by Zeke Biddle
Jargot slowly claps his hands together. “Well done. It appears the rumors of wizards and their intelligence haven’t been entirely over-exaggerated.”
Really not wanting to be ripped apart by a necromantic werewolf on a rampage, I order—politely ask—my familiar to start diving straight into the heart of danger, knowing full well if he dies, so do I. But I’m going to die no matter what unless this crazy plan works.
“What’s happening?” Alexandra asks, stretching herself awake.
“Hell yeah! God, I’m glad to see you. You couldn’t have picked a better time to wake up. Grab those swords of yours, and be ready to run through this door and kill whatever you find on the other side the second I say so.”
I expect some kind of wisecrack or flat-out rejection, but she nods her head very seriously. With her agreement secured, I turn my attention back to my familiar. I might only have one chance.
The eagle and I struggle as he gets closer and closer to the necromancer. My familiar can practically taste blood. If I knew for a fact the bird could cause enough damage to make it worthwhile, I would let him attack.
Please, I beg him through the link. Do exactly what I ask.
Agreed, he replies.
Approaching Jargot from behind to avoid being seen, the eagle turns just a smidge at the last second, and instead of stabbing the necromancer’s neck with his beak, grabs the necklace. He immediately starts to climb as he shoots past Jargot.
The necklace snaps.
The rodent skull falls to the ground.
My familiar has provided at least a sliver of a chance for us to survive if we all do our jobs.
“Now!” I shout to Alexandra, yanking the door open.
She charges through, scattering skeletons like bowling pins, tumbling to the ground with several draped on her back. Most of the skeletons turn their attention to her, leaving me alone for a brief second.
I raise my staff and prepare to cast my fireball, but a skeleton who hadn’t followed Alexandra enters the doorway and reaches for me.
I doubt I have enough magic to kill Jargot if I have to waste a fireball on the skeleton, but I can’t attack him with it in the way.
Alexandra can’t help because she’s already too occupied.
I scream in frustration. We are so close to victory. Jargot’s just lucky the other two women in my party are unconscious. With all four of us fighting as one, there’s no way he could have survived our fury.
My desperate plan is to blast the fireball into the skeleton’s chest, and then try to overwhelm Jargot in the chaos and hope I’m stronger than him.
The odds are not in my favor, but I can’t think of anything else to do.
I cast the spell, but before the fireball shoots off the end of my wand, the skeleton pirouettes. The fireball flies past it.
Time slows down. Microseconds feel like days.
I hold my breath and watch the fireball.
Jargot doesn’t seem to have noticed he’s lost his fire protection. He puffs out his chest, but his eyes go wide with confusion and terror when the fireball hits him.
For a man with so much magic at his disposal, the fire seems to burn right through him.
Guess he relied a little too much on his one layer of protection from fire.
It’s a good reminder for me to always strive for redundancies.
Jargot falls writhing to the ground. His legs kick one last time.
I turn to check on Gillian and Eulalia. Gillian has her bow held out in front of her body, still aimed at the open door. It was her arrow that knocked the skeleton out of the way of my fireball.
“Nice shot. We’re quite a team,” I say.
Gillian smiles back at me. “We have a pretty great leader.”
“Can I get a little help out here, Eulalia? These fuckers did quite a number on me.” Alexandra cries out.
Eulalia brushes past me on her way to heal our warrior.
A spark of the flame that killed Jargot’s thugs in the shack has started to spread to a full-blown flame in the tiny room.
I take Gillian’s hand in mine. “Come on. Let’s get some fresh air.”
We all sit down in the grass to watch the building burn down.
You’ve destroyed 2 of 2 Hybrid Generators. Congratulations! Return to Raven Haven to receive your reward!
“Thank God that was the last machine. I’ve had enough of those hybrids,” I say.
Gillian shivers against my body, most likely with memories that will haunt her for a long time.
“Well, well, looks like you’ve made quite a mess of things here,” a raspy breath from behind us says.
19
We all jump to our feet and spread out in battle formation. “Hi there, Esmeralda,” I say. “What brings you here tonight? If you are looking to join up with Jargot, you’re too late. We already killed him and his hybrids.”
Esmeralda cackles at the moon. “Fools. Machines are a dime a dozen. Jargot has been destroying them for months.”
My blood turns to ice. I know the two of them are enemies, but in all the chaos and immediate peril, I haven’t had a chance to sit still long enough to figure out much beyond that. But if she’s really responsible for the generators…
“Did we kill a good guy?” I ask no one in particular.
“Fuck no,” the witch says. “He was a piece of shit. He’s thwarted most of my efforts of expanding my base with those fucking skeletons of his. Another month, and he probably would have been ready to lead a slaughter on these lands like hasn’t been seen in generations, killing everyone and animating their dead bodies.”
Nothing makes sense. If he’s evil and she’s evil, how could they have hated each other so much?
Buying time, I ask, “Sounds like we’re pretty big damn heroes, huh?”
Esmeralda cocks her head and looks at me like I’m stupid. “You have my gratitude. Now I can lick my wounds and lead my own attack soon. I have you and your pretty women to thank for it all.” Her laughter fills the forest. “As a reward, I think I’ll let you live long enough to watch me destroy the world.”
She disappears into thin air just as quickly as she arrived, leaving us with our thoughts.
“Well, fuck,” I say. “That didn’t go the way I wanted at all.”
Gillian leans her head on my shoulder. “You did the best you could with the information you had. That’s all anyone can ever do.”
“Red is right,” Alexandra said. “Leaders never have all the information. They must make guesses, and yours kept us alive and protected the lands for a while longer. We can use that time to get stronger.”
“And fuck,” Eulalia adds, sending us all into a fit of much-needed laughter after a long night of horrors.
When we recover, I ask if anyone has any suggestions on where we should go next.
“I’d like to go back home if we could,” Eulalia says. “My village deserves to know the truth about what happened here. They need to hear that they should prepare for war.”
“Any objections?” I ask.
“No one’s going to object, Marcus,” Alexandra says. “Can we just start walking before some stray hybrids return to their nest?”
I stand and wipe grass from my robe. “In that case, let’s return back to where we began.”
“We can’t go back until we make it out the other side of the forest,” Alexandra reminds me.
“Crap. Is nothing easy in this world?”
“I am,” Gillian says with a giggle. “Come on. How long could it take?”
20
It takes two days before we reach the edge of the forest and can see more than ten feet in front of us. Once we spend a few hours enjoying the open sky, we turn back.
We argue for an entire night about whether to return to Raven Haven.
I want to claim the reward Dasandra promised. Eulalia wants to make sure her people know the monster generators have been destroyed before whatever journey we take next. Gillian says she’s just along for the rid
e but votes to return just so we don’t end up in a tie.
We celebrate our victory with a quick night of sex at the house in the middle of the woods. Well, it started as a quick romp. After two days of listening to us making love, Alexandra finally demanded that we leave so she wouldn’t have to listen to our fucking and smell the stink of our lovemaking.
So before the sun sets on the fourth night after defeating Jargot, we emerge from the Cursed Woods at the edge of the Raven Haven. The trees hadn’t been quite so eager to contain us when I blasted the one blocking our path with my biggest fireball.
“This place is so small. How are they going to protect themselves from an army?” Between Titus and Esmeralda, and lord knows who else, I have no idea which army will reach here first, but there’s no hope of the village surviving any of them. “We need to find a bigger town to set up our base,” I say.
Alexandra agrees. “This little dump is entirely too far from all the action. The One-Eyed Monster, Esmeralda, hell, none of the random major monsters will even bother coming around here.”
“That sounds like a perk, not a flaw, to me,” Eulalia says.
I nod my agreement. The endorphins from our victory wore off after the first night. Now I just want to settle down, make love to my women, and maybe learn a simple trade to pass the rest of my days.
“So we just hide and let those evil monsters crush the rest of the world?” Alexandra says, pulling away from our group. “There are thousands of innocent people who will get crushed as the evil armies fight back and forth for little patches of land, destroying places like this with no thought at all. We can help them. We can give them a stable leadership and safe borders.”
“You want to be the queen of all the kingdoms?” I ask.
”No. I definitely don’t want that kind of responsibility. But we can help bring stability to whoever is willing to rule fairly.”
Eulalia, as always, steps between us to try and put out the fight brewing between us. “Let’s just sleep on it a few nights. We’ll come up with a plan we all agree on.”
Alexandra and I glare at each other, challenging the other to make a peep.
Eulalia and Gillian skip off ahead of us into the center of the village. When everyone rushes out to greet them, I tell Alexandra, “You don’t have to stay with us, you know? I want you to, but you are free to do whatever you want.”
“I know that, wizard,” Alexandra says with a grunt. She shoves against my shoulder as she marches after the girls, leaving me alone to wonder why she does any of the things she does.
When I reach the celebration, Dasandra grabs my face with both of her wrinkled hands. “Well done. For your bravery, and for saving our village from the hybrids and returning with Eulalia, we offer you a plot of land and the beginnings of a humble shelter.”
She points off into the distance where I see an empty patch of land. There’s no house, just a pile of odds and ends in the middle of the area.
“Thanks,” I say, trying to keep the disappointment from my voice.
But she must’ve heard. “It may not look like much, but when you pitch your tent there, good things will happen.”
Eulalia and Gillian fall against each other giggling.
“Oh, yes,” Gillian says. “Let’s hurry over to our new home and see how quickly we can get Marcus to pitch his tent.”
The two of them nearly fall over, they’re laughing so hard.
I roll my eyes at their silliness. “Truly, thank you for your generosity. We’ll definitely take you up on your offer, at least until we know what our next plan will be. Now, if you don’t mind, no time like the present to…umm, assemble that tent. Gotta be easier to do before the sun sets, right?”
The old lady pats me on my back as Eulalia and Gillian drag me toward our new home.
Before we even reach our humble plot of land, though, the crowd behind us starts screaming in terror.
We turn and fall into formation without a word, our weapons at the ready.
I can’t see anything because of the glare of the setting sun.
“What is it?” I ask.
Before any of the women can answer, someone from the middle of the chaos screams, “Orcs!”
Hard and Deep
1
After surviving the long journey through the Cursed Woods, all I want to do is set up the crappy tent we earned as a reward and fuck the women in my harem.
Life is rarely so convenient for adventurers, though.
Before we even reach our humble plot of land, the crowd behind us starts screaming in terror.
We turn and fall into formation without a word, our weapons at the ready.
I can’t see anything because of the glare of the setting sun that reminds me if we don’t get moving we’ll be pitching a tent in the dark.
“What is it?” I ask.
Before any of the women can answer, someone from the middle of the chaos screams, “Orcs!”
My companions move as one with me, everyone syncing their pace to keep our formation from falling apart as we approach the chaos.
There are two figures standing in the middle of the road. If one stood on the other’s shoulders, they might be taller than me. They both have a tiny dagger in their right hand.
“Really?” I mumble, glaring at the villagers fleeing the scene. “You interrupted us just for this?”
Any villager with a solid shovel could both kill and bury the two pathetic creatures before the stars even come out.
I point my staff in their direction at the same time Alexandra charges. Eulalia hurries after the orcs. In the off chance the creatures managed to hurt someone, she wants to be there to heal them.
Before any of us can carry out our attack, though, they both drop dead with an arrow sticking out from their heart.
“Leave the arrows until the morning,” Gillian says. “Let’s go fuck.”
Alexandra waves us off. “I’ll clean up here. Let me know when it’s safe to come into the tent.”
Alexandra hasn’t been able to join my harem yet because of something in the game mechanics. It has something to do with leveling up, but since I can’t access any of the game menus, I can’t describe it much better than that.
If I could exit the game, I’d find the developers, especially Kip, the one who trapped me here, and kick their asses.
Who am I kidding? Back on Earth, I’m just a loser in college. At least here I’m managing to become something special.
Fortunately for me, the women seem to somehow know when a new spot opens up. I’ve already gotten laid more times in the game world of Loot and Booty than I ever did back home. That’s not much of an accomplishment since I was a virgin back then, but still. Life has been much kinder for me since Kip trapped me in the game.
If it weren’t for the fact there was some homicidal maniac who Kip also trapped in the game before me, life would be perfect. Apparently whichever one of us kills the other first will get returned to Earth. The way things are currently going, I’ll be pissed as hell if I manage to kill my enemy and it causes me to lose my harem.
Gillian nods her agreement and pulls Eulalia and me toward the plot of land the villagers gave us for completing our last quest.
I swat Gillian’s butt as I say, “Don’t get yourself all worked up yet. We still have to set up the tent.”
Gillian’s ass is firm and petite, just like everything about her. She barely comes up to my chest, but stands with such bravery and confidence that she seems much taller. Her fiery red hair cascades past her shoulders. She’s wearing her tight leather top and even tighter leather pants that leave nothing to the imagination. Yet when she takes them off, she’s even more stunning. I’ve only seen her nude a few times, but I plan to again as soon as I can separate her from our adoring fans.
Unfortunately, the crowd has returned to surround us in the street, cheering us for saving their lives. I roll my eyes at how vulnerable they’d be against a real attack.
They ask a flurry of que
stions about our last mission, and Gillian’s answers grow more and more extravagant with each reply until she finishes our tale of how we destroyed the hybrid-monster generators.
“Are you sure you’re a thief and not a bard?” I whisper into her ear before giving it a light nibble.
“Well, maybe not one hundred hybrids,” she concedes to the crowd. “But their blood does flow through the forest like a river.”
I give her ass a squeeze and kiss the back of her neck, hoping she’ll get a sense of my need. I don’t want to have to resort to rubbing my erection against her for her to get the point.
She gives a squeak. “Oh! Sorry, my fair patrons, but I must retire for the eve and help my brave wizard oil his wand.”
The crowd laughs but begins to break up.
“You’re going to embarrass me with your tall tales, Gillian. If everyone catches on to your exaggerations, what are they going to think when you talk of my sexual exploits?”
Eulalia gives me a start when she sneaks up behind me and gives my ass a squeeze. “Don’t worry, Marcus. I’ll set them straight.”
“I’ve got a thief who should be a bard, and a healer who should be a thief. What’s this world coming to?”
“Well, we’ve got a wizard who probably still wishes he were a warrior,” Eulalia shoots back.
She’s not far off with that claim. Normally when I play these virtual reality role-playing games, I play as a warrior. But I can usually log off whenever I want to quit during those gaming sessions, too.
Why would I ever want to leave this new reality, though? Other than having more women join my harem, I can’t imagine what more I could want.
Here, I’m the hero who’s cleared the forest of the witch’s hybrids and of Jargot’s skeletal army. I also have two women, Eulalia and Gillian, who have willingly joined my harem, and Alexandra, our warrior, will join the harem once the game decides I’m ready for another. I’m not sure the exact mechanics behind it, but it must involve some kind of leveling I can’t directly see since I can’t pull up the HUD to see any of the game menus.
