72. The Next Steps

Consciousness returns to you slowly, sense by sense. Heat, pressed against your chest and belly, weighing you down with pleasant comfort. Something tickling against your nostrils with every breath. The slow draw and push of twin breaths, acting in sync; one raspy, the other soft. The faint yet pervasive scent of sex, not unpleasant.

The snik of your eyes opening is almost sacrilegious in the all encompassing peace of this space. A deeper exhale moves your breathing to a different rhythm and blows a few locks of fading red hair away from your nose. The warmth moves against you, shifting and letting out a murmur of protest.

It's so tempting to let sleep drag you back in, but you force yourself to resist. You owe your followers, your friends, an explanation.

Also, not to put too fine a point on it, you never got around to washing yourself upon your return. Someone, likely Amanda, seems to have rubbed you down with a damp rag while you slept and so it's not as bad as it could be, but every shift of scale on flesh is producing an uncomfortable itching where dried blood has begun to flake away.

The problem is only exacerbated as you shift away from Amanda's body. The blood between you has sealed you together as it dried, and an audible crunch accompanies the most disgusting sensation. Like pealing your skin off by accident.

It's enough to wake the once-redhead with a cry of surprise. She rounds on you, hands coming up as if to ward off the unseen threat and clutching the same leather and bone fetish she used to light the room before you slept. The cord is wrapped around her wrist as light spills forth, the same strange green colour as before. It takes her a moment to realise what has happened, but then her face wrinkles.

“That's foul, Red Scale.”

You shrug, unapologetic. “I'm not the one who just slept with me.”

Her face scrunches even more, but you speak again before she can retort. “I'm going to clean myself up, and then I need to speak to everyone. I'll see you at the Tavern in half an hour?”

She nods, but her attention is mostly on her own back – one questing hand returns with a thin sheet of dry blood an inch across and she goes a little green.

“On second thought, why don't you go and clean yourself up, and I'll be down in a few?”

That gets her up and moving, barely pausing to throw her robes on on her way down the stairs. You take the few moments of solitude to shake yourself fully awake.

The sleep has done you good – while your thoughts still drift towards the horror of feeling your own mind lose itself, it's no longer a sucking whirlpool. You can at least ignore the issue, and focus on the future.

After a few minutes picking the worst of the blood off of yourself, you head down to the spring room. Amanda, judging from the wet footsteps leading down to the jail, has already left, and water looks wonderfully still and cool.

You slip under the surface with barely a ripple, your sky adapted body just as capable of slicing through the water until you're sat at the bottom of the pool. Each movement sends another cloud of rust-like blood into the water, until the area around you is cloudy with it. But the gentle flow towards the waterfall trap clears your vision after a minute of silent contemplation. Above you, several figures stand, their forms rippling and distorted by the water. One is much larger than the other two, however, so you have a reasonably guess as to who they are.

You take a moment to steal yourself. You certainly like all of the girls in their own way, and you have a (Twisted, you will admit to yourself) kind of love for Sapphire. But that doesn't make the telling off you're undoubtedly going to receive any more pleasant. At least they chose Amanda to be with you at your weakest.

A sigh of smokey bubbles escapes your lips. There's no delaying the inevitable, and you can admit to yourself that you fucked up. Might as well get it over with.

But when you break the surface of the water, it is not Sapphire, Feathers and Mercy who stand there to greet you, but three strangers.

The tallest of the three regards you with a tilted head, and she... it? It has some aesthetic similarity to a humanoid woman, especially at first glance, but every part of it is wrong. The skin is a greyish hue, with veins of a paler colour. Instead of hair, long strands of lichen or moss fall from its head and right shoulder. Its left shoulder is bare. To the bone. The flesh... stone? Of its body has crumbled, exposing a skeleton the same rusty colour of the blood water. The other shoulder seems to have grown to compensate, into a craggy outcropping. A small tree grows there, jutting backwards and trailing tiny vines. Your eyes drift down, despite yourself. The creature is nude, with a stomach polished to a near mirror shine as if by some demented sculptor, and without a navel to mar the smoothness. Any genitals are hidden behind more rock like protrusions, sharp enough to look at that you pity any adventurer who decides to try anything on this being.

It shifts, as if it is following your gaze and presenting itself for inspection. The rust bones grind together is it lifts its arms above its face, showing off smooth, nipple-less breasts. The left arm ends is a soft looking, feminine hand. The right in a clawed, three fingered chunk of rough ore. The face is nothing but a blank mask – sculpted beauty, but hollow. Literally hollow, the same blow that destroyed its shoulder having cracked open part of its head, letting you see inside. A single orange light, like a firefly, drifts between the empty eye sockets.

You shudder, and finally break your gaze. The creature has Mercy's dichotomy about it – half soft sexuality, half sharp danger. With Mercy, one had to be aware of her current position and work around it. This Oread, whatever it was, did not strike you as someone who had two sides to their mind. No, this creature would lure you in with soft movement and carve you to pieces when you got too close. Possibly without ever knowing what it was doing. You can see no hint of intelligence in that cold face, except its position as far away from the other two figures as can be achieved, and the fact it hasn't yet moved to take advantage of your distraction.

After several seconds without moving, the Oread allows its arms to drop back down to its sides, and turns its head to look at you fully.

You raise your head to meet its strange stare. There's no acknowledgement, no movement. No breath. An eddy of wind sets her lichen swaying, but apart from that she may of well have been a statue.

You clear your throat, unable to look away. “You should know that if you wish, I can Name you. It means...” your courage flees. The Oread is just too uncanny to look at. “Well, the others can fill you in.”

You hit accept.

Note to self. Tell the goblins not to antagonise the Oread.

The creature walks past you with surprising grace, bringing with her a gust of fresh, chill air. A hand of stone, unyielding and cold, brushes against your side. You don't look back at it.

Instead, your focus moves to the other two beings. These, at least, you were somewhat expecting to show up. In fact, compared to the Oread, they're almost mundane.

The Imps share a great deal of their physical characteristics with the summoned worker you created earlier – hunched and unattractive, with scrunched faces and baggy looking wings. Sharp claws adorn their fingers and toes, and their legs are digitigrade. One is dressed in a small loincloth, the other in a loincloth and chest wrap. Maybe a male and female?

They're both looking at you in a mix of fear and respect.

“You betta know what yur fookin doon big man.”

It takes you a moment to decipher the words, then you roll your eyes. “Does anyone? Welcome to the madhouse.”

The Imporne Oread is one of the things I've had the most fun with lately. I'm defo going to be doing a character sketch when I finish up with the one I'm working on right now.

Also, it's the first of the month! That makes it the perfect time to join my patreon at https://www.patreon.com/BlackBug

There are two levels - £1, where you get your name below, access to polls (There's not that many yet but they do happen upon occasion) and a special role in the discord, and access to a patreon only section of said discord.and £2, where you get all that, but also get the next two chapters in advance!

Finally, A huge thank you to my patreons NA, Spockk Kirkk, Un Casualsniper, Tyrant615, Jon Dunning, Jakelandiar and Curious