Witch King 1

by Nick Harrow

  All four of our bodies moved together in perfect harmony. Jaga bounced on me, my flesh invading hers with every deep thrust, filling her with steaming rin even as the crashing waves of pleasure pushed her shio into my core. Ayo cried out and spasmed against my hand, her body convulsing around my fingers as her sacred power combined with mine to purify the senjin. Aja lowered her breast to my mouth, her crimson hair dangling over her face like a veil. A spark of pure dream power rolled through the four of us as if a circuit had been completed, and we shuddered together.

  It wasn’t enough. I needed more.

  The crimson bear’s strength surged through my veins, and I slipped my fingers free of Ayo’s hungry sex to grab Jaga’s hips in both hands. A guttural roar rumbled from my chest, and I stood, hauling Jaga off the deck with me. My cock reached the limits of her depths, and she gasped in surprise at the maneuver. I turned her toward the sampan’s port side, then let her feet touch the deck again as I thrust into her in an animalistic frenzy.

  “Blood God,” she groaned. She clung to the sampan’s rail and pushed back against me with feverish intensity. There was no rhythm now, just the desperate grinding need as we chased a stomping dragon of primal pleasure through each others’ heaving flesh.

  Ayo kissed me with wild abandon, crushing our lips together and thrusting her tongue into my mouth. She let out little whimpers as her swaying breasts brushed against my skin. Her erect nipples ignited sparks of sacred power that jumped between us, raising the hairs on my arms and flickering in the spirit’s white hair like shooting stars.

  I pulled Aja to me and stroked her dripping cleft with the fingers of my right hand. She sucked at the side of my throat and wrapped her arms around my shoulders. She urged me to go faster, harder, and soon my hand was grinding against her in rapid circles.

  Jaga let out a savage moan, arched her spine, and threw her head back. Her hair, damp from the mist, slapped against her shoulders. Convulsive shudders shook her from the soles of her feet to the crown of her skull, until she was left shaking and hardly able to stand.

  “Enough,” she moaned when I pulled her hips back against me. Another cataclysmic shudder ran through her body, and she collapsed against the railing like every shred of strength had been leeched from her muscles.

  The pilot slithered from my grasp and eased herself down to the deck, leaving my prick throbbing and exposed to the river breeze. Her eyes were hooded with exhaustion, and she lolled against the side of the boat with her hands in her lap. Her core glowed with blue shio, a bright marble of light that sent pulses of sacred energy coursing through her body with every beat of her heart.

  “Here,” Aja growled. She bent over in front of me and reached back between her legs to grab my sticky, twitching cock.

  I plunged into the crimson-haired spirit and she yipped like a coyote as the head of my stiff rod plumbed her depths. Her muscles tightened and she howled, again and again, a wild, animal’s cry that sent water birds flying through the mist in an explosion of flapping wings.

  Ayo straddled Aja’s back, facing me, her eyes wild and cheeks flushed a deep, almost violet blue. She kissed me fiercely and pulled my hands off the other spirit’s hips to squeeze her breasts. She was lost in a passionate hunger that went far beyond anything I’d seen in her before. She stroked herself desperately, clawing her way toward the divine ecstasy that Aja and I hunted together.

  All concept of time and self vanished. I’d become part of a sweating, heaving animal that existed only to satisfy its animal urges. Mielyssi’s ecstatic cries echoed in my ears, her voice ragged with emotion and dripping with pleasure as she called my name in an endless litany in time with the slap of my thighs against Aja’s ass. Our bodies glowed with the silver radiance of sacred energy, and its power bound us together in a writhing circle of delicious agony.

  We came in a string of overwhelming pleasure. Aja’s juices splashed down my legs as she melted around me. Ayo cried into my mouth, her lips locked to mine, one arm around my neck, her hand pulling my fingers to the slick nub of her clit to bring her to a shuddering climax.

  With a primal thrust, I emptied myself into Aja. Ropes of my seed flooded into her and ran down her thighs with every thrust. A tidal wave of an orgasm plowed through my mind and body and splashed across the three women on the deck with me. Our voices rose in a final, animal chorus, echoed within me by the crimson bear’s savage wails of pleasure.

  The spirits and I parted reluctantly, our bodies sticky with our shared juices. I lay flat on my back, while the spirits leaned against the sampan’s edge next to Jaga. No one said a word, the only sound the synchronized thunder of our pulses in our ears.

  “What a fucking mess.” Jaga broke the silence at last.

  “That’s exactly what it is,” Ayo giggled.

  “I’m not cleaning it up,” Aja declared. She pointed at the sticky residue of my cum plastered to the insides of her thighs. “Most of it came out of our shaman. He should clean it up.”

  “I don’t think so. After that performance, I’m not doing anything but taking a nap.” I chuckled. “Starting right after you three tell me what the fuck happened and where we are.”

  “Good, you’re done spewing fluids everywhere.” Yata landed on top of the sampan’s deck. “Now I can chastise you for nearly shattering your core with that little stunt.”

  “What?” I had no idea shattering my core was even possible. Sure, I’d banged it around a bit pushing myself too hard in the past, but Mielyssi had never told me it was possible to break the damned thing.

  “You pushed every dribble of power out of your core at the same time you pulled in pure senjin.” Yata squawked and hopped from one foot to the next to the next, wings fluttering. “Your nodes aren’t built for that kind of abuse, and the shell definitely isn’t meant to have sacred energy incoming and outgoing at the same time. You’re lucky you’re not dead.”

  “Which we would have been if it weren’t for my little stunt. If I hadn’t used the formation, the trap would have crushed us like bugs.” I cupped my hands behind my head and wished for a handy pillow that didn’t materialize. Maybe there was a shaman technique for that. If there was, I vowed to learn it at the earliest possible opportunity.

  “Just because we survived doesn’t mean it was a good idea.” Yata preened itself and hopped down to the deck next to Jaga. “The good news is that no one died, your core isn’t crippled, and we’re almost to the Lake of Moonsilver Mist.”

  “The cave cut through the hills and came out farther downriver.” Jaga yawned and stretched her arms overhead, her breasts jiggling in a most distracting way. “We’re only a few hours away from the lake.”

  Aja and Ayo looked very excited by that prospect. The looks of unbridled glee on their faces stirred an unexpected pang of regret in my gut. In a few more hours, they’d be back with their mistress. They’d be home, and that’s where they’d stay. After I left to figure out how to save the world, I’d probably never see them again. That would put a very serious crimp in my ability to absorb and use sacred energy.

  But, more importantly, I’d miss them.

  Suddenly, I didn’t want this mission to end. This, the five of us together, seemed right. The very idea of breaking up the group made me want to punch something. Hard.

  “So much for the good news,” Yata croaked. “Who wants to hear the very bad news?”

  “You have to be fucking kidding,” I groaned. “Don’t tell me the Jade Seekers got ahead of us again somehow.”

  “Okay, I won’t. But this is even worse.” Yata flapped its wings and let out a nervous caw. “There’s an army camped around the lake. And the soldiers are building boats. Lots of boats.”

  Well. Fuck me.

  Chapter Twenty

  YATA SPILLED THE REST of the details in a torrent of squawks and agitated feather ruffling. Turned out there were a few hundred well-armed and armored assholes parked on the Lake of Moonsilver Mist’s south shore. Based on the state of their camp and
the amount of work they’d done building barges for themselves, the soldiers had been at the lake for several days, maybe as much as a week.

  It wouldn’t be much longer before they were ready to launch those barges.

  “At least they’re on the far side of the lake.” I’d take whatever advantages we could get at this point. “And it doesn’t sound like they’ll be ready to make their move before tomorrow at the earliest. If we head out now, we’ll have time to heal the spirits’ mistress and get the fuck out of there before they know we’ve arrived.

  “Yes, but no,” Yata croaked. “They’ve got scouts rowing all over the lake on skiffs.”

  “How the fuck did they know we were coming?” I growled and paced along the sampan’s length. We’d dropped anchor out of sight of the lake after Yata had arrived. We were safe for the moment, but if we couldn’t reach our goal we might as well have been on the wrong side of the moon.

  “What sort of banners were they flying?” Jaga asked.

  “Black.” Yata preened nervously. “With some kind of golden sunburst design, and a lion or something on them.”

  “You sure it’s a lion?” Jaga asked. “It couldn’t have been a tiger?”

  “It could have been a fucking house cat,” Yata snapped with a click of its beak. “It was a long way away, and the fog is awfully thick. But, yeah, I guess it might be a tiger.”

  “The White Tiger Kingdom are renowned kickass motherfuckers,” the riverboat pilot groaned. “They’re awfully far from home. You must have seriously pissed someone off for them to send so many troops all this way to stomp your ass.”

  “Even if they sent five hundred men, that’s a drop in the bucket compared to how many soldiers the kingdoms can field.” Every merchant I’d ever talked to in Floating Village had gone on and on about the number of soldiers marching here and there, making life hard for honest, hardworking folk. Things had changed while I’d been away, but I found it hard to believe the Empire would let its armies dwindle. “Their leader could have spared five thousand, if they really wanted us dead.”

  “That’s an interesting way to look at it,” Jaga said with a raised eyebrow. “Your numbers are all wrong, though. There aren’t more than a few thousand troops in any of the seven kingdoms.”

  “That can’t be right.” I sat down on the deck and crossed my legs, Jaga’s words reminded me of just how long I’d been gone. I needed more information, and this was as good a time as any to get it. “Let’s have a little history lesson.”

  “Have you really been living in a cave for the past fifty years?” Jaga asked.

  “Yes, but it was closer to a hundred years, I think.” I tried to grin, but it came off as more sad and wistful than cheery. Fuck, but I missed Mielyssi. “I went into the cave during the nine hundred and eighty-sixth year of the Seventh Age, during the first week of Dragonwinter. I only came back a few days ago.”

  “Are you fucking with me?” Jaga asked. “This is the fifty-third year of the Eighth Age, and it’s the last fucking week of Jadeflowering.”

  “Do the math for me, because I was gone when the Seventh Age ended.” A cold chill ran through my body. I really didn’t want to hear this answer. “Just how long have I been gone?”

  “Right at a hundred and fifty years,” Jaga said. “Honestly, though, you’re pretty good at bumping uglies for an old, old man. And here I was worrying I was too mature for you.”

  “Give me a second.” This was a lot to take in, and I still didn’t know enough to understand what the fuck was going on. “All right, how long ago was the War of Shudders?”

  “That was the end of the Seventh Age.” Jaga crossed her arms under her heavy breasts and stared intently at me. “You better not be fucking with me. Everybody knows how that went down. Those crazy priests got sick of the demons rampaging all over the continent and poisoned the dream meridians. That ended the war and pushed all the hungry spirits and their allies back through the nexuses to the Frozen Hells. It also fucked everything up, though. Killed a ton of people, tainted the senjin, and made the Emperor seal off the Deepways to keep worse things than the demons from crawling back out.”

  That explained what we’d run into on our way here, but it still didn’t make any sense. If the dream meridians had been poisoned at the end of the War of Shudders more than fifty years ago, why hadn’t Mielyssi freaked out then? She’d been fine, all the way up until the night before she made me leave.

  Her words from the top of the ten thousand steps came back to me. She’d known, even then, just how much time had passed. Decades had slipped through my fingers while she taught me how to love and fight and hunt, and decades more had gone by as I descended the stairs. My mind felt like it was about to come unmoored from my body, and my understanding of time and space suddenly felt woefully incomplete. Lifetimes had passed in what felt to me like weeks, at most.

  “Holy fuck,” I groaned and clasped my head in my hands. “I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

  “Sorry,” Jaga said. She crouched down in front of me, her vest loose enough to reveal the top of the blue tattoo that surrounded her breasts. “If it’s any consolation, everybody else pretty much went crazy for a while after the war. The Emperor changed his title to the Midnight Emperor and went to war with the Moonsilver Bat Kingdom. He had his Jade Seekers kill them all, then hunt down every shaman they could get their hands on. Said the bat priests and their spirit seeker allies were the ones who’d poisoned the meridians. Claimed they did it on purpose to try to take over the Sevenfold Empire.”

  “And that’s why those Jade Seekers were camped outside my village, waiting for me.” It felt like threads of fate were weaving invisible patterns around me as Jaga told her tale. I’d left before the world went to hell. The crimson bear had kept me on top of the mountain until after the war ended, after most of my people had been wiped out, after all the other shamans had been slaughtered.

  At the same time, Aja and Ayo’s mistress had known I was returning and sent the spirits to find me. This army had been on the march before I’d even left Floating Village; they’d known where I would be and how to stop me before my journey had even begun.

  For a moment, I felt a cold certainty that this was all part of some larger plan. Someone had been pulling my strings, maybe since before I’d left Mount Shiki.

  Stop worrying over nothing. That’s not how I do things, and you know it.

  The crimson bear’s voice was harsh in my thoughts. I didn’t know if what she said was true or not. There was also no point in worrying about how I’d gotten here. That was something for future me to fret over while he was relaxing in a house of ill repute somewhere with a drink in his hand.

  “How bad was it?” I asked Jaga. “The war, I mean. You said tons of people died. How many?”

  “Almost everyone.” Jaga took in a deep, shuddering breath and plopped down on the deck in front of me. She pulled her knees to her chest and encircled them with her arms. “Before you left, there were what? Ten million people living on the continent?”

  “No,” I said. Where I’d lived had been pretty sparsely populated, but the traders had told me the rest of the Sevenfold Empire was loaded with people. “Ten times that many. A hundred million, at least. Most of them lived in Sungold Eagle territory, at the heart of the Empire.”

  It was Jaga’s turn to look shocked.

  “That’s impossible.” She scrubbed her cheeks with the palms of her hands and blinked hard as if trying to will my words away. “There are less than a million people left on the continent. Some say there’s not even half that many.”

  My guts tightened into a knot, and my blood seemed to seize up in my veins. It didn’t seem possible that any war, not even one involving demons and hungry spirits, could destroy ninety-nine out of every hundred men, women, and children. It was no wonder we hadn’t encountered more travelers on our journey.

  “Not many left to save,” I muttered to myself. My heart ached for the world I’d lost. The more I saw of i
t, the more it seemed to have suffered while I was gone. If what Jaga said was true, then five hundred men was a substantial portion of the White Tiger Kingdom’s military.

  They must have really wanted me dead.

  That was reason enough for me to want to survive. If the Emperor had sent so many Jade Seekers after me, if he’d impressed so many of another kingdom’s troops into his service just to kill me, I must be more important than I’d thought.

  I didn’t believe for an instant that the priests of the Moonsilver Bat Kingdom had intentionally tried to destroy the dream meridians. Priests were sacred practitioners; they needed the senjin that came out of those meridians to fuel their miracles and commune with their god. The only reason they’d have fucked up the source of senjin was if they’d been pushed into a desperate corner. Maybe they had done something terrible, but they’d done it to try to save the world. I was sure of that.

  It was possible that the Midnight Emperor had ordered all of my people wiped out and sent his men to finish the job because he was pissed that they’d fucked everything up.

  But it was also possible that the Emperor was the one who’d fucked up. No one got to be the big man in charge of the Sevenfold Empire without a significant amount of skill when it came to channeling senjin. The Emperor had to have known and approved of what the Moonsilver Bat’s priests were doing.

  If he’d wanted them all murdered when the dust cleared, maybe it was because they knew the Emperor was the one who’d done something terrible and he needed to silence them.

  The fact that he wanted me dead told me the reason behind his murder spree was even deeper than that. Maybe my heritage was a key that could help unlock this mystery. Maybe as the last shaman and the last member of the Moonsilver Bat Kingdom, I could undo at least some of the damage that had been done to the world, and the big man didn’t want that to happen.

  Or, I was jumping at shadows and making connections that didn’t exist. None of it would matter if we got caught. I needed to focus on the problems I had in front of me, and solve them one at a time.