A light breeze blew, and we alternately spent time cataloguing types of Nakamamon or dipping fingers into the god and swishing them around. By now our flight had sted most of a day. Isabelle’s ankle had been fully healed by the magic in the salve, Trent was back to normal only minutes after taking my potion, and now it was just the ten of us and our companion animals enjoying the ride.

  Though chilly, the direct sunlight kept us from breaking out the warm weather clothes. We were up level with the scattered clouds, but after our full day aloft, the great god of the ke descended. Larelle and the rest were ready to paddle like hell to keep the raft from falling, but after several tense minutes it didn’t look like we were sliding up towards the wyrm’s head.

  Tara had spent a lot of the ride getting to know Airaconda, her new friend. The serpent could manifest as an actual flying snake, with wings hovering around it and wads of puffy clouds, or it could shimmer and vanish. In both forms, Airaconda was rge and powerful enough to take a passenger for a little joyride, and for now that passenger was Tara.

  She and Airaconda looped around the raft, sailed from the ke’s head to her tail, and then when Tara was more confident she wasn’t going to fall to her death, around the entirety of the mammoth snake of water. She could be heard talking to the creature, telling it her whole life’s story in typical Tara fashion. I wondered if the slitherwind could speak, and it just didn’t ever get a chance.

  As the minutes passed and the air around us warmed further, we gradually approached the ground. A small valley in between two sharp mountains soon proved to be our destination. Dipping down, the ke god curled around into a circur snake shape, and finally touched down.

  I’d only flown in an airpne a handful of times, but this nding was much gentler than the one I remembered. The pne nding had been a bump, sure, but not a problem.

  This was like a leaf on the wind, gently gracing the nd with its presence after a whole summer hanging out above it all.

  “Well that was nice,” Cinzy said, and again patted my leg. I caught sight of Regina smirking. “I was worried there’d be a tsunami or the nding would capsize us. Whew! That was wonderful. I’d like to do it again!”

  We had no real way of knowing how far off course we were, and supplies weren’t ideal. I hadn’t yet brought up the anti-magic pills situation with An or Cinzy, but it bothered me just the same. The Bard, for her own reasons, didn’t seem to care about it. An, I could understand, looked mortified at nearly every moment of our journey… unless he was pranking me.

  “We likely could end up doing it again,” Chrysta said, already manning several oars at the same time and getting us moving towards the shore. “We’ve suspected that Guanelzia might have several stops along a migratory route, but no one has tested out this theory… the next trip could be soon and could take us even further afield.”

  That was no ideal.

  “Okay!” I called. “We’re making camp on the shore! Everybody knows their pces and duties already, correct?”

  A chorus of assent followed.

  “Good, because it’s been a long and boring day that was completely unexpected. Let’s make it a calm, orderly night, no surprises, no messes.”

  Larelle, Ivy and Isabelle grabbed their oars from Chrysta and got to work. Trent got to work, too, piling up dirt beneath the shore and creating a ramp closer to the raft. Once there, he used his power to reel the raft up onto the shore. This time he followed my advice and didn’t overtax himself by burning through his entire mana pool. An, Cinzy and I got him up to the campsite.

  Once again it was tents and food and firewood. Cinzy and I were much faster at the tents this time, testing the wind and making sure the doors didn’t face the wrong way. Firewood was quick again, and soon enough Regina and Tara were back with some herbs, berries, and Tweedle Dee had caught a rabbit. A thing that was rabbit adjacent anyhow. As soon as Regina grabbed it and began skinning it, the flower fox darted back into the valley forest, followed by a shimmer of wind in the shape of a serpent.

  “Trent,” I called.

  “Boss?”

  “Permission granted to use whatever power you like to help set up camp, especially a campfire, trine, and if Larelle thinks we need them, any defenses.”

  He saluted and quickly hollowed out a rge fire pit.

  “An?”

  “Hm?”

  I started walking, and he fell in beside me. I id out the situation with the anti-magic pills, and he paled.

  “I-I-I-I—”

  “It’s all right,” I told him. “We’re not in any real danger, so far as I know. And I’m not mad.”

  “It’s, w-w-well, it’s… there’s, uh… w-well, we have ab-b-bout three w-w-w-weeks.”

  “What happens then?”

  What happened then was we became beings infused with magic. The administration and bureaucracy of the company weren’t comfortable letting that happen. People changed forms. They developed abilities. It wasn’t like the css abilities from the system. It sounded like the became Nakamamon.

  “None of this sounds bad, though.”

  It wasn’t that the situation was good or bad, it was too early in the program to study the effects. Things made entirely of magic, like the big honking coin Johnson had slid across the table to me approximately one lifetime ago, those things dissolved into nothing. Nakamamon weren’t able to travel through the portal without being in constant pain, slipping into comas, and then dying. So the top brass was worried about us not being able to go back through the portal.

  “So you’re saying we might be stuck on this side of the portal forever,” I said. Without a cure, obviously. Which, if I was high enough level, I could probably create.

  “I-i-it’s not c-clear,” he said.

  I wasn’t in a position to offer up my nine human team members as guinea pigs for that little experiment, meaning one of two things had to happen. One, we needed to abort this little mission and make our way back with all due speed to the castle. This could take the three weeks we had left, depending.

  Or we could use the resources at our disposal to get one of our own back to the city, pick up more of the medication, and bring it back.

  “Tara!” I called out.

  ***

  Moss and a carpet of leaves muffled every footstep. The silence here really was like almost nowhere else on earth. From the corners of my vision I could see odd animal creatures poking their heads out of burrows or shuffling off deeper into the forest to get away from the two legged oddities.

  Obviously, I wasn’t pleased that my long-legged, bronze-skinned gorgeous funk buddy was going on a weeks and days-or-week-long mission to recover the medication we needed in order to see our home world again.

  She reminded me just by what she was wearing that this wasn’t going to be fun or easy. Tara had on a pair of bck yoga pants with pink stripes up the middle, and they showed off her toned legs and gorgeous bubble butt superbly. Above that I could see an inch of belly, including her belly button, before a matching athletic zip up hoodie took over. She had her blonde hair in a ponytail, but it too had been going bronze, making her look like one of those living statues in the middle of big cities. It bounced as she walked, shining in the evening sun.

  I joined her on a short walk through the forest surrounding the valley, checking out the weirdness that was to be found. I spied several flowers I’d never seen before in my entire life, but knew the names of anyway. Jalnapes weren’t native to earth, but here they were, twining around several dead trees and spreading their bell-shaped purple and magenta flowers for huge bees and butterflies.

  “This is not an order. You are allowed to say no,” I told her, “but I wanted to ensure that we had this conversation in private. I don’t need a panic.”

  She peered at me, then took my hand in hers and rubbed her thumb over it. Her skin was cool, soft and smooth. Perfect in other words. “It’s a difficult choice to make,” she said. “I should be fine. Airaconda and I have been flying for hours now, and she’s getting used to my weight. I can bring food and water with me, and if you give me a potion for Stamina, we’ll be gold. I think probably we’ll spend the night somewhere under the stars, or if the weather’s not cooperating, I can construct a shelter. Ranger, after all.”

  “This sucks,” I said. “I was hoping—”

  “Eh, shush. If I get this done right, I’ll be back in less than a week, and then you and can get down and dirty as much as you like whenever you want.”

  I grinned at her.

  “And we can have a little farewell messing around,” she said, and offered me a grin that was equal parts adorable and naughty. “Now, expedition leader, are you going to order me to strip down for health reasons so you can clear me for this emergency excursion back to base?” She didn’t wait, but instead unzipped her hoodie and freed up her perky breasts. Apparently there hadn’t been anything beneath, and I was here for it. She then turned and inched those yoga pants of hers down her ass.

  “I guess I don’t need to issue any orders,” I muttered, staring down at her incredible ass, contrasting as it was against the bck of her pants. She grinned and winked at me.

  “We’ll need to do an oral exam first, I’m sure,” she said, and dropped to her knees. A second ter my cock was out in the open and she had her mouth all over it. This blowjob was going to be a sloppy one, it seemed, lots of tongue and lips slurping up and down, over my balls and up and down the shaft without sucking on me. Twice she popped the head into her mouth and sucked me down halfway, before it popped free and she gave a satisfied ‘ahhh’. Like she’d just had a refreshing sip of beer on a hot summer night.

  “Next I’ll need you to see if my chest is all right,” she said. I stepped forward and put my cock between her breasts, and enjoyed the odd feel of them cradling around my well-lubricated shade. They weren’t big enough to really call this a full tit fuck, but it had the added effect of making me feel like a very well-endowed man. Every time I slid upwards she pped at the head and slurped at it before letting me free to slide back down.

  Lust had rgely repced her pyful manner. Her face went serious, eyelids falling and her breathing deepening.

  “I’ll need to do a cavity check,” I said, in between strokes.

  “Oh my, doctor… which cavities?”

  “All of them, I think,” I said.

  Pleasure’s Bounty had signaled that I could spend a Token in order to enhance the pleasure of our lovemaking, but I held off until now.

  She stood, back to a nearby tree, and thrust her midsection out at me. There was nothing sexier to me than seeing a beautiful woman both leaning back and also pushing her pussy out toward me. I was still very much in the disbelief phase of this situation. I couldn’t believe my luck, and wasn’t about to question it.

  Wrenching her pants down, I checked by hand and found her very wet. It was now, working a finger back and forth over her slit and tonguing at her pleasure button, that I spent my Token.

  I spent some serious time making sure her clit was as healthy as it could be for her trip back to the city, and also massaging her inner walls with first one, and then two fingers. There was a patch of skin on the inside of Tara that produced the desired effect of making her go absolutely wild. She humped down into my face over and over again, talking breathlessly the whole time. Yes, she said, that was the spot. Right forking there. Yes, she went on, I shouldn’t stop, it felt so damn good, she wanted me to fluff her right here, right now. Please would I just give it to her? Why couldn’t I just stick it inside her, please?

  I got the sense, via Affinity, that she was rapidly climbing the dder to a huge climax. The mana within her collected, and collected, balled up just beyond where my tongue flicked back and forth over her clit.

  And after several minutes, that ball of mana inside her condensed so much, it exploded outward, and she came. The fvor of her changed immediately, sweetening and becoming even fresher than before.

  “Holy…” she panted. “I’ve never… cum… that fast.”

  I couldn’t help it. I had to buy up a point of one of those Pleasure Seeker Qualities. I put one point into Stave Off and the next into Girth. I’d been having a little trouble keeping everything in when I wanted to keep going, so Stave Off cimed it would help with that. And who doesn’t want more girth?

  When I stood she was just finishing turning around and presenting her incredible ass. She’d kicked off her yoga pants and was looking over her shoulder expectantly.

  “Don’t keep me waiting, Fletcher,” she moaned, so I didn’t. She kept right on talking, in her own Tara way. “I need it right now. I need ugh… yes, I want that big, fat… oh fudgesicle you’re big. Oh it’s going to be lonely without this… ugh, this big, fat monst—uhhhhh…”

  She stopped talking as I pushed the widest part in. She was wet, very wet, but Girth did not lie. I was noticeably bigger around. She seemed a lot tighter all of a sudden, and I didn’t think she had shrunk.

  “Oh gods, Fletcher,” she continued, getting breath back in her lungs. “Are you even bigger than before? Ugh, yeah, push it… even… further. Don’t stop.”

  I did, gritting my teeth against the additional pleasure created by all the additional pressure. I tried to distract myself by squeezing her ass, running my hands up and down her sides, and then cupping both her boobs as they hung down. By now both her forearms were against the tree and her head was down, like she was just trying to survive the onsught.

  Her breathing came in shallow, but loud gasps.

  “Wait,” she managed weakly. “D-don’t move. I need to… get used…”

  Instead I reached down and brushed two fingers over her clit, and set her off again. She lost her bance and would’ve gone down, except I held her with one arm. With the other, I kept lightly strumming her clit, making her shudder and flop. She even bucked back into me, squishing her ass cheeks back into my midsection and forcing another loud groan out of her.

  When she recovered, we shifted positions with her on her back in the huge patch of moss, peering up at me in wonder. Her mouth started going again.

  “I’ve never… I’ve never cum like that before,” she panted. “Not even when I was just pying with myself in my room when I first discovered I could make myself cum. Holy smokes, Fletcher.”

  I slowly sank my full length back into her, and she groaned out, low and long. It was perfection again, surrounding me, which ratcheted up notches in the perfection level the moment I started sawing in and out of her.

  “Oh, oh jeez,” she said, “you’re not done.”

  She brought her legs up around my waist again and locked her feet together at the ankles.

  “Fluff me, Fletcher,” she begged. “I want it.”

  I couldn’t very well refuse such a request, now could I? This was how, ten minutes ter, I was slowly pounding my cock in and out of her, and she had gone through three more crushing orgasms and being loud about it.

  I’d been sucking on her nipples and sliding my hands all over her toned legs, loving how long they were and how smooth she felt in my hands. If she was going to be gone for at least a few days, possibly days and days, I wanted her to know what she was coming back to.

  “You going to have sex with anybody else?” I whispered.

  “Nooooo,” she moaned.

  “Why not?”

  “Because… ugh… because I want Fletcher’s dick,” she managed. “Nobody can, unh, match this.”

  “And you want my cum now?”

  “Yesssss,” she hissed.

  “Where?” I asked, grinding in deep and rolling my hips. “You want it in your mouth? On your face?”

  “Inside,” she gasped. “Cum inside me.”

  I didn’t question it. My mind was too fogged from all the sex. My need to have her trumped my higher order brain function. Plus, she had her ankles locked and I’m not sure I could’ve gotten them apart at all, much less in time to stop her. I pressed forward, as deep as I could, and dumped every drop into her.

  “Mmm,” she said, a sound of pure satisfaction.

  Time passed, with us just resting like this.

  “You better get used to doing that, because I need it more than just these three times, cowboy. After that first time with The Lovers… I just can’t have it any other way.”

  Eventually I softened up enough to pop out of her. Her hand drifted down to the junction of her legs and she scooped some of my seed out, staring at it like she wasn’t quite sure what it was.

  “Uh… yeah.”

  “I can’t decide whether this stuff is addictive, or having you dump it in me, or the friction.” I had no idea what to say to this. “But I can’t stop. Can you go again?”

  “If you can get me hard again,” I said.

  It turned out I could. We had sex for another thirty minutes, and at the end of it she was riding me, shivering and shaking and demanding I pump everything I had into her. And like a genius person, I did it.

  This is Christopher flirting with consequences.