squatted low in the grass half a dozen paces in front of me to act as my vanguard, while Arx had scurried to the other side of the wagons to flank them. I just hope that new skill of hers works as advertised. We had not spent much time in negotiating the details.

Right about then, we heard her begin, and we tensed, anticipating all hell breaking loose. However, the Bandits did not appear to notice the faint tones drifting toward them from out in the fields. I sighed in relief at that. At least that part of the skill seemed to be working… though I questioned Arx’s taste in music. Does the woman know nothing but bawdy drinking songs?

To be fair, there was something ethereal about her tone quality which befitted a Siren, but whether that was the skill working or just her trying to keep it subtle, I could not say. Still, if you actually bothered to listen to the words of the seeming lullaby she was singing, it was hard to keep a straight face—particularly when she started in with the bit about how her nipples were ‘as big as her thumb’ and ‘making dead men come’.

Shaking my head, I leaned forward, trying to determine who she was targeting. We were not entirely sure how the victim would react. To say nothing of what the effect would even do, there was always the chance it would not even work. According to Arx, effects like these were resistible, however as her Charisma was currently sitting at 9, it was unlikely a bunch of Bandits were going to have the natural Wisdom to fight her off for long.

Having a lack of Wisdom is, after all, part and parcel to a life of crime.

Soon enough, I spotted one that had decided to wander a little ways from the rest, apparently to relieve himself. However, his body was swaying as though drunk, and his head had begun bobbing to the beat of Arx’s singing. After a moment, he started stumbling out towards where she was hiding in the grass, not even bothering to pull his pants up. It was a little hard to see what happened next from where I was sitting, but abruptly, I heard the man give out a soft grunt and disappear into the grass. Several heads swung toward the muffled sound incuriously but, as there was nothing to see and no reason to suspect foul play, they quickly lost interest.

Through our connection, I felt her scuttling to a new location somewhere opposite the wagons from me and begin again. This time, the song featured ‘chirping night bugs cheerily hopping across the lady’s jugs to the amusement of all the lugs.’ It was catchy. From my vantage, I could not tell if it was working or not, however after a few moments, there was a strangled, “Uht!”

“What was that?” one of the Bandits asked. He was a wolugh—one of several races I had been introduced to on this world. They tended to be a short and squat people, rather like dwarves, except for the disproportionately large rhinoceros horn sticking out their foreheads. This individual was speaking laoi-na, however, and with a fairly thick, guttural accent. We were still within the territory of Jax’s former people though, so that made sense.

Jax glanced back at me significantly, but I shook my head. Not yet.

“What was what?” another responded, this one a green-haired laoi with a top-knot and a grating, high-pitched voice. “I didn’t hear nothin’.”

“Course you didn’t,” the first one grunted. “You was lookin’ at them dirty pictures o’ your’n again!”

“Ha! You’s just jealous o’ my Cecella.”

“She’s a whore, you git! Half the lads here’ve ‘ad a go at her.”

“You take that back, plowhead!”

While the two of them argued, Arx resumed her grim work, managing to silently pull two more unnoticed thanks to the distraction. Four down. Even at level 1, her skill, Subtle Beguilement of the Siren, was already paying dividends, and surprisingly, the name of it was quite tame—even boring—compared to the Lady’s normal fare. It was just a shame that our first idea had not panned out, but apparently, I was not unique in my inability to buy AoE’s during the Foundation Layers. Still, it would have been nice to entrance them all at once. This would have been a cake-walk then.

Just as Arx started in on her fifth, the Marauder—a huge, jaundiced looking man with his black hair pulled up into a high ponytail—suddenly shouted, “Shutting up! Shutting up! We wants to hear pretty lady singings!”

I blinked a few times at the voice, which had not at all matched up to the body of the giant it had emerged from. It was almost childish. Actually, I was not even sure what race this person belonged to, but he sort of reminded me of the Bandit King.

“What lady singings?” the wolugh said, turning to address the man in a mocking tone. “Did your last scuff with Big Tom crack your head, Binn?”

‘Binn’ did not answer immediately. He was too busy grinning like a fool and giggling. “Head feel funny…” Even as he said that, he started staggering slowly in the direction of Arx.

“Oy… where do ya think you’re going, ya lummox!”

I pulled a face. Rookie mistake, Arx. Always save the big guy for last.

Stealth games loved that little trap. They would almost always have a big, stupid guy with a huge gun somewhere in their game to wander around. He would be intimidating and dangerous, so of course, most players would want to take him out quickly. Sometimes, developers would even draw a big target on the guy’s chest. But that was just the thing. He was big. Everyone else that was nearby would notice the second he went down.

But I could not blame Arx for falling for it. In a way, she had been the big lug archetype. Stealth tactics were not in her tool kit.

Jax glanced at me again, her lips pulled taut.

I nodded to her unspoken question. Now!