by Noah Layton
It was all I could do to stop Arabelle from slamming into a tree.
What terrified me most was how silent the forest was. Sure, the slamming of her hooves against the undergrowth and the hard breathing of all three of us colored my senses, but other than that my vision was assaulted by a constant torrent of illuminated trunks that we moved past and in between.
I prayed that one of them wouldn’t move and reveal itself to be some unknown monster.
‘Mm...!’ Elera moaned out. ‘There...!’
Her hand rose to point ahead briefly but fell again. She turned her head to the side, and in the firelight I glanced sharply at her face; her lips had become chapped and dry as if she hadn’t tasted water in weeks, and her face was turning a light shade of purple instead of the graceful blue that I had become used to.
Her skin looked like it was cracking open.
‘Hold on...!’
I kicked Arabelle’s stirrups and my horse neighed wildly I’m response. We galloped ahead hard, barely missing trees that whipped by.
The further we travelled the more nervous I became. We had moved more than a mile to the north-east from the tribe, and there was still no water in sight.
This wasn’t like the Black Patch in its boggy marshes and endless pools. It was dry, until-
Arabelle neighed loudly and slid to a halt. Elera and I were almost bucked from her back, but I managed to hold both of us in place.
I raised my torch and searched for the threat, but there was none.
Elera suddenly shifted and fell from the horse’s back. She landed heavily on the ground and began to claw her way forward.
‘Shit...’
I jumped down and hitched Arabelle to a tough, low-hanging branch before rushing over to Elera. I moved to pick her up but she fought against me.
‘There...!’ She wheezed, pointing ahead.
‘There’s nothing here!’
But then, against the rushing wind, I realized that I wasn’t just listening to the sounds of the endless leaves of the forest clashing with each other – there was water straight ahead, and it was making a lot of noise.
A thick wall of leaves and vines blocked our way, but Elera continued to claw at it. I retrieved my sword and cut through it. It was tough, but eventually my sword ripped vertically through the greenery.
I picked Elera up and laid her across my back, pushing my torch through the gap before it had a chance to set fire to the leaves, and followed the fire in my hand.
‘Woah...’
I was standing in a small clearing that gave directly onto a waterfall. Rushing blue water fell across smoothed grey rocks five yards overhead, disappearing into the ground below.
That was the reason that we couldn’t find a river in the area; it flowed through the ground beneath us. It must have flowed from here all the way to Ichabod’s Cove, and along a hundred other smaller streams too.
Either side of the waterfall were more jagged rocks that led at a steep incline to the raised land up ahead, and the point where the river stemmed from. As of yet we had mostly travelled south, and I had yet to explore the north beyond the trading post.
Elera was now on her feet beneath the flowing water. She had one foot on the ground that I could see, and the other on the other side of the waterfall, suspended on some unseen ledge.
She tilted her head back and indulged in the flow of the earth’s life force for stretching moments.
Before my eyes her cracked purple skin transformed into the flawless light blue that I had seen the first time I had met her.
She turned to me and smiled as the water flowed over her body.
‘Come,’ she smiled, beckoning me to her.
Before I could answer Elera vanished behind the waterfall.
I approached it and called out her name. Nothing.
‘Where are you?’
‘Beyond the water!’ Her voice echoed as if all around me.
I surveyed the pounding torrents of water and figured there was no way I could reach Elera without getting soaked.
I put out my torch in the water, threw it to the ground, and stepped forwards.
‘Fuck it.’
I pushed through the water, holding my hands out and waiting to slam into a rock wall.
Leaving the water, I emerged into an open space. It was entirely dark.
I searched in my inventory and retrieved another torch, then ignited it.
I was standing in a small cave that stretched back into the rock five or six yards and the same in width. Fine sand caked the ground, but otherwise the space was bare - aside from Elera.
She was pushing her wet hair behind her back, her wet body dripping with moisture. Beads of water dropped over her smooth skin, which she rubbed in like a lotion.
‘So much better,’ she sighed, smiling. ‘I am sorry for the, umm... Problem?’
‘Oh, it’s no problem,’ I stressed, jamming the end of the torch down in the side so that it held in place. ‘I just... I thought you were dying.’
‘I have always lived in the water... I do not think that I can leave it. Thank you for saving me just now.’
Without hesitation she proceeded to pull away the leather covering her breasts and cast it aside, then bent over and slipped out of her underwear.
‘Woah, woah, what are you doing?’
‘I must get water to all of my body.’
She continued rubbing the water over her body, caressing her breasts and running her hands over her stomach and down between her legs. She gasped lightly as her hands ran over the sensitivity between her legs.
I couldn’t look anywhere else.
She looked back up from her body and smiled at me.
‘Do you enjoy looking at me?’
‘I... Yeah. A little too much, actually. Listen, I think it’s best that I get back to my land. They’re going to be worrying about me.’
‘You are leaving me?’
‘You can’t stay at the tribal land. With no water you’ll die. You’ll be safe here for now.’
‘Please stay for a short time. I have been without company for so long.’
She wasn’t messing around. She had already crossed to me in total silence and was standing right before me. The nymph brought her hands to my chest and licked her blue lips. She slid a hand to the back of my beck, guiding me to her
There was no way that I could resist kissing her. Her lips were warm and soft and full, and pressed tightly to mine as I ran my hands over her wet, naked body.
‘This is the most that I have ever let a man touch me,’ she whispered. ‘In the rivers it was never anything more than a stroke of the face or a guiding finger at a man’s chin before they fell into the water, and I and my sisters would laugh at them and disappear into the forest.’
‘Doesn’t look like you’re doing that right now.’
‘What makes you think I want to run away?’
‘Your nature,’ I smiled. ‘Like you said.’
‘It is my nature to entice the weak-minded of your kind… But real men, like you, are different. You are the first man of true strength that I have encountered.’
We kissed again. Elera pulled at my clothes and removed them effortlessly, her hands seeming to be everywhere.
‘Now this makes it seem like you’ve been with a man before.’
‘Maybe we did not only pull them into the water… Maybe we stole their clothes with promises of pleasure and then pulled them into the water…’
‘Are you going to do that to me?’
‘No… I don’t think so…’
My clothes removed, our naked bodies became pressed together in the cave as we kissed passionately. Elera’s hands found my hardness and her fingers wrapped around me as I ran my fingers between her legs and felt her wetness against my skin.
She gasped at my touch, her mouth falling open as we looked each other in the eyes and pleasured each other with our hands. Her touch was soft and gentle, and the feeling of her supple fingers was incred
ible.
We were still standing in the midst of all of this – until Elera suddenly slid her hands up to the back of my neck and whispered into my ear.
‘Sit down… I want to mount you.’
I had never heard it said like that before, but for some reason it turned me on even more.
I lowered myself to the ground, sitting and leaning back as I propped myself up on my hands. Elera stood before me, then lowered herself down atop me. Her body quivered as the head of my throbbing cock touched between her legs for the first time, but I had to do nothing; she moved herself onto me, supporting herself with her hands on my shoulders as we both watched me enter her for the first time.
She looked up at me, her mouth hanging open. I wrapped my arms around her as our bodies moved together slowly as we experienced each other for the first time, but it didn’t take long for Elera’s appetite to flare up.
‘Mm… More…’
I lowered myself back with Elera still atop and my dick buried into her. She laid herself on me and positioned her legs, biting her lip and staring me intensely in the eyes as I fucked her harder. She stamped her hands into the sand and pressed her body against mine, pushing her round breasts around my face, which I was more than happy to take.
I licked ferociously at her nipples as I took her hard. It was the dead of night outside, and while we were secluded in the cave I had no intention of being heard by any foreign beast that might have been lurking nearby.
But Elera’s screams were like the most addictive drug I had never heard of. I couldn’t get enough of them. Fortunately for us, the waterfall masked most of the sounds that we made.
We slowed, and she pulled herself from me. She laughed playfully and sank forward onto her front a few feet away.
‘Defile my body,’ she said, moving to all fours and arching her back. ‘This is the gift I give to a real man…’
In the flickering firelight of the secluded cave I moved behind Elera, admiring her round, perfect behind for a moment as she perched it in the air and shook her hips smoothly from side to side.
I pushed into her again, commanding her hips as she moaned out gracefully against the sound of crashing water behind me. The sounds of her pleasure combined with it as I groaned out, biting my lip to hold myself back as I took her from behind.
Her blue, slender body writhed as her fingers tensed and grasped at the millions of grains of sand as I took her harder and harder. Somehow she seemed to be growing tighter around me as I pounded her.
I couldn’t take it any longer.
In the warm seclusion of the cave I thrusted into her and came deep inside of her, my groans and her screams of ecstasy echoing all around us.
I pulled from Elera, and her quivering arms finally gave out. She fell onto her front and rolled to her side, panting deeply. I crawled to her side and wrapped her blue body up in my own. She was water-kissed and smooth, her warm form thoroughly satisfied and mine too as we both drifted to sleep.
***
Light was shining through the waterfall when I awoke. I turned over on the sand to see Elera sleeping peacefully next to me.
I watched her for a few minutes before her eyes flickered open and she looked up at me with a smile.
‘Did you sleep well?’
‘Pretty well,’ I replied. ‘You completely took it out of me.’
‘I am glad to know that my first time was pleasurable for you.’
‘You shouldn’t think of it like that,’ I laughed. ‘It should feel good to you to, you know?’
‘Oh, of course, but I have been so used to the idea of thinking about what men want for so many years that…’
‘It’s difficult to get out of that way of thinking. Look, I might be in charge, but that doesn’t mean it’s not my job to pleasure you too. And with a body like yours… Well, it’s pretty impossible for me not to try and do that.’
‘I found last night incredibly pleasurable, Tall-man.’
‘Good. I promise next time I’ll make it even better.’
‘There will be a next time?’
‘Of course. If you want to, obviously.’
‘I certainly do, but how is that possible? I cannot return to your land… Unless you wish to keep coming back here, but I do not want to be troublesome to you.’
‘You’re not troublesome, believe me,’ I said, sitting up and reaching for my clothes. I couldn’t help feeling like this was some kind of Sunday morning nail-and-bail after a one-night stand. That may have been what it looked like, but that wasn’t what it was. ‘I’m going to figure out a way for you to stay alive on my land, whether that means digging until I hit water or channelling a river through it. I’ll find a way.’
‘Thank you. I was right about you being a good man. You are not just strong and commanding, but kind too.’
‘I’m just trying to do something good,’ I said simply. ‘What more can I do?’
I pulled on my clothes while Elera watched me. I was about to kiss her goodbye when a flicker of movement at the back of the cave set my nerves on edge.
I quickly reached for my sword and held it in a defensive stance. Elera sat bolt upright, looking between me and the darkness ahead.
‘What is it?’
‘Something moved back there.’
‘I don’t see it.’
There was a sudden flicker of light, then another.
I moved forwards until I reached the cave wall. There was nothing living back here – it was within the wall.
I retrieved another torch and lit it up, guiding its light along the wall.
Stamped into it were dozens of tiny patches of orange and bronze color that reflected brightly against the fire.
‘What is this…?’
‘Ore,’ Elera replied, heading to my side. A pocket of copper, I think.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘There was a small pocket in the rivers once when I was younger. My sisters told me about it.’
I ran my fingers across the ore, feeling the smooth, shinier patches intermingled with the rougher stone around it.
I wonder…
‘Step back for a second,’ I said to Elera, then swapped my sword out for my pickaxe. I had picked it up from the post a while back as another thing to invest in, but I had never got around to placing it in storage. In the clutter of objects it was still sitting in my inventory, something I hadn’t used once as of yet.
My assumption was that it could be used for removing any rocks that we might have stumbled upon while harvesting, but now it could serve a different purpose.
I positioned the pick of the head against the stone, readied a stance, swung it back over my shoulder and struck it against the ore.
Above the pocket a percentage calculator suddenly appeared.
11%.
I struck again, harder this time, and it moved up to 27%.
The harder I struck the faster it could be mined.
Once the counter hit 100%, a hollow patch appeared in the wall and the ore clunked out and onto the ground in small, collectable pieces.
I picked it up and placed it into my inventory.
Copper ore x6
‘That was easy,’ I commented.
Considering the little work that had gone into recovering this much ore, it was something that I planned to begin exploring in the very near future.
‘I need to get back to my land,’ I said, turning to Elera. ‘Are you going to be okay here? It’s not exactly cosy.’
‘I was trapped in a cave for months. I think that I can survive here. The caves below look like an interesting place to explore, too.’
‘Caves?’
‘Down there.’
We crossed to the space where the waterfall disappeared below. Elera pointed to where the water disappeared underground.
‘There are cave systems all over Agraria,’ she said. ‘Some are small, but others are enormous. There is another world lurking down there.’
‘I’ll keep that in mind
,’ I said. ‘Be safe out here. I’ll come back in a few days.’
‘I will wait for you,’ she smiled, kissing me again and pulling away. ‘Now get back to your land. Your people may need you.’
I exited the waterfall, drenching myself again. Arabelle was still hitched to the tree where I had left her.
I examined the area in the yellow morning light. Elera would be safe here until I could figure out a way to keep her alive back at the land, if such a thing was even possible.
The only alternative would be to claim a piece of land with a body of water upon it and station her there... Or find a way to channel the underground river through my land, which was beyond stupid and probably impossible.
I shook my head and crossed to Arabelle. I patted her and surveyed the area one last time, then hopped onto her back.
Something was wrong, though. I was being blinded by a sharp reflection, one far stronger than that coming from the sun. It was coming from the top of the waterfall.
For a moment I thought it could have been the water itself, but it was off to the left side, away from the flow.
The forest was quiet save for a bird squawking somewhere in a nearby tree. Elera was safe, and it was just my horse and I out here.
It could be another deposit of ore, and if it’s shining that brightly it could be a valuable one.
I headed to the left side of the waterfall and began my climb. Despite the water that had splashed onto the rocks from the nearby flow, they were jagged enough to stop me from slipping.
It became more vertical at the peak, but after finding two secure spots to pull myself up, I wrenched myself to the left and onto the rocky ledge, and found the source of the brightness.
It was mangled, busted and bent out of shape, but there was no mistaking it.
It was my jet.
The craft I had been flying before I landed in Agraria was an experimental piece of machinery. My memory of my arrival here was foggy, but the onboard computers had detected… Something. At first I had assumed it was an anomaly, but a strong gravitational force had pulled me towards it.
But it wasn’t an error - it was the portal that Master Marlo, the old head of the Orakin Tribe, had pulled me through.
The J-17 possessed two key features due to its experimental nature; an automatic seat ejection in the event that the aircraft went into an uncontrollable plummet and received no instructions, and a series of heavy-duty parachutes and pressure-supported rafts connected to the frame.
