Forsaken

by Cebelius

  He felt her hand cup him once more, felt her tongue slowly unwind, retreat, and its four component tendrils sealed around their axis as it slipped back between her still slightly parted lips. Her breath washed over him, and her exhalation was redolent of the sweetness he'd sensed earlier, the honey notes much stronger now.

  His stomach rumbled in response.

  Yara panted fitfully a moment, her eyes only gradually clarifying as she lowered him back to the ledge and set him down.

  His legs failed to support him and he sat abruptly, unashamed of his nakedness. His body shone with her saliva and he reeked of sex, but he was alive, and at the moment that was enough.

  She smiled at him a moment later and asked, "Hungry?"

  "I could eat," he admitted absently, still a bit stunned by what he'd just gone through. He realized a moment later that he should have known better.

  Her hand cupped him and slid him forward. He wound up pressed firmly against one of her breasts as she said simply, "Drink."

  He blinked, felt the extravagant warmth and softness against his cheek, then reached up to turn her already hardening nipple, which was so large he was only barely able to get his mouth around it. Once he had it, he squeezed at the base, not having any better idea what to do, but it seemed enough as he was rewarded with a thick, syrupy fluid that tasted so much like honey as to make no difference. He was only able to swallow twice, and take a third mouthful before he was forced to disengage. The stuff was so incredibly rich that it was difficult to swallow, and sat heavily in his stomach.

  It also filled him with a heady warmth and lassitude that left him wondering if he'd been drugged.

  "From one, many. Come. I show," she said, and it was obvious that he wasn't being given a choice in the matter as he was once again scooped up. She cradled him against her bare breast as she turned and made her way across the open, spherical space with a speed that ruffled his hair with the wind of their passage.

  They surged into one of the openings near the very top of the space, then twisted through a series of vertical turns that would have been nigh impossible for a normal person to navigate. It took no more than two minutes for her to come out into another relatively open area. When Abram saw what she had stored there, something within him froze.

  She set him down on a ledge and skittered away through another spherical open space, but this one was cluttered with objects that Abram only gradually recognized as horribly bloated bodies.

  Living bodies.

  Some had been male, some female, and he was only able to discern this because some had beards and others lacked them. Most of their features had been wiped away by whatever swelled them beyond any mortal capacity. He could only assume they had once been dwarves, but the smallest among them was swollen to twice normal size, and some of the largest were practically ten feet in diameter and almost completely spherical in shape.

  Yara seemed to know exactly where she wanted to go and stopped at one that had obviously not been there as long as most. The figure was too engorged to move, but tried as the broodmother approached, moaning pitifully. There was no echo in the open space, the sound was absorbed by the massive, pillowy bodies all around.

  Abram couldn't help but watch as Yara took hold of the poor creature and once more her tongue slipped from her lips, split, and sealed itself around the head. Its ineffectual struggles grew more violent for a moment, then faded to feeble movement that soon died away altogether. Yara's tongue flexed, began to pump, and Abram saw a bloated hand spasm wide, the only sign left of struggle as the broodmother pumped something into his body.

  She incubates her eggs in living hosts. No wonder the dwarves sent an army after her ... Oh my God, what have I done?

  Again his legs refused to support him, and he sank to his knees, eyes wide as he watched the broodmother disengage, move to another bloated egg sac that had once been a person, and repeat the process.

  He felt his gorge rise and closed his eyes, tilting his head away as he struggled to breathe.

  It's just a game ... just a game ... IT'S JUST A GAME!

  He didn't vomit, but that may only have been because what Yara had fed him was so thick it refused to come back up.

  Abram forced himself to look again, but his hands covered his mouth on their own as he shivered. The only thought he could sustain was that it wasn't real. It was just a game.

  You're the bad guy, remember? Necromancy, swarms, pain lashes and tentacle runes. This is how your armies get built. You're the bad guy ... and it's just a game. These aren't real people. Nothing in the real world could do that to a person, there's no way anyone would survive. It's not real.

  In a desperate bid to reassure himself, Abram pulled up his stats:

  Primary Statistics:

  Strength: 6/20

  Dexterity: 6/20

  Constitution: 10/20

  Soul: 20/20

  Presence: 3/20

  Comeliness: 3/20

  Secondary Statistics:

  Health: 13/13

  Stamina: 18/20

  Mana: 31/90 (100)

  Regeneration (HP): .0123/minute at rest

  (+17.712 hppd)

  Respite (SP): 2/minute at rest

  Renewal (MP): .2/minute*

  *conditional

  Affinities:

  Primary

  Chaos

  Evil

  Death

  Secondary

  Abilities:

  Template's Gift

  Iron Stomach

  Disease Resistance

  Poison Resistance

  Dark Sight (120 feet)

  Spells:

  HUD

  Dark Lightning

  Tentacular Rune

  Points Available: 10

  Ten points. Half what I got from Angrboda. I guess that makes sense, Yara isn't exactly a mythological legend, just a big fucking monster.

  The sight of his stat screen hanging translucent in the air before him steadied Abram's nerves and sapped the horror from him. He could still see the bloated, living vessels filling the chamber around him. He could still smell the sweet scent of Yara's honey, thicker here than anywhere else. He still had the realization of what this alliance would bring, what he had done, but it was easier to put it all in context now. It really was just a game. Here was the proof. He had points to spend.

  Abram sighed with relief, and at length, when Yara returned to him, he was able to smile a genuine smile for her when she gave him a questioning look, glancing out over the chamber as she said, "I could not run. Understand?"

  "You were protecting your brood, I understand," Abram said softly.

  She smiled and nodded vehemently as she said, "From one, many."

  He kept his stat screen between him and the vision of horror the room sought to inflict on him as he agreed, "From one, many."

  He tilted his head back the way they'd come as he said, "Take me back to Angrboda, please."

  She picked him up, carried him from the room, and by the time they neared the entrance again he had almost succeeded in putting it from his mind.

  Almost.

  13

  Bad Blood

  "Come again. Miss you."

  "I missed you too, little one. We'll be back this way soon. We may come with dwarves, but we'll keep them away from here. We need to use them for something else, but if there are survivors we may bring them back for you, so leave them alone if you sense them, all right?"

  Yara's spines shivered, then she nodded and said, "Will do. Bye-bye."

  She scooped up two of the armored figures, both of whom Abram presumed to be still alive, and turned her massive form to head back toward her den.

  Abram watched her go, then glanced at Angie and Sif as he said, "I suppose all we need to do now is follow the trail of devastation back toward where the dwarves came from?"

  Angie shrugged and nodded, then asked, "Did she feed you? Her honey is very filling and nutritious. It's also a universal antidote and contributes to
rapid healing. She should have offered."

  "She did."

  "Good, you should wait at least a full day before eating anything else though. If you eat too much with that inside you it can have ... lingering side effects."

  Abram turned away, not bothering to suppress his shudder, careful not to step on the innumerable insect corpses as he said, "She showed me. I'm aware."

  "Showed you what?" Sif asked, hurrying to catch up.

  Abram briefly considered staying quiet, but Angie clearly already knew. He reasoned that telling Sif and gauging her reactions would give him some useful information, so he told her what he had seen, sparing no details.

  Sif listened quietly, her blue-on-black eyes betraying little of her thoughts. She never showed surprise, shock, or horror, and when he was done she said only, "Well, I suppose that explains why the dwarves were so aggressive. Perhaps she got too greedy with her predation trying to gather enough people to fuel her latest round of progeny."

  Angie nodded as she said, "It seems likely, though it's also possible that the dwarves simply sent a patrol too far afield and discovered her by accident. Or that they've known of her location for some time and were finally resolved to wipe her out. Either way, the fact that this group was annihilated may make it more difficult to garner support from them. Unless their numbers were supplemented for just this campaign, there may not be a strong enough force left at the outpost for them to be willing to risk the manpower for us."

  "We've got all the riches of Svartheim to tempt them with," Abram said quietly. "If dwarves are as greedy as they always seem to be in the stories, they should come running even if it costs them their last man."

  He saw Angie and Sif exchange a look out of the corner of his eye, then Angie asked, "You intend to make that offer?"

  "I'll offer whatever I have to in order to get the force I need. Treasures can be regained, but we'll only get one shot at revenge."

  Sif nodded, her expression settling into one of grim acceptance as she said, "That's fair."

  "I suppose," Angie said. "I don't like the idea of giving the dwarves anything, but needs must when devils drive."

  Abram was reminded again of what the dwarves had done with the last template they'd caught, and asked, "How are we going to handle this anyway? I get the feeling that if I just walk in I'm begging for trouble we don't need."

  "You're not wrong."

  Angie sounded pensive, and met his glance with a subtle shrug. "Perhaps it would be best if you didn't actually enter the settlement at all. Sending Sif and I should be sufficient. She has more than enough reason to be making this request on her own, and the dwarves have long memories. They know me, know of my connections to Svartheim. The fact that I never sought revenge for what they did to my previous lover may now pay some benefit, though what that might be remains to be seen."

  "You never tried to get revenge?" he asked, eyebrow raised.

  She shook her head. "There was no point. The dwarves would have held a grudge, and as I said, their memories are long. I cannot reach them with my true body, and while my proxies are formidable I could never take on the entire settlement by myself. The bergsrå of that past age would never have consented to aid me ... and even success would have been pissing into the wind. I would forever after have been required to ward off dwarvish intrusions."

  She smiled faintly as she looked at Abram. "When you are mortal, all you have to think about is satisfaction in one lifetime. I am ageless. I think long term lest I be doomed to even more misery than I have already been given."

  He glanced toward Sif, who noticed and met his gaze as she shook her head. "I can't even imagine giving up on revenge against the Mor. Not for what she's done."

  "Youth says such things. With age you will understand that passion spent on anger and hatred is wasted."

  Angie reached out and slid an arm over Abram's shoulder, turning him toward her and kissing him deeply. Initially surprised, he gave himself to her kiss, reveling in her affection. When it broke, she smiled as she said, "Better to spend one's passions on love. The returns are far more worthwhile."

  Abram had to blink away his goofy grin as his brain went through a power cycle. He gave what she'd said some thought as the three of them walked, and eventually said, "I suppose the problem with we young’uns is that there's more passion than love in our lives. If we don't spend it on something else, we go crazy."

  Angie laughed and said, "That's a fair assessment, though in my experience the young are crazy by default. Sanity only comes with a lengthening perspective."

  "I think that's a spectrum," Abram returned. "A perspective that's too long is just as insane as one that's too short. Life is lived in the moment. There's a saying where I come from. 'You can't take it with you.'"

  "Spoken like a mortal," Angie teased.

  "Which I am," he said, rolling his eyes as he turned his hands up. "So I think my perspective, and my passions, suit me just fine. I've got more than enough both to love you and ensure that the Mor gets what she's got coming."

  "Fair enough, young Abram. Fair enough."

  She set a hand briefly on his shoulder, then let it slip free as they walked on in silence for a time.

  The track they were following was a wide swath of devastation left by the dwarven advance. The mushrooms had been razed so completely and in such a wide track that he had his dark sight back, and Abram was vaguely surprised by how thoroughly the flames had cleared away the fungus. He would have expected to see partially burned stalks and chunks of debris, but either the magical fire the dwarves had used was every bit as tenacious as napalm, or the fungus itself was prone to burn completely. Ashes lay everywhere in heaps and low swells, many of which partially obscured insectile bodies that he couldn't help but notice were getting fewer and farther apart as they got more individually impressive.

  They didn't all look like centipedes either. Most of the corpses they were passing at the moment looked more like a cross between a praying mantis and a xenomorph. It was also becoming obvious that the dwarves hadn't made it as far as they had unscathed. Abram wasn't counting, but he did note that as they got farther from Yara's den, the dwarven casualties got heavier.

  It was a violation of standard game logic that nevertheless pleased him. Whoever had designed this encounter had done an excellent job suiting the battle to Yara's personality. She seemed the sort to send her strongest troops into battle first to protect her younger, more vulnerable brood.

  Every step they took lifted puffs of ash into the air and Abram was profoundly grateful that there was no wind here, or the grit and dust would have quickly become unbearable. As it was, a glance back showed they were leaving a haze in the air behind them.

  "How far until we get out of this mushroom forest?" he asked.

  Angie glanced around, then said, "I am not certain. We aren't following the route I would have taken us. I think we're actually moving laterally rather than directly toward our destination. Perhaps the old bridge was destroyed. We should be able to cross into the caverns again as long as we stick with this path, and the devastation should keep other predators from bothering us."

  "You mean not everything in here belongs to Yara?" Abram asked.

  "Of course not. Do these look like the bodies of things that eat fungus?" Angie asked, waving toward one of the chitinous centurion corpses half-covered in soot. It was the size of a suburban, and its scythe-like appendages were easily five feet long from last joint to tip.

  "No, not really," he conceded.

  "We'll be lucky if we don't have to deal with some of this forest's other denizens on the way back," she said. "Only luck and now the battle have conspired to give us a smooth road this far. Subterranean Celestine is not a place for the faint of heart or weak of arm."

  As they walked in companionable silence, Abram pulled up his stat screen again and glanced over it as he thought about how to spend the ten points he had available.

  What drew his attention immediately were the ten p
oints of mana he had locked up in his HUD. If he wanted to free those points back up he needed suitable affinities.

  Hantu, what affinities apply to my HUD?

  'As a divination spell, the secondary affinity Divination most strongly applies,' came the immediate reply.

  What are the primary affinities?

  'Air and Fire.'

  Abram's lips twisted. If he took those two affinities to reduce the load his HUD put on his mana pool, that would be all he could do. It was something he needed long term, but in the short term he needed to broaden his tool kit. He also wanted to improve his base stats. He frowned as he considered his options.

  'A bit spoiled for choice are we?' Hantu asked.

  If I take Divination, how much will that cost?

  'Three points.'

  And how much mana of this permanent ten-point drain will I get back?

  'Four points.'

  GDI.

  'Language.'

  Abram rolled his eyes. If I take one of the primary affinities, fire or air, how many points will THAT save me?

  'Two each.'

  Thinking about that, the math worked out such that if he eventually got all three affinities, his HUD would only cost him two permanent points. Definitely a goal, but not immediately achievable. He recalled that he got a discount if he had the primary affinities that a secondary affinity was based on, so Divination would have to come last if he wanted to be efficient, unless ...

  Do I get a rebate if I take a primary affinity AFTER a secondary?

  'No.'

  Of course not. So Divination came last. Taking at least one new affinity was a no-brainer, but which to choose? Air or Fire?

  Air would give him options if he needed to go underwater. It also opened up the possibility of flight, levitation, maybe even increased speed generally. Fire gave him more offensive capability, not to mention light if he ever needed it. If the Mor did die, his dark sight died with her.