Tales from a Lewd Fantasy World – Tale 6 – The Hero from Another World 3

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a man from the modern world with no particularly remarkable qualities who is invariably single, preferably unemployed or working at a dead-end job, and whose plans for the future should involve a call to a therapist and/or the suicide prevention lifeline, is transported to a fantasy land.

A fantasy land filled with ancient magic, with a variety of cultures and races, with mystery and knowledge he is completely new to.

Does the experience change him? Broaden his horizons? Make him ponder his place in the cosmos or even that the universe is actuallya cosmos?

Nope. Not at all. What it does? It is making him remember the recipe for mayonnaise.

Look, I also thought it was clever the first time around I saw it in a trashy isekai. Certainly, the desire for good food is a great motivator, as the history of the spice trade should attest to, and somebody taking advantage of such an apparently unremarkable ‘cheat power’ as knowing modern recipes to make a fortune was a breath of fresh air, but the reality is… it wouldn’t work.

For starters, most fantasy worlds won’t have anything even closely related to patent law, nor an industry to really get things off the ground and start scaling up production. But that’s the boring logistics of it when there’s another aspect that is far more interesting: the actual good food to be found.

I’m not even talking about Dungeon Meshi shenanigans (though, despite Zhandra’s admonishments, I can’t help but feel curious), but about what could be found on our own Earth. Anybody who has attended a LARPing session with a few overenthusiastic foam-wielders and a surprisingly, at times, level-headed girlfriend will have had the chance to learn that not having access to modern cooking methods and recipes doesn’t mean being unable to get good food. Heck, it doesn’t get much more primitive than a good barbeque, and the meat of cattle raised without any of the industrial methods we’re currently used to is… Well, there’s a reason some things are rather expensive to get, yet they’re still being produced.

But, also? The alternative is boring.

Think about a group of adventurers traveling into the unknown, delving through ancient ruins, and witnessing vistas not meant for mortal eyes. Think about the magic of the moment as your lungs expand, filling with the chill air of blue mountains as a red Sun crests over a sea of fog that swallows the whole world except for the peaks where griffons and dragons nest.

Let that image sink in. Allow yourself to feel the slight chill of a haze that pricks at you through thick layers of cloth, dewing on top of your cloak, the heavy fabric billowing around your ankles with swirling winds that carry powdered snow in their capricious eddies. Stand tall, on top of the known world, as your gaze travels across the azure-grey expanse of what most men will never see except from below, the ocean of clouds that only parts in lakes of shadow that lead to the world below you. And, as you just watch, listen, feel, as your cheeks sting right below your eyes with the kiss of the wind, as your muscles smolder with the fatigue of your trek…

Well, I wouldn’t want to top that with a mayo sandwich.

Would you?

I’m betting you wouldn’t. Not when you can take a handful of the berries you picked from a shrub along the way and crush them between your teeth to savor their sweet juices. Not when you can crack dried nuts and let them turn into a paste of pure flavor spreading across your tongue. Not when you can chew on a confection made with honey and ginger and let the sharp sting of it energize you and wake you back up to experience a world made sharper as fatigue washes away and dreamlike mystery remains.

Because that’s what fantasy should be: a chance to experience something else, something more. A chance to revisit the things we may have forgotten, either as individuals or as a culture. I don’t need modern recipes to enjoy this world for what it is. No, I want to eat its food, drink its drinks, and—

“Will you stop staring and just eat your damn sandwich?” Zhandra groans.

I look up from the hateful tuna and mayo thing held in my hands and over the campfire in the middle of the twilight forest’s clearing at the chiding demoness. To my right, Elena, sitting on her own folding camping chair, giggles for reasons entirely her own and surely not having to do with how she’s been looking at Zhandra and me since our first (and, so far, and despite Elena’s aggressive cuddling whenever we share a bed, last) threesome.

“Adrian, I swear, if this is yet another of your ‘fantasy land should not be like this’ rants…” Zhandra starts, rubbing her right temple as she holds the parcel of waxed paper (at least it isn’t aluminum foil) while holding her own sandwich in her left hand.

“I’m just saying, canned tuna has no place in an adventure—”

“It’s practical, you insufferable man! And really expensive, so you better appreciate the chance to eat conveniently prepared sea fishwhile out in in the middle of the woods, you ingrate, stubborn, mulish, obstinate—”

“Those last three are synonyms.”

“And I need each and every single one of them to even approach the magnitude of your hardheadedness. Bards of old would be at a loss when trying to describe how pigheaded you are. The chroniclers of the Elven Cities would ask for more and more scrolls, their inkwells running dry as they spent months just elaborating on a single aspect of how utterly intractable you become whenever things don’t work like you think they should according to what you read in cheap novels!”

I… gape at her.

Elena is silent. Though her shoulders are violently shaking.

She may be having a stroke.

“It’s just… mayo,” I finally answer with a low yet condemning mumble at the hated condiment.

And staring at the ground in front of me.

For no reason.

After a moment of silence (and Elena’s further shaking), Zhandra sighs.

“I’ll cook something properly adventurish next time,” she says.

“You will?” I ask, staring right into her purple, slitted eyes, the black surrounding the bright color as mysterious as the first time I gazed into them when we were introduced, and I kept trying to come up with a witty quip that didn’t involve hinting at my reading habits when it came to hentai—

And now she’s blushing.

Red skin darkened along her cheekbones, the pointed tips of her ears going almost black, her lips softening from the disgruntled thing she had at the start of her scolding, and…

“Will you two kiss already?” Elena asks with an almost audible eye roll.

“What?” Zhandra and I say at the same time, through sheer coincidence, and not at all because we were each lost in the other’s eyes and reacted accordingly to the interruption.

Not at all.

“Are you being serious right now?” Elena asks with a cocked eyebrow that is very much stating how utterly unimpressed she is with our play at ignorance.

“I mean… I am eating,” Zhandra comments, gesturing with her abominable tuna thing.

At least the bread is proper fantasy bread. You know: hard crust that crunches between your teeth, the white of it densely packed, almost too thick for anything to soak into, but just almost, and it softens wonderfully with any kind of sauce, almost a meal in and of itself when used to clean a dish off meat juices—

“Stop running away into your rants and help me,” Zhandra reproachfully shoots at me from the side as Elena keeps staring at her.

“You’re doing a wonderful job on your own,” I tell her, not wanting to take away her agency as a strong female character.

“You just thought something that would make me want to stab you. You have that look right now,” she says, turning back to me and away from Elena.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I tell her, defending my innocence from unfair accusations.

“I do,” Elena says, once more betraying the trust I have deposited in her innocence, cinnamon-rollness, and overall well-meaning behavior.

“He does that thing. That half-smirk with just the right side of his mouth,” Zhandra comments.

“Yes. I’m still surprised they didn’t behead him back at the palace. Vesper knows the princess was keen on the idea.”

“… You know, I would’ve liked to know that when we were deciding whether or not I should escape from that nest of vipers,” I tell her while trying very carefully not to move the right corner of my mouth.

“I thought you knew? She told you,” Elena says with honest confusion.

“I thought that was hyperbole!”

“She said, ‘Adrian, if I could get away with hanging your headless corpse from the highest tower of my palace as a warning to any uncouth visitors the gods may decide to test my temper with in the future, I would do so gleefully and swiftly.’”

“How was I supposed to know that wasn’t a joke?!”

“Just… just how many people joke about murdering you?”

I look at Elena. Then at Zhandra.

Then arch my eyebrow.

For some completely mysterious yet surely unfair reason, both of them groan.

“All right, eat your damn sandwich and get ready. It’s time I beat you up. Again,” Zhandra says, jokingly alluding to our pedagogical, entirely safe, and not at all violent spars.

Hopefully.

***

Learning how to fight is both far easier and much more complex than one would imagine. You aren’t going to reach an enlightened technique just by browsing some old tomes passed down by ancient masters of the art (which really takes a lot of fun out of the equation), and you need to develop a body awareness I don’t know if other sports really prepare you for (mostly because sports were never my thing). You also need to keep in mind a surprisingly large number of things when drilling for proper footwork, weight distribution, stance…

Except you don’t.

You really, really don’t.

What you need to do?

“Stop getting distracted,” Zhandra mutters, the smoldering campfire behind making her silhouette shimmer in oranges and reds, in gold and crimson, as she takes a tentative step forward while holding her twin cushioned sticks.

Yeah. Because practicing with real weapons is a very stupid thing to do when sparring with somebody you don’t want to kill.

So I ready my own dagger surrogate in what modern fencing calls the third parry, with the blade held at a slight angle forward, upright, almost parallel to my body’s profile. It is far longer than I always thought a dagger would be when I browsed RPG handbooks, but the right length for what historical manuals told me it should be. Basically? A dagger is quite close to what most people think a short sword is.

And then Zhandra considers I’m either appropriately ready or distracted enough that I need to be taught a lesson, and launches herself forward.

She’s fast, and the real world doesn’t work on a turn-based system, so trying to react after she’s made her move would only result in me getting stabbed painfully despite all the armor and padding.

And that’s the actual secret to learning how to fight. The thing that’s so much simpler and far more complex than any kind of intricate technique you may need to drill over and over:

You need to move.

So as soon as I see the tilt of her shoulders shifting, I jump back, restraining the energy rushing to assist my enhanced body so it doesn’t help me. Not when I’m training, when I’m learning. And that means Zhandra is that bit faster, so she finishes her step right as my rear foot lands, but before the lead one does, so she dives low to slash at my forward knee, and I barely have the time to switch from third to second parry, a flick of my wrist angling the pretend blade downward, the wood clacking solidly against her weapon despite the padding.

Because she’s let me.

Because she’s teaching me, not pushing me beyond what I can handle, beyond what I can learn from.

I discovered the difference the one time I got smug about landing a blow on her after a feint. I thought that meant I had improved enough to catch her off guard and made it obvious just how proud I felt about doing so.

And then she stopped holding back and demolished me, twin blades blurring about me faster than I could even process the stinging blows as I panicked, completely overwhelmed, and just threw my arms up to cover my face.

Then, as suddenly as it started, it ended, the flat of her left practice dagger pushing my chin up, making me look into her eyes.

Eyes that weren’t filled with vindication, or anger, or even mere satisfaction.

No, they were worried eyes.

‘Getting cocky will get you killed,’ she said.

The lesson… may not have stuck.

Because I do my best to keep up with her, with the prodding strikes that I retreat from or that I parry when they’re exaggerated enough for me to see the opening to do so. I catch a brief glimpse of Elena watching us, still sitting close to the fire with her foldable camping chair, and she’s—

I tear my eyes off golden hair blazing with the flames beside it and the white veil incapable of holding it back, and then I lean back as far as I can, Zhandra’s left dagger whizzing right in front of my chest, the white clothing of the padding seeming to ripple with the sheer speed of her attack.

“Don’t. Get. Distracted,” she says, her eyes burning in front of me with shimmering violet.

And, again, under the irritation, the annoyance, and the genuine anger… she’s worried.

“Zhandra—” I start to say, not knowing how the line will end.

But she lunges, redoubling her first attack, and I’m forced to sidestep, letting her body shoot past me in a way that should provide an opening for me to retaliate, yet somehow doesn’t.

And then she turns right back around, fully reorienting toward me before I can do the same, eating up the distance between us with a jump, step, lunge that ends with a sharp blow over my right wrist that almost makes my hand go limp.

So. I need to move.

I am heavier than her. Stronger. I should be able to just bullrush her and overwhelm her.

But that is a very bad idea against a knife-fighter.

So I sidestep once again, trying to get inside her guard, advancing as I shift our respective angles.

And I almost trip on tangled grass.

She’s right in my face before I even process the momentary loss of balance, and I can’t just lean back. I don’t have time to jump away, so I do the same thing I did against the giant demon wolf last week and drop to the ground below on my back, biting back the grunt as I fall against packed earth, and—

And Zhandra is on top of me, sitting on my chest, both blades by the sides of my neck as she looks into my eyes with something wild and scared.

“You… You used magic. You can’t kneel down faster than I can fall. That’s not how physics work,” I tell her, for lack of something else to say.

“You…” she trails off.

And kisses me.

The padding of her practice weapons holds me in place as she does so, her far too agile body just curving down to kiss me over the crossed wood.

And she once again fills my world with cinnamon and black pepper as her tongue slithers into my mouth, seeking my own, dragging it up into her mouth.

I let go of my own weapon and wrap my arms around her, holding her, pulling her down to me until her leather armor rests against my chainmail in a way that makes me imagine I can still feel the warmth of her body despite our forced distance, despite being too protected from one another to be as close as we should be.

And then she lets go, her lips parting from mine, and her glowing eyes take the place of cinnamon.

“You… Don’t. Don’t do this to me. Please,” she begs.

I lift my right hand to brush her bangs aside futilely, the dark hair falling back into place as soon as my fingers run past it to cradle her cheek and feel the warmth and softness that was promised and our armors held back from us.

“I don’t understand,” I tell her with my best apologetic, rueful smile.

And she chuckles.

Which, as far as I am concerned, is one of the best outcomes I could’ve gotten out of this interaction.

“This. This… thing. Losing control, allowing yourself to be pushed around, allowing me to dictate the pace of the fight, not even countering or striking… It will get you killed, Adrian. It will get you killed in front of me.”

“I… I thought you said—”

“Power makes up for a lot of things. And you have a lotof power. But… you aren’t using it right. Not like I thought you would.”

I can feel the eyebrow raise on its own.

“I don’t understand,” I tell her, yet with not a hint of an apology and, in fact, with quite a bit of annoyance.

Which, for some reason, makes her snort and drop her fake blades before she sits up and looks down at me past her bust and crossed arms.

“Let’s start with your choice of weapon—”

“Daggers are lethal, uncomplicated, versatile, and really, reallygood at pushing through armor. A rondel dagger will go through chainmail like it isn’t even there and will punch through solid steel plate without too much issue with a hammer strike—”

“What do you think about whips?” she says, rudely and inconsiderately cutting me off in the middle of my erudite exposition.

“What?”

“Whips. What do you think about whips as weapons?”

I look at her like she was dropped on her head as a baby. For some reason, Elena giggles from her spot in the fireplace behind me.

“They are stupid. Unwieldy, slow, they would telegraph the blow long before it would reach you at the distance they are supposed to work in, they are impossible to use in close quarters, and they are basically useless as anything other than BDSM paraphernalia.”

Elena stops giggling. I would rather not look to see if it’s because she’s blushing, because some things must be preserved, and the wholesome image of the priestess inhabiting my mind is one of them.

Yes, even if she wears a robe with twin slits up her thighs that quite frequently dispel any mystery about her preferences in underwear or lack thereof.

(Leotards. She wears white, skin-tight leotards. High-cut, skin-tight leotards. And she claims it is standard fare for adventuring priestesses because it’s practical.)

Zhandra is cocking her eyebrow in a way I’m pretty sure she’s copied from me.

It’s doing things to me.

Then, for some mysterious reason that has absolutely nothing to do with the complicated look she shoots Elena’s way, she sighs and recocks the eyebrow.

“And what if I told you I once met a shy, mousy girl who could slash through chainmail with a whip?”

I… blink at her.

“… Is this one of those things where you realize I’m not from around here and tell me something you think should’ve been obvious from the very start?” I tell her.

For another mysterious reason, the eyebrow drops, and the tips of her ears darken once more.

…

It also does things to me.

Look, it’s not my fault. I’ve got an actual sex demoness sitting on top of me, wearing that stupidly unpractical leather armor that hugs her curves all too closely when armor is all about deflecting strikes, and so should never be body conforming, and… and…

I don’t know where I was going with this.

I blame the leather-covered boobs.

“I… When I asked you what you wanted me to teach you, and you started rambling about daggers being so practical… I…” she says, looking utterly lost.

And then Elena kneels beside my head, softly patting my hair as she smiles down at me and then at the girl for whom ‘blushing scarlet’ can never be hyperbole.

And who’s currently blushing scarlet.

“What Zhandra is trying to say is that… You have magic. You have power, Adrian, and… And that’s the wrong word. Because you don’t have magic: you are magic. It springs from your soul and will always be colored by it, by your deepest self. So, practical concerns are all well and good for most people, but when you add that in? There are other things. More important things. And remaining true to yourself is chief among them,” she says, gentle, azure eyes looking down into mine.

And then she looks up, stares at the girl sitting on top of me, and kisses Zhandra with a brief, soft brush of their lips that makes my heart clench.

“Huh?” both the demoness and I say.

“Practice what you preach?” she says with a shrug, a cute dusting of pink over her cheeks, and an adorably shy smile.

…

I think that, at this point, stating that it does things to me would be rather redundant.

…

It does things to me.

“Are you…?” Zhandra asks me, her eyes glowing a tad brighter.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I immediately reply.

“You do. You most certainly do,” she says, glaring down at me, once more crossing her arms under very prominent breasts.

“What—” Elena starts to ask.

“He’s horny! I waltz in front of him, swaying my hips left to right in the most unpractical way I can manage, and that gets me, at most, a trickle of lust. But you show me a bit of tender—uh. I mean. You know,” she says, trailing off as her eyes meet those of the priestess.

And the tips of her ears are once more almost black, while Elena’s smile is radiant enough that the two of them become a contrast in light and shadow.

So I grab Zhandra’s ass (the very same she just admitted to teasing me with for long, agonizingly long, hours of trekking, so it’s fair game as far as I’m concerned) and push her up so she loses her balance and ends up crashing against Elena.

There’s some yelping, some flailing, and, suddenly, my head is somehow ensconced between two sets of thighs, one of which is almost yet not quite covered by two flaps of pristinely white cloth trimmed with blue embroidery while the other leaves a stretch of red flesh free between leather boots and elastic shorts beneath stripes of hard leather that act like the world’s skimpiest fauld.

Not a bad place to be in, all things considered.

I mean, I’ve got a twig trying to stab the back of my head, and there’s a sharp pebble getting intimately acquainted with my right kidney, but, overall? Ten out of ten. Would trip up my Sapphic teammates again.

“Adrian!” Zhandra yells my name, yet not in the way she should while my head is tightly pressed between the ridiculously supple inside of her thighs.

Like, seriously, she’s got a muscle tone to rival professional athletes. She shouldn’t be this soft.

“Zhandra!” Elena calls out from below the demoness, yet in a way she shouldn’t while the two of them are clothed.

… I’m starting to think that, between the literal sex demon, the isekaied man used to modern pornography, and the actual priestess, the one we should be most wary of is not any of the two most likely suspects.

“You two!” I yell, just because I don’t like feeling left out.

For some reason known only to minds steeped in the influence of Hell itself, Zhandra maneuvers to knee me in the solar plexus.

And, despite the chainmail and the padding beneath it making sure the armor doesn’t turn my skin into something resembling grated cheese, I wheeze out something distinctly unheroic, much less Goddess-chosen.

“All right, that is enough,” she says as she scrambles to get up and drags Elena into a sitting position, with both of them kneeling by my left side. “You’re gonna get it through your thick skull that you need to pick up a fighting style and weapon that suit you, and you will stop doing the kind of things you did in that thrice-damned cave, and—”

“I liked the cave. And what happened in it,” Elena interrupts.

And…

Oh. Damn it.

She’s blushing. Fiercely and intensely, in a way that almost makes me worried for her health. But she’s also staring at Zhandra with an edge of defiance that I wouldn’t expect from her.

Except that is a lie.

Because I know Elena, at least as much as I can know somebody after only months of being acquainted, and in those months… She has been many things.

She has been gentle, and caring, and smart, yes. And she almost never raises her tone for anything, not when a kind word or some deference may diffuse the situation.

But, when she fights on behalf of others? For something she believes is right?

Then another side of her comes out. The side of her that convinced me to take her with me to fight monsters, to risk her life beside me despite all my misgivings.

The part of her that is now looking at Zhandra.

“Elena, the demon—” Zhandra starts.

“The demon bit Adrian. It didn’t bite you, nor me, and we both know precisely what happened in there and what hasn’t happened ever since.”

“I—”

“It wasn’t a sin,” Elena says with as much vehemence as I’ve ever heard from her.

And Zhandra looks lost, her eyes wavering between the blonde and me, her lips moving in the start of words that remain silent.

And I sit up.

Then, as solemnly and gravely as I can, I grab the backs of their heads and push them together.

“Now, kiss,” I utter the sacred words.

Both girls turn in my grasp, their cheeks pressed against one another, and one glares at me while the other blinks in confusion.

“Is this… another one of your traditions from Earth?” Elena asks.

“Yes. It’s called the comic relief. It consists of making tasteless jokes that break the tension of a dramatic moment, drag down the narrative, and make the audience despise the character doing it.”

Zhandra blinks.

Then laughs.

“It suits you well,” she says.

“Thanks. I also think so,” I answer.

And then I lean forward and kiss her.

I hug the two of them, pressing their bodies against my chest and one another, my hands going from their heads to their napes, and my lips are pushed against Zhandra’s all the while as she all but melts against me.

Then, with literally heroic willpower, as I am a hero and that is, by definition, the only kind of willpower I can exert, I pull away to look into glowing, violet eyes surrounded by inky darkness.

“It wasn’t a sin. It isn’t a sin. And I’m tired of acting like a high school boy unable to handle his own feelings. Zhandra: I—”

She looks at me, her lips still open, still glossy with our last exchange, and I try to take in all of her. Her beauty, her wit, her courage, her…

Her.

I take a deep breath to steady myself. To do this right. To try to at least approach what she deserves from me, from this moment, from the one thing this woman knows has never happened to her, not when she knows intimately well how all her other relationships went, how lust and nothing else drove all her former lovers, the thought angering me beyond what I ever thought it would.

And I…

I look sideways at Elena, who’s looking at me with the purest, brightest, most encouraging smile I’ve ever seen.

And the burst of gratitude I feel for her at this moment is only overshadowed by the need to tell Zhandra that…

“You’re an amazing woman. You’re smart, and sharp, and fun to be around, and I had to force myself to slow down and not call you a friend from the very start, because I’ve messed up too many past relationships by rushing into things. And I… I used to be more open, until I learned not to be, but with you… With every day that we spend together, I learn to open back up. I learn that there are people who are worth the risk, who give so muchback, and… And I want to give you everything I can. Not because you deserve it, even if you do, especially because you do, but because…”

I look at her.

At violet eyes shimmering with an inner light most can’t see without years of training as her magic, her soul is brought to the surface. As she stares at me with her sight, the one given to her by her lineage. The one that lets her know I’m not lying if I claim this is something other than a lust-fueled, schoolboy crush.

“Because?” she whispers with a voice that’s rough enough that it makes my heart clench in sympathy.

“Because I love you,” I finally say with no more fanfare. No grand declarations. Just… Just the right, simple words that shouldn’t have taken this much work to be dragged out into the light.

The words that seem to echo through this small forest clearing, accompanied by a chorus of susurrations from the wind-swayed branches.

And, as something inside her eyes shatters and I see the young woman more open and vulnerable than I ever thought she would be…

Something else shatters inside of me.

Magic pools in my chest, roaring, demanding my attention as it surges forth, as it tears down things I rarely noticed, things that I thought were the natural pathways of my channels, even if they swirled and stopped the flow of my magic, forcing me to focus harder than I now know I should.

And… I can feel it. Right over my breastbone, in the middle of it.

I can feel my heart opening and magic pouring forth.

But it still stalls. Still gets drawn into shallow pools to become stagnant.

And it doesn’t matter.

None of it matters.

Not when my world hangs in the balance, in waiting for an answer I think I know but still need.

Gentle, crimson fingers that should be calloused with blade work and training yet remain as tender as any part of her rise to my face, tracing lines I never cared to explore as she draws me with her touch.

As violet eyes hold me in place. Together.

And she leans forward, her fingertips over the edge of my beard, her thumbs below my cheekbones, pulling me down so she can lean her forehead on mine as her eyes close, and a soft, marveled smile blooms on lips that still taste like mine.

“I love you too,” she whispers, yet with none of the roughness from earlier.

And I…

I pull her closer to me, my arms wrapped around her shoulders, holding her tight enough that we tremble.

And then Elena hugs us both.

“I… I am so proud,” she says with happy tears in her voice staggering the enthusiastic words.

And I kiss her.

She lets out a surprised, muffled cry that I swallow hungrily as I lean forward and over her, my arm around her going to her lower back so I can dip her as her hold on my neck gets stronger with the fear of falling back.

An unfounded fear.

Because I’m not letting her go.

Not as long as she doesn’t ask me to.

And then Zhandra slithers inside my hug, and I can feel the softest, short black hair in the world brushing past my cheek as she dives down to kiss Elena’s neck while I keep kissing her lips, peppering them with quick pecks that mingle with the flavor of salt pouring from her eyes until she gasps and I take the opening to enter her, to taste her tongue with mine.

She’s lying back on the wild grass of this clearing, her white veil spread below her and her golden hair shining atop it with the dim light of the late evening. Her eyes are closed, depriving me of their azure light, but her hands are digging into the back of my head, and the soft sounds she makes in my mouth make my blood roar.

Zhandra keeps licking her neck, stopping only to tease her left ear, to nibble on it, to shove her tongue inside her ear canal, and make the taller girl squirm below us.

And I’m getting really tired of this stupid chainmail.

So I pull back, my thighs straddling Elena’s like Zhandra straddled my chest a moment ago, and I undo my belt so that the metal cascades down my body, its full weight resting on my shoulders before I pull it up and off, once more marveling at the intricate craftsmanship that makes the armor flow like quicksilver. But then Elena opens her eyes, and she… she devours the sight of me undressing above her.

And the armor’s craftsmanship is quickly forgotten.

Because feeling desired like this? Feeling wanted by a woman like her?

It’s too much of a rush for me to contemplate anything else.

So the fire crackles behind her, the low flames barely licking above the protective stone circle laid around them, and the grass rustles in a sudden breeze. The world goes on around us.

But it doesn’t matter.

Not when Zhandra shoots me a quick grin before deliberately tracing a single line with her finger below Elena’s bust, the fabric tightening against the generous curves as Elena bites her lip and tries to look at our ruddy companion before she’s forced to close her eyes once again by a deft tongue resuming its work inside her sensitive ear.

And definitely not when she opens back her all too blue eyes and looks at my hands undoing the buttons on the side of my padded jacket, the white piece of clothing cut in a way quite similar to a fencing jacket.

The collar and the first three buttons are undone, and the flap falls down to reveal the thin shirt sticking to sweaty skin below it, the linen clinging to me in revealing transparency.

And Elena, sweet, wonderful, kind Elena writhing under Zhandra’s touch… reddens as she stares at the insinuation of my muscles, her throat bobbing as she hesitatingly grabs her right breast, softly palming it and barely squeezing, just making the soft flesh move in a wide, hypnotic circle under my own eyes.

Then I look at hers, and she smiles.

And stops moving.

Zhandra is also looking at me, expectantly, her face nuzzled against the crook of Elena’s neck.

And when I undo the next button, they both move.

So I keep opening the line at the side of my jacket, and Elena keeps massaging her breast as Zhandra keeps kissing and teasing her until her errant hand goes to the lonely left breast of the blonde, rhythmically squeezing it rather than moving it up and down, making her let out soft, pitiful moans as her blue eyes beg me to hurry.

So I don’t.

I drag it out, the buttons coming off slower and slower without ever stopping, barely sliding out of the slits with a push of my thumb so that more of my body is revealed in staggered angles of the now loose flap.

Her breathing is ragged, quick, and her eyes are as wide as her cheeks are red. Her mouth is open in something slack and surprised.

And Zhandra, by her side, between kisses and nibbles, smiles in a way that manages to be both impish and tender.

I would like to drag this out even more. To tease her for hours with increasingly more intimate acts, but… But her body is soft beneath me, and Zhandra is beside her, being Zhandra, so my erection is way past the point where self-control is a notion I’m willing to entertain.

I stand up, straddling them, and both their eyes fly to the very apparent tent in my pants as I shrug off my jacket and let it slide down my arms to fall down behind me.

Then I look at Zhandra with an eyebrow cocked, and she takes a moment to blink at me before her smile turns into a smirk.

“Wha—Zhandra!” Elena protests.

But she doesn’t move.

And so red fingers travel up the sides of the priestess’ body, undoing unseen clasps hidden along the blue line that continues the slits that often tease me with thighs soft enough to sink my fingers into. And, soon, Elena is below me in just her white leotard.

A leotard stretched thin around her body, a leotard that is tented by her hard nipples, pulled taut around her belly, and darkened with wetness against her sex.

I bite my lip, feeling something dark and warm rise up at the sight of her, defenseless and held down below me.

And then I undo the buttons holding my pants closed. Because, of all the weirdly anachronistic things I keep finding in this world, zippers are apparently a line too far.

I step to Elena’s right, and I drop down both my pants and underwear before I remember to untuck the first from my high boots, and I take those off as well.

Then, because I’m not a savage, I take off my socks. Something I’m sure is impossible to do while remaining sexy and alluring, but that still needs to be done to avoid worse outcomes than an anticlimactic finish to my improvised striptease.

And then… I kneel between Elena’s thighs.

“I…” I meet her eyes. Her blue, wide, almost scared eyes. And I force myself to continue. “I owe you a lot. Not because of what you’ve done for me. Not even for all the times you’ve fought beside me, literally saving my life. No, I owe you… because you’re you. Because… you’re a better person than I thought I would meet. Because you’re beautiful, but… I… I’m likely making a mess of this, but it’s not even that you’re pretty, that your hair shines in a way that makes me wax poetic about sun and gold, that your body is enough to distract me even from Zhandra’s—”

“Oi.”

“Shut up. I’ve caught you looking often enough.”

“I mean…” The demoness looks at me, and then, with a feline smirk, squeezes Elena’s breast in a way that’s both possessive and boastful, proving once again that at least some stereotypes about demons are accurate.

“I… you…” Elena tries to say, looking from me to Zhandra and back again, her eyes straying to the hand teasing her and my cock pointing upward between her legs even as she tries to meet our eyes, and her breathing grows even more erratic.

So I…

I lean forward, my hands resting on her bare thighs, my face hovering over the body spread below me.

“What I mean to say is that it’s you that is beautiful. That… I used to think souls didn’t exist, but if I’d met you back on Earth? Even without all the magic, the gods, the demons? If I had seen you, talked to you, and gotten to know you? That would’ve been enough. That would’ve been enough for me to believe in souls, Elena, because yours is so beautiful that it shines through you in everything you do.”

She lets go of her breast, and her fingers reach my cheek, caressing me, digging past the stiff hairs of my beard until I meet her eyes once again and see the renewed tears and the incredulous smile.

“Thank you,” she says. “Thank you for showing me this side of you.”

And…

And magic surges.

My heart opens further.

And I don’t guide it: it guides me.

“I love you,” I say, the words definitive and absolute. “I love you, and I will show you how much. I will devote myself to your happiness, to your—to our future. And… both of you. I love you both, and I never even thought that was possible, but now I don’t think it’s possible not to, and—”

“You’re rambling,” Zhandra says, kneeling by my side, holding Elena’s hand in her own as she cradles my other cheek, the one Elena isn’t caressing.

“Can you blame me?” I tell her with an insecure smile that she answers with her own doubts, fears, and happiness.

“No. I’ve often tried, yet I keep failing to,” she says, a bit of laughter and wit in her tone.

And then she kisses me. Softly, tenderly, and briefly.

But when I open my eyes… She holds them long enough I lose track of time.

Well, at least until Elena drags me into a long, passionate kiss that leaves both of us panting for breath.

“You can’t…” she says, eyes wide, hands holding my face in place more ineffectually than them. “You can’t… do this. You can’t tease me, and turn me into a lust-addled mess that only wants to be ridden into unconsciousness and then hit me with that. You can’t say all those… those beautiful,wonderful things I kept hoping to hear just a hint of and then ignore me. You… you impossible man!”

“I keep telling you—” Zhandra says, smug dripping off her tone.

“And you! You! You play with my body, and murmur sweet nothings in my ear, and… and… and you’re making my head swim. I keep imagining you and all the things you could do to me, all the ways that day in the cave could’ve gone differently, even if it was perfect, but then I managed to get you all three in bed to ‘save money,’ and you two went right to sleep while I melted between you! Do you have the slightest idea how frustrating it’s been to watch you tiptoe around the foregone conclusion of you being stupidly in love since months before you even dared acknowledge that—”

“I love you,” Zhandra says.

“W—what?”

“I—okay, this is embarrassing, but… What Adrian said? I can’t put things any better. You are… you are astonishing. And part of me realizes this is just me being far too used to rejection and clinging to the one holy woman who has shown me even a bit of acceptance, but you are all those things he said. You’re kind, and gentle, and brave, and—”

And Elena kisses her.

Enthusiastically.

So much, in fact, that they topple to the grass below, Elena on top of Zhandra as the leotard-clad priestess straddles the demoness, silencing frantic noises with even more frantic kisses as she pulls at dark hair to keep the other woman from pulling apart. Away.

And…

All the emotional openness aside? All the deep revelations about what was holding me back, what made my magic be far above what any untrained person should have yet still be underwhelming for what a Goddess-touched hero should wield? All the deeply felt confessions that shouldn’t have been this hard to tell to the two women that I have pledged my life to since we three fled from the royal family?

There’s a very sexy woman I love making out with another stunningly attractive woman I love below me, and Elena’s ass is moving side to side in a way she must’ve copied from Zhandra, because there’s no way that is sheer instinct, even if the noises they are making tend toward something feral.

And I’m kneeling behind said ass.

So I swallow a large mouthful of saliva, pull the thin stretch of white fabric wetly clinging to Elena’s sex aside, and grab my cock.

Then Elena goes suddenly still, her back arched as her soft behind presses against my palm.

And I… Push forward.

She throws her head back as soon as I make contact, mewling in a way that makes goosebumps rise across my back, and then she pushes back, her wet heat spreading over my tip, pushing down my shaft as she rhythmically contracts, never slowing down until she reaches my hand still holding my cock to unnecessarily point it toward her.

Zhandra is looking at me from below our teammate, her hair disheveled and her cheeks as dark as I’ve ever seen them. And she smiles at me.

So I let go of my cock, grab Elena’s hips right below the high cut of her leotard, and pull her to me.

And I don’t stop until I’m pressing against her ass, the soft curves molding to my hips, the opening of her pussy tightening around the root of my cock.

Zhandra looks at me, biting her lip, and Elena’s head is resting atop the leather breastplate of the demoness, her veil spread over her left shoulder, stray locks of blonde hair lying flat across her cheek as she gapes, her eyes unfocused as she just breathes loudly and quickly.

“Do her. Do her as hard as she deserves,” Zhandra says, making Elena’s eyes go wider in what could be either panic or anticipation.

But before she can confirm one way or the other, Zhandra grabs her cheeks and drags her up into a kiss every bit as passionate as the one the priestess assaulted her with a moment ago.

So I, like the very wise man I am, do what my girlfriend tells me to do.

And fuck Elena as hard as I can.

Her whole body shakes below me at my first thrust, her back writhing when I stop and press her down against Zhandra, but that’s just the start, and…

And I can feel the magic.

Mine and Elena’s.

Because if… if it’s my soul? If it answers to me being true to myself?

I guess hers does the same thing.

And so I feel her pull, that of her body and of something else, and I have to make an effort to drag myself away, even if it’s just to push right back in as she moans something muffled by Zhandra’s mouth.

Then I do it again, and we flow as we crash, as she regains enough sense to push back against me, to raise her hips and twist them around me as she anticipates the next time I’ll bottom out inside of her body, the next time the force of my thrust will make her cheeks clap and ripple even as she strains to get on all fours on top of Zhandra, the demoness making her struggle all that much harder with roaming hands and lips, with giggles that sound as sweet as Elena’s moans when her lips are momentarily freed, and she wordlessly pleads for us to keep going, or stop, or both.

Zhandra pulls off the white veil and throws it away, the white, thin cloth rippling and seeming to fly away over the dark green grass as blonde, golden hair spreads free over a pale back that is shown to me through a leotard made transparent by sweat and passion.

And then I almost lose my mind.

So I lean forward, over Elena’s body, my chest pressing against her shoulder blades as I keep ramming my cock in and out of her to the rhythm of her grunts and moans, and, despite the lust burning my thoughts before they can become words, I look straight into Zhandra’s violet eyes as they blaze bright enough that I don’t need magic to see their glow.

She rushes up to meet my lips, to kiss me, to have her tongue drag a pointed, agile tip down the middle of mine.

I close my lips around it, keeping it in my mouth, unwilling to let her go even as I lengthen my strokes inside Elena’s body until the blonde collapses below me, her hips still pointing up as her breasts crash back against Zhandra’s.

And then… Then Zhandra pulls away, a brief pang of something sharply disappointed stabbing my chest before I see her smile, her incredulous, warm smile.

“Not a sin,” she whispers as it widens.

And she vanishes.

It takes me a brief moment of incredulous blinking before her legs slide out from beneath Elena, and then her plush, red things wrap around the blonde’s head from below her, a matching hand pulling blonde hair down right as I warm, wet breath washes over my testicles and soft, short black hair brushes against the inside of my thighs.

I swallow yet again, incredulous at what is happening until Zhandra kisses my balls, sliding one of them inside her mouth to play with it with her tongue before letting me go with a wet, slurping sound that sends shivers up my spine before I feel her move in a way that assures me she’s now treating Elena to something quite similar, if the way her back trembles beneath my chest is at all indicative of it.

And the priestess has always been kind to a fault. Generous and giving.

So she dives back down against Zhandra’s offered sex, and the demoness’ thighs twitch before spreading open as Elena’s head moves with purpose and enthusiasm.

So, while my lovers engage in some reciprocal oral loving, I… I…

I could really just lean back and stare. Take in all the beauty of the two women being as loving with one another as they deserve someone to be with them.

But I don’t.

Maybe because I’m selfish. Maybe because I don’t want to ever feel like they could leave me behind. Maybe because I want to give them as much as I can, not just merely take.

Or maybe because magic pulses in my chest and guides me to tell the women below me that I desire them. That I’m tired of denying it. That there’s no valid reason for me to do so.

Not with them.

So I move languidly, in and out of Elena, briefly pulling out and holding still so that Zhandra can kiss my tip, can wrap her soft lips around my head and suck on me, licking away both mine and Elena’s juices until the blonde whines in wordless protest so that Zhandra lets me go, and I go back inside her pulsing, tight sex.

And then I move that bit harder, that bit faster, making Elena throw her head back to moan before she turns around to look for my lips. To kiss me hungrily and desperately until Zhandra wraps long, golden hair around her wrist and pulls her back down so she can eat her out while receiving my cock.

I move fast now, my clash against Elena’s behind audible, seeming to echo across the forest clearing, and Zhandra turns her head aside to kiss the inside of my thigh before rushing back to attending Elena as the blond grabs at the grass below her and tears it up, roots dangling from her clenched fingers as dark earth crumbles and falls from them.

I do it hard, with strength I never had before coming to this world, and Zhandra’s thighs twitch before her hips lift off the ground, pushing Elena’s face up so I can kiss her cheek, lick her ear, discover the trace of burning cinnamon Zhandra left behind for me when she licked the same ear earlier.

And then, inevitably…

“I’m going to—”

“Inside!” Elena manages, speaking for the first time since I entered her, her voice not quite muffled by Zhandra’s sex. “Inside me!”

“I—”

“Potions! Been taking them!”

“Since when—”

“Cave! Kept! Hoping!”

I… I stop, pressed as deep inside of her as I can, but too astonished to move.

And Elena manages to turn around and look at me with a happy smile that is only disheveled enough to look even more radiant even while framed by the shimmering juices of Zhandra’s pussy.

“Do it. Do it, Adrian. Do what I kept wanting you to do,” she pleads.

So I kiss her lips and taste Zhandra on her before pushing up, going upright on my knees as I grab her hips and hold her in place before I ram myself yet again inside of her body.

She lets out something keening, and Zhandra hurries to pull her head back down in a way that would make me chuckle if I wasn’t about to burst, about to fill the blonde with what she’s asked me to give her.

And so, I hold her steady as I hammer away at her, and each time I bottom out, our flesh claps together, and the muscles on her back tighten under taut, translucent fabric.

Then I…

I throw my head back, eyes clenched shut as I feel her heat enveloping me, pulling at me, demanding from me, and I give her what she wants.

I roar as the orgasm travels across and through me, as I feel the liquid fire burst out, almost painful in its intensity as I feel my cock pulse with every new jet of seed I pour inside the beautiful woman below me, inside my lover, inside my friend, inside…

Elena.

So I shudder, barely moving back and forth as my body refuses to listen, and I can just hold onto her and wait for it to pass, for the overwhelming climax to stop wrecking my mind.

And it’s only when it’s almost over, when a weak spurt flows from me to her, that I can open my eyes and see her lying lifeless below me, on top of an equally unmoving Zhandra.

I manage to pull away even if I don’t know even how or why, but, right as my cock slides out of her body, as cool air replaces searing heat…

Zhandra grabs me.

Her hand is firm around my base, and I have to blink before I look down, past Elena’s reddened ass, to see glowing, violet eyes looking up at me with something almost like madness in them before she pulls me down and into her mouth and she moans around me, sucking as hard as she can until she coaxes one last burst of semen out of me that she takes on her tongue, swirling it around my head before sliding me past tightly clenched lips that seem to leave behind no trace of my seed or Elena’s juices, only the shine of Zhandra’s saliva.

So I fall back on my heels, just… looking.

At them.

Zhandra smiles at me with tenderness and something else before she leans back down to lay soft, slow kisses on Elena’s sex that seem to always coincide with a twitch of the blonde’s hips, even as they space out and diminish in magnitude until both women are just lying in front of me, exhausted and spent.

And I…

I force myself to crawl forward and lie by their side on grass that has suffered through our exploration of each other’s bodies, and then I slide one arm under Zhandra’s surprisingly unclothed waist and the other over Elena’s leotard-clad back.

I could drift to sleep just like this, unwise as it may be while naked, drenched in sweat, and in the middle of a cool forest that will only get colder after nightfall. I really, really, could, and I do, in fact, want to.

But there’s just one thing I want more.

“Elena?” I say.

“Hmphrrm?” she, more or less, answers.

“You never said it.”

“Raaaphhhh?”

“You never said that you love us.”

It takes just a moment.

And then, the exhausted, sated, disheveled woman jumps up in a panic, barely managing to sit beside Zhandra’s blinking head before she looks at each of us in turn.

“I… I didn’t?” she says.

Zhandra and I exchange a look that promises shared enjoyment of a flustered blonde before we turn to her with twin, bright, entirely innocent smiles.

“Nope. My feelings are hurt, you know? I just bared my heart to you and all that,” the demoness says.

“And it took me so much courage to do so,” I add.

“Ah…” Elena says, the red flush on her cheeks maybe not just due to her last orgasm.

“Really, after everything we went through—” I continue.

“Are you sure I didn’t say anything?” she all but pleads, her hands wringing on top of her currently pink lap.

“Nothing at all,” Zhandra says. “You were so busy begging for Adrian’s dick that you forgot about his heart.”

“Really, I am as flattered as I am wounded,” I add, because if there’s something I’ve learned from Zhandra is to ruthlessly exploit any openings she provides for me.

“Ah. You mean you didn’t understand what I meant when I left my entire life behind to travel the world with you two, fight monsters by your side, patiently wait for you to feel comfortable with expressing what you obviously felt, and finally made love to you two then begged to share your bed ever since? That’s what you mean when you say I didn’t tell you I love you, isn’t it?” Elena says, a masterfully arched eyebrow signaling the end of what sounds like both a heartfelt confession and a chiding lecture.

I lick suddenly dry lips and look down at Zhandra.

Who looks back at me with, I think, about the same rising panic as I’m currently feeling.

And then… Elena laughs.

“I love you. Of course I love you, you impossibly stubborn, brave, and beautiful fools,” she says.

And then Zhandra and I laugh first in relief and then in joy.

We spend the rest of the evening cuddling on a pile of blankets, naked beneath the last one, just… just touching one another, sharing the feeling of our bodies just to be sure the others are there.

By our side.

And, beneath stars brighter than any that could be seen over a modern city, under a sky so clear that the entire forest around us is bathed in silver, that Zhandra’s red skin and Elena’s pale face are turned into glowing contours to my new eyes…

I smile.

And my magic… My heart beats. Freer and more open than it has been in years.