Mark 2.0

by Prax Venter

  He held each one of their horrible, tube-like bodies in his unending gaze, and with a burst of precise intention, he sent fourteen thin lines of his Goddess-given energy downward from his hands.

  In an instant, glowing blue strands pierced the muddy earth and impaled each of their walnut-sized brains. Essence from their deaths washed over him and filled up all empty space left in his pools, knocking loose whatever next-level madness had taken hold of him.

  The ethereal strings connected to his hands faded away, and Mark fell to his hands and knees in the mud as if he were a broken marionette. The inevitable crash from channeling so much power began, and he simply stared into the mud, breathing through the throbbing thunderstorm in his head as the warm rain pelted his back.

  “Mark…” Abby said softly as he felt one of her tentacles slowly encircle his waist.

  “Did you kill them all?” Jezebel asked, still in bear form and searching for threats. It was strange how normal her voice sounded coming from a stubby snout.

  Mark nodded once but almost blacked out from the movement.

  “Just give me a second…” he murmured then remembered that his loyal succubus was still wounded. He forced himself to look up at the blonde bombshell and saw the sad droop in her right wing. “I’ll heal you as soon as I can, Sasha,” he added through clenched teeth.

  “I know,” she said. “I’ll live. Take it easy. At least I figured out that I can’t metal up my wings and expect to be able to effectively glide- especially with a passenger. That was pretty stupid. But seriously, did you just murder everything under the fucking ground with some new AOE attack?”

  Mark intended to shake his head but stopped himself before making the same mistake twice. Abby was now completely wrapped around him, her warm, firm body pressing into his back and quietly protecting him from the rain. It only took a few more deep breaths before Mark felt the burnt center of his mind fade like spots in his eyes vanishing after looking at a bright light.

  “No, Sasha,” he said then turned to look at Jezebel who had shifted back to her satyr form while he recovered. Her wings were still deployed and gave them some visibility, but she was a beacon in the night. They needed to move. “I want to talk about it, and soon, but let’s find some safety and shelter first.”

  Abby felt his intention to stand so she unwrapped herself from him. He missed the warm contact from her tight little body and his essence pools made the sensation far worse, but this was not the time or the place to snuggle.

  “I fail to see why this recall location was labeled with the word sanctuary.” Jezebel repeated Mark’s sentiment from before then shifted into her more robust centaur form. “I saw a structure near the middle of this… landform while we were falling into it. After you heal Sasha, I’ll fly us there to avoid any more of these worm-like creatures from ambushing us.”

  Abby nodded slowly. “Abdominal impalement is a highly unpleasant sensation and one I never wish to experience again, but I cannot put into words how substantially potent the pleasure…” She trailed off and started absentmindedly coiling her arm tendrils on her flat green stomach.

  All his Enthralled looked so damn hot dripping wet. Abby’s erect nipples aggressively poked against her soaked yellow bikini and the light of Jezebel’s virtual wings made them each cast deep shadows-

  Mark’s heal flipped back into the ready position, and he focused his growing arousal into unsnapping Sasha’s wing-bones. Her leathery right wing began to glow red as a moan escaped her lips and her eyelids fluttered under his focused attention, but it was nowhere near the level of expanded abilities he had access to a moment ago.

  When it was over, his sultry succubus unfurled both wings with a satisfying and healthy snap, flicking rainwater outward. She then folded them back up with a long sigh.

  “Thanks, Lover,” she said, one of her small fangs exposed in a half smile. She then turned to address the others. “Now can we please fuck this man?”

  Mark smiled. “I have so much essence weighing my balls down I’m finding it hard to think of anything else.” With a chuckle, he vaulted onto his centaur’s back and wrapped his fingers around Jezebel’s firm, round tits. “We’ve got this whole digital universe turning against us and still all we can think about is fucking. I love you guys.”

  Once Sasha hopped up behind him and Abby was hoisted up into Jezebel’s arms, the group of lovers and teammates ascended into the night.

  It was too dark to get a good grasp on the landscape, but now that they were slowly hovering and panic wasn’t gripping him, he took a moment to try and look around. If he had to guess, it appeared as if a small winding river had cut through this wide chasm and created a floodplain in the middle. He cast his gaze forward toward the small lake he’d noticed earlier and saw a shadowed outline of splintered wreckage. Was there more water here at some point in the past that allowed the passage of ships?

  As they approached, more details began to stand out.

  “It’s an airship,” Jezebel said, and Mark picked up the many broken shafts on its tilted deck like bristles on a hairbrush. The hull was cracked in half with most of the front section submerged in water.

  “At some point it was,” Abby agreed, clutching on tightly while still leaning out to get a good look. “A crash landing?”

  Jezebel brought them down closer to the deck, and her glowing wings began to illuminate sections of railing that reflected light back.

  “Looks like metal,” Sasha said.

  There wasn’t really a good place to make a proper landing on the boat as it was mostly slanted angles and rotted wood, but as she circled around the derelict skyship, the dark opening of what appeared to be the captain’s cabin came into view.

  “Perhaps we could hole up in there, dish out a batch of level ups to you sexy ladies,” Mark said.

  “It is your duty,” said Abby, then extended one of her tentacles out into the darkness on the other side of the splintered boat. “But I feel we should investigate that first.”

  Because Jezebel was holding the petite abyssal horror sideways in her arms, she was the only one facing this direction. When Mark turned to look, his mouth hung open.

  About seventy yards from the broken boat was a bright rectangle that showed some other location bathed in sunlight- like a doorway.

  “Yes,” Jezebel said as she adjusted their trajectory, “that certainly looks important.”

  “How did we not see it before?” Sasha said.

  “I believe its surface only occupies the flatness of two dimensions,” Abby answered. “I witnessed it rotate into existence as we circled.”

  To test this, Jezebel took them wide as they slowly approached the strange portal through the rain, and sure enough, it became much more difficult to see from the side. It was obviously magical in nature and looked as if it should be emitting light, but it was more like a cutout of reality alone in the darkness.

  The doorway was at the edge of the lake and sat in the middle of a perfect circle of small pebbles about twenty feet wide. Jezebel’s wings began to illuminate the area and twelve larger rocks marking out the edge of this unique area. They were about the size of his head and each one appeared to be the same distance from the next.

  “There’s a message,” Abby said, pointing out a small wooden signpost within the ring of rocks.

  “Let me drop down first and check it out,” Sasha said, pushing off their flying mount, her sharp black hooves skittering briefly on the rain-slicked pebbles as she landed. Mark wanted to protest, but the creatures that attacked them before seemed to have a hard time damaging her curvy metallic legs. That, and the huge pile of stones covering the area gave him the impression it was a surface the mud-burrowing creatures would avoid. Either way, Jezebel lowered them all to the point where her four dangling hooves were only a few feet away.

  Sasha carefully stepped up to the weathered signpost and then her thin spade tail cracked once. Mark felt amusement pulse along their bond.

  “I’ll gi
ve you guys one guess as to what’s written here,” she said with a hand on her round hip.

  “Sanctuary?” Jezebel said.

  Sasha nodded. “Give this horsewoman a cigar!”

  Their flying mount landed, and her passengers disembarked before she shifted back to her satyr form. The colorful world of green, blue, and red leafy trees beyond the flat surface moved with him, giving the impression that this was indeed a door to somewhere else. He glanced over at the simple wooden signpost with the word “sanctuary” displayed with shallow gouges as if someone had carved the word with a knife long ago.

  “We should toss something through first as a test,” Jezebel suggested. “I don’t trust anything in this world.”

  Mark bent down and plucked a small wet pebble from the hundreds around them and wordlessly chucked it in with a sidearm throw.

  Instead of passing through and hitting the ground on the other side, the rock vanished as soon as it hit the threshold.

  The four of them stood silently gazing into the inviting rectangle of daylight trying to determine what the result meant as the rain continually splattered everything from above.

  Jezebel sighed and turned to the others. “I’m inclined to just head back to the airship crash site and-”

  She broke off as the ground began to shake causing the pebbles at their feet to bounce and clack against each other. Mark summoned his magic two-handed mace as he searched for any threats, and his True Sight enhanced eye showed him a subterranean red splotch the size of a freight train weaving its way toward them from deeper in the valley.

  “Guys…” he began, taking a few protective steps toward his bonded monster-women. “It looks like the granddaddy of those shitty worms is coming to get some payback. Either we mount up and keep looking for shelter, or we take a chance on this Sanctuary place- like right now.”

  “I have a good feeling about this place,” Sasha said before she surprised everyone and casually stepped toward the portal.

  And then she was gone. Gone from sight, from their bond, and from his True Sight ability. She was nowhere.

  “No! Wait!” Abby yelled and then dashed after her.

  Anxiety washed over him from Jezebel as the quaking grew more intense and almost knocked them to the ground. They shared a glance before Mark shrugged.

  “I’m right behind you,” he said, holding out his mace toward the portal.

  His strawberry-blonde satyr held her breath before she also vanished before both of his eyes, magically enhanced or otherwise. At this point, it didn’t really matter where they went as he was going to follow them regardless, and Mark’s last thought before touching that threshold was praying to anyone who’d listen that this wasn’t some type of suicide door.

  - 2 -

  Mark’s good eye shot open and he sat up. For a moment, he had no idea where he was, but then he saw Sasha, Jezebel, and Abby also coming around in the soft grass surrounding them and remembered the portal in the darkness. He swiveled his head to take in this new location and saw what had to be some type of crocodile person getting to his feet nearby. The rough, dark-green creature in a soldier’s uniform caught his attention at first, but it was the smoking ruins of the air ship they’d seen before behind him that drew his eye. They were still in the bottom of a canyon, but things were different now. Overgrown.

  Was this a portal to the past? Was this colorful forest the Sanctuary they were looking for?

  Before he could process any more information, the formidable-looking crocodile soldier drew a short, wide blade from a black scabbard on his hip, reversed his grip so it pointed to his chest, and then forcefully shoved it all the way through with a grunt.

  Mark and his team jumped to their feet as the creature locked his beady eyes on them then fell the ground gurgling on his own blood.

  Sasha’s tail snapped once behind her.

  “What the hell is going on, here?” she asked.

  Mark didn’t have an answer, but he pushed his boots into the fertile, sandy earth as he sprinted for the fatally wounded monster man.

  The creature was dead before they reached him, and Mark’s enhanced eye saw only lifeless flesh. There was no way he could bring this guy back. Ornate medals and golden braids adorned the soldier’s chest and despite being worn to threads in some places, the slate-gray attire gave him a refined air.

  “Why did he take that action?” Abby asked from behind as she coiled a tentacle around Mark’s limp fingers.

  “Company,” Jezebel said, pushing a warning through their bond.

  Mark turned to see a balding human male in a white robe and a well-endowed bird-woman walking toward them from the right. The man held up a hand when he saw them looking.

  “Ho! New visitors!” he shouted loudly from a distance.

  Mark shared a glance with his bonded women then checked the dead crocodile soldier one last time before leading his team toward people who might finally explain any of this madness. He’d been trained to not to get his hopes up.

  The man appeared to be in his fifties and had a friendly smile on his warm face. His avian companion had vibrant pink-and-teal feathers and looked ravishing, despite her wide yellow beak. She wore no clothes but in a bit of reverse modesty, her dark red, fleshy nipples were the only part of her not covered by colorful plumage.

  As they walked through the clearing around the smoldering, broken airship resting in the middle of a river, Mark caught sight of many other bodies from all manner of strange species lying dead around the area. One or two others were still alive and standing up, yet many more were long gone. If he had to guess, they were experiencing the point in time at (or soon after) the actual crash landing.

  After a few more steps, the two groups met.

  “Four at once!” the man said, his genuine good nature reflecting in his warm brown eyes. “It’s been so many cycles- decades, hasn’t it?”

  “Manners…” the bird-woman said, her over-sized, black eyes wincing at her companion. She then turned to face Mark and his party. “I’m Chorra and this is Meegon. May we ask your names?”

  Mark flashed them a smile. His truth-seeing ability did not detect an ounce of deception or ill will in either of them.

  “I’m Mark, and this is Sasha, Jez-” His mouth snapped shut when he remembered that they had only minutes ago been flagged as universe-wide fugitives by Maliah. He had a moment to curse his stupid penchant for blurting out the truth and wished he’d had the forethought to give fake names. By the emotions hitting him from the pair of strangers in front of them, he knew it was too late.

  The bird-woman called Chorra finished for him.

  “Jezebel the satyr, and Abby the abyssal horror… Now that is both surprising and not surprising.”

  “My goodness, you’re dead on, Chorra!” Meegon said. “They match the description perfectly.”

  Mark took a step back, ready for anything.

  But before anyone could say anything else, a huge half-hippo half-man came running up to the group from the wreckage. At about eight feet tall, the intimidating creature looked like he could crush Mark with his massive hands alone. He wore a silky white shirt that didn’t quite fit and an absurd pair of small shorts over his pebbled gray skin. On closer inspection, Mark picked up several lacerations and bruises all over his body.

  “What a damn mess!” he said, rubbing a particularly bruised elbow. “So many dead rich sons’ a bitches. You lot stick with me and we’ll all make it through this alive. I plan on trekking toward the Hassig Sea as soon as possible, by way of the river. We could make it by-”

  “Not now, Kiv,” the balding man said, dismissing the newcomer with his hand. “You go on ahead, you don’t want to miss your big tournament. We’ll be right behind you.”

  The hippo-man narrowed his tiny brown eyes and then turned to Mark and his Enthralled.

  “I don’t remember seeing any of you people onboard... Whatever. You as dumb as this other human, Collector, or do you want to do the smart thing and follow
my lead?”

  Mark looked between Chorra, Meegon, and this new fella Kiv at a complete loss.

  “Yeah, we’re not going anywhere with you until someone starts explaining what this is and where we are.”

  He noticed yet another human male with dark hair in purple clothes approaching them from around the far side of the smoldering airship hull, but Mark ignored him for now and focused his attention on the potential threats standing around him.

  Kiv spat a huge lump of a foul-smelling brown substance onto the ground.

  “Fuck you losers,” he said and then stalked off toward the approaching man.

  Chorra sighed and ruffled her feathers like a dog shaking off water. Mark, still full of essence, could not resist watching her soft, full breasts bounce as she did so. Then Meegon started to explain things.

  “You are all within the perpetual loop that is Sanctuary, Mark. None of you need to worry about your past- we’re all here for the same reason. To hide from the outside world. That uniquely bizarre message we all saw on the last cycle doesn’t really mean anything as you cannot be killed here- and neither can we. Sanctuary represents absolute safety.”

  Mark frowned. The friendly guy didn’t seem to be lying, but he’d be foolish to blindly trust his blind eye and drop his guard. They’d all need to be on guard around everyone they met for the foreseeable future.

  “That solider back there sure looks pretty dead to me,” Sasha said.

  “We literally watched him die,” Jezebel added.

  Meegon shrugged. “He does that at the start of every cycle. Detrious says he’s got some secret to protect and doesn’t even want to risk the chance of someone coming in here and probing his mind, or some nonsense.”

  “Detrious?” Mark asked, and the bird-woman pointed one of her long-feathered arms back toward the man currently walking away from the further enraged hippo person.

  “He’s another Visitor. Probably the one who’s been in here the longest.”

  “That’s a dirty lie and you know it,” Meegon said, waving his finger at the woman.