by Alyson Belle
“It’s okay, Topper,” I said. “We didn’t need him. You did the right thing, even if you couldn’t save Jazzus.”
“We didn’t even find out who robbed the guild bank. You might have been right about it being Haxor. I thought I knew him, but… I guess not as well as I thought I did.”
“I don’t think so, actually.” I frowned, waffling again on whether I should tell him about Kromgorn. It seemed obvious now that he was the one who had robbed us, before he dropped his guild tag. There was no reason not to tell Topper, but for some reason, I hesitated… maybe I was embarrassed to have my old character associating with our sworn enemies.
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” I said. “Look, we need to get a move on. The things I heard earlier were pretty scary. I think you’re right about Vierdimin’s plans to cut the server over to a private instance. We don’t have any time to waste, and now we have to find some other mage to help us.”
The scuff of a boot against dusty stone drew my attention back to Lefay, who had been quietly trying to crawl away again while Topper and I were talking. I’d almost completely forgotten about her in the chaos around Jazzus.
“Hey! Oh no you don’t!” I cried.
Now that her cover was blown, she scrambled to her feet and tried to take off running, but once again I slammed into her in a full-body tackle that sent the two of us rolling through the dust. This time she came out on top, and as much as I struggled I couldn’t get her off of me.
“You bitch! Let go of me!”
“Why are you so difficult!” she shouted, shaking my shoulders while we wrestled together on the ground. “Why can’t you just give up and go along with this? Don’t you understand that he’s going to punish us all for your bullshit? Aargh!”
I grabbed a chunk of her hair and yanked while she screeched, and then I got to experience my first full-on cat-fight as a woman, complete with scratching, yowling, and furious flailing.
A strong hand suddenly closed around the fabric at my neck and yanked me away from her. Topper held both of us off the ground by our shirts, one in each gauntlet. I swayed there with a chagrined expression, but Lefay continued to kick and spit like a cornered cat, fighting against his implacable grip.
“Knock it off,” he rumbled. “We don’t have time for this. You said it yourself, Lacey.”
Then he slammed Lefay with his long-lasting cooldown ability Divine Stun, and she went limp in his hand.
“That’ll hold her until we get back to Jaiden’s Crossing, I think.”
He set me down, and I dusted myself off, making a face. “What are we going to do with her?”
Topper looked thoughtful. “Well… we still need a mage, right?”
I blinked at him in surprise. “Her? No way. You really think she’d help us find Vierdimin?”
It hadn’t even occurred to me, but now that Topper had suggested it… She was one of the highest level mages left on the server, and the only one we had handy at the moment. It was worth trying to get her to help, at least.
“Why not? You seem to have a knack for pissing her off, if you want to take a run at her. Meanwhile, I can go take a flight around Lorengarde and see if I can find anyone else who’s in our faction and might be willing to help us. They’re both long shots, but they’re better than nothing.”
They were only slightly better than nothing, in my opinion. I’d seen so few players since Vierdimin locked us all in game that Topper’s “fly around and try to find them” strategy seemed ludicrous, and our only other option was to try to get his highest-ranked lieutenant to turn on him. But I couldn’t argue with Topper’s logic. I nodded slowly.
“Yeah, I have a few tricks up my sleeve for her.” I smiled to myself as I remembered our last encounter. If she couldn’t gate away, maybe I could coerce her into helping us, unless Kromgorn had really put the fear of the lich into her. “Why don’t you take Jazzus on your wyvern, and I’ll carry Lefay. If we’re going to drop one of them, I’d rather drop her.”
I glared at the unconscious dark elf as Topper dumped her onto the ground and went to carefully lift Jazzus onto his shoulder. We carried them both to the dungeon exit and then flew them back to Jaiden’s Crossing, where we returned to the same inn we’d left Saintly at. He was sitting at the bar, chatting quietly with a barkeep named Dirth who looked suspiciously like Kirth and was polishing a similarly always-dirty mug. Saintly raised his mug to us in greeting, and Topper glared at him.
“Are you still drinking?” Topper demanded.
“No no no,” Saintly protested quickly. “Shobering up rapidly, I assure you. Thish ish water.” He pointed at his mug and then held it out. Topper gave a quick sniff and then a satisfied nod.
“Good. Come on Lacey, let’s bring Lefay upstairs.”
Topper settled Jazzus’s still body into one of the inn’s chairs and tossed a coin to the innkeeper to rent a room while I dragged Lefay’s body up the steps with thudding jolts on each one. I wished she could have actually gotten bruises, but I knew she wouldn’t—it was more for my own entertainment. We tied her to a chair so she couldn’t cast, which was as effective in its own way as an energy cage and required an Escape Artist check to get out of on her own, which I was almost certain she hadn’t bothered training. No one ever did because it was so rare to actually get caught and tied up like this without NPCs or guildies interfering.
Lefay had started to come around from her stun while Topper was tightening the final knots. She shook her head and blinked at the room around her, and then began to wiggle her wrists and tug at the bonds in frustration.
“Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me,” she hissed. “What do you cretins think you’re doing?”
Topper looked me in the eyes. “You’ve got your mission—I’ve got mine. You good?”
I nodded. I was actually looking forward to getting another crack at Lefay. Her stupid homophobic attitudes had pissed me off from the beginning. Topper walked out of the room and slammed the door, and I crossed my arms and regarded Lefay with a cold stare.
“What do we do now, slag?” she asked.
“Why are you such a cunt?”
“Why are you such a cunt?”
Things were off to a really great start. I sighed.
“Okay, look. You’re tied up. We’re stuck here for a while together. Can we just agree to like, set aside the bitchy banter and talk? We’re both stuck here right now. Why be jerks about it?”
Lefay stared at me sullenly, which I took as her agreement. She’d always been a bitch, but at least she was reasonable. Maybe that’s something I can work with…
“I’m sorry I called you a cunt,” I said. I wasn’t really, but maybe extending an olive branch would help ease the tension a little.
“I’m not telling you anything.” Her eyes narrowed. “No matter what gross things you do to me.”
“You are so squicked out about the gay thing… What’s your deal, anyway?”
“Oh, sorry. I didn’t realize it was weird to think chicks trying to get on other chicks was gross. Oh wait, no, it’s not weird at all—still gross, dude.”
“You know, a lot of people think homophobia is a sign of internalized homosexuality.”
“Where’d you get that, a textbook? Look, I’m not here for an ‘it’s okay to be gay’ lecture. Not every girl you run into is going to be into chicks. Deal with it.”
This wasn’t getting me anywhere, and it occurred to me that I was doing exactly what Vierdimin wanted me to do: Wasting time arguing with Lefay about something pointless while his master plan fell into place.
I slumped onto the wooden floor and huffed in frustration. “You’re captured, and you’re not going anywhere, and we’re running out of time, so I’m just going to lay out what I want. We have a way to find Vierdimin. We need a mage to cast a divination spell on his unique staff, which will lead us right to him. But without Jazzus, we don’t have a mage. We need you to cast the spell for us.”
I could swear that the w
izard almost looked impressed for a second, but she quickly stilled her face. “That’s clever. But tell me this, if we’re being all touchy-feely honest: What exactly do you plan to do when you find him? I’m telling you this out of self-preservation, but that guy is scary. I joined his guild because I wanted people to group with, and when he started talking about living in game forever, the idea was attractive to me. But after a while, I started thinking about what he could do if he was all powerful and this became our new life instead of just a game. It’s not a fun thought. That’s why I do everything I can to do what he wants, and you should too.”
It was the most information, and the most honest information, I’d ever heard come out of the elf’s mouth—and the least vulgarity too—and I was honestly shocked to be having a real conversation with her.
“What can he do, exactly?” I asked slowly, hoping to pry a little more intel out of her moment of vulnerability. But Lefay was too clever for that.
“Nothing he hasn’t already demonstrated,” she muttered. “Hacking into some GM tools he shouldn’t have access to. Locking players into the game.” She gave me a pointed look. “Steal people’s accounts and log in as their characters.”
A chill ran across me and lifted the downy hairs on the back of my neck. “That was Vierdimin in my body?”
Lefay rolled her eyes at me. “You really are dense if you didn’t figure that out. Do you think I’d take that bullshit from anyone but him?”
“But how can he be piloting Krom if he’s stuck in the game like the rest of us?”
She shook her head. “No idea. I told you. The dude is scary. He has some way to jump between avatars now, too.” Lefay hesitated, indecision playing across her face. “I shouldn’t tell you this much, but it doesn’t really matter anymore. You can’t beat him. And you’ve obviously figured out what his plan is. When we’re all trapped here together, he’s going to get his entertainment torturing us for the rest of eternity.”
I shuffled over and put my hands on her knees so I could meet her face to face. “Lefay. Listen to me. He’s obviously got you scared, but he hasn’t won yet. Why would he be working so hard against us if it was really hopeless. We can beat him. You can help. Help us beat Vierdimin and let’s end this nightmare for everyone.”
A shadow of doubt flickered across her face, and I leaned forward eagerly, hoping that she’d choose to help. But then her expression hardened. “He preys on weakness. You’re a dumb fucking bitch. Get your hands off me, lesbo.”
I yanked my hands back and glared at her in frustration. Still with the homophobia! Was she really so terrified of the lich that she wouldn’t take a shot to help spring all of us, even after everything she’d told me?
“You know what?” I said. “If you’re that scared of catching ‘the gay’ because a girl hits on you, let me fix the problem for you.”
I’d had enough of her bullshit, and it was time to teach her a lesson. In a sudden stroke of brilliance, the perfect punishment had come to me: I waved my hand dramatically in her direction and said, “Major Glamour.”
Nobody specialized in illusion magic, because as Erlix had explained to me, it was perceived to be the weakest school. But that meant that people overlooked gems like this spell, which let me physically alter the body of another player. In old-school tabletop games, spells like this would have just been silly fun. But in a game where you actually inhabited the body of your avatar, it became an interesting offensive spell. Because of how personal it was, the check to inflict it on unwilling targets was really, really high. But I had 32 Charisma. Good luck resisting that, Lefay.
I watched with the utmost satisfaction as her long, beautiful white hair retracted toward her scalp, and the feminine curves of her body rearranged themselves along with her robes. Where moments before, a beautiful, female dark elf had been tied up in the chair, a extremely handsome and well-muscled dark elf male now sat before me, wearing only a baggy pair of pants. He frowned at me suspiciously.
“I feel really, really weird,” he said in a deep, male voice. “What the fuck did you do to me? Oh Jesus. My voice. And is that… that feeling in my pants… do I have a dick?”
I’d turned Lefay into a dude. Not an illusion of a dude, but an actual dude, for the entire duration of the spell. With my Charisma being at a godlike level, it would be quite some time before he’d get to turn back into a girl. Maybe weeks. Base duration was 24 hours on this spell.
“There you go,” I told him, resting a hand on my hip and raising an eyebrow. “Now you don’t have to worry about being gay anymore if I touch you.”
I expected him to curse, struggle, maybe threaten me. Maybe to cry or beg or plead to change him back, considering how grossed out he’d acted all the time by the fact that I was a guy in a body of a chick. But I was not prepared for him to burst out laughing. He looked down at his new body and flexed his muscles, checking out the bulging biceps and rippling pecs of his new, manly form.
Lefay almost seemed pleased.
“I didn’t have any idea there was a spell that did this…” he murmured. “I feel so strong and tough.”
It was such a weird reaction that my mouth dropped open in surprise. I’d meant this to be a punishment for him! Did he actually like that I’d turned him into a dude? What a weird chick.
But then the pieces started coming together for me: She’d wanted to live inside a videogame because she didn’t like the real world. She reacted explosively and over-the-top about me being in a cross-gender body, way more than most people. Was it possible that she wasn’t squicked out by me coming onto her because she was grossed out by my body, but rather because she’d been grossed out by hers?
A brilliant, new idea began to form. I scooched closer to Lefay, positioning myself between his knees, and looked up at him again with my dirtiest smile. “Say, Lefay… How would you like to have your dick sucked?”
His cheeks darkened to a shade of deep indigo in what I assumed was a dark elf blush, and he swallowed nervously. “I… I…” he stammered. It was the first time I’d ever seen Lefay at a loss for words. That was when I knew I had him. I smiled and reached inside his pants, using all the feminine charms I’d learned over the last few days while I was stuck in the game to make myself as sexy and appealing as possible. I sighed and giggled, brushed my tits against his knees, and ran my other hand up his inner thigh while I slowly drew his stiffening cock out.
“Oh god, that feels good,” he moaned. As a former guy myself, I knew exactly how good it felt for him. His whole demeanor had changed now that I was holding his cock in my hand—almost shy, instead of cocky and pissed-off, but definitely eager. I could see the lust in his eyes and how much he liked my touch. Whatever was going on inside Lefay’s head, his body was reacting exactly like a real dude. I wondered how long Lefay had secretly fantasized about being a man.
As I began to slowly slide my hand up and down his cock, teasing him with my eyes, it occurred to me that this was the first time I’d been this intimate with a real player since Jazzus. It was exciting and different from being with an NPC. Knowing that there was a real person behind those lust-filled, indigo eyes, experiencing the building, throbbing anticipation of a pleasured cock for the very first time made playing with the dark elf almost as exciting as getting fucked myself. Just a few days before this, I would have been worried about all kinds of silly things—what this meant about me, whether it was gay to be doing what I was doing right now, what it said about Lefay that she was enjoying it.
But now that I’d had a lot of experience as Lacey behind me, those questions seemed unimportant. We were just two people, two players, here in this space together. And I was going to do my damned best to make sure she had fun with it.
Lefay’s head tilted back with his lips slightly parted, moaning in appreciation as I jerked him with quick, delicate movements.
“Ooh, yeah, yeah…” he murmured. I pulled my hand away and he frowned. “W-wait. Why did you stop?”
I smiled a
nd stood, slowly unwinding my makeshift clothing from my body. His eyes nearly popped out of his head as the loosened bandages fell away from my breasts, allowing them to swing freely. Next I undid the tie that held the sarong-like wrap at my waist in place, letting it fall to my feet. I smiled at Lefay and arched my back, coming up onto my tiptoes as I stretched and thrusted my chest out prominently.
His gaze slid up and down my body in an appreciative manner, lingering on the downy patch that led the way to my sex, and his cock hardened again after its brief respite from my silky fingertips. I moved closer to the bound elf and then lowered myself to sit on his lap, cradling his stiff rod against my increasingly wet slit, and rocked against him, pressing my soft breasts into his dark, muscled chest while I held his hungry stare. I looped my arms behind his neck and brushed my lips lightly against his, exhaling as I did so, knowing that the scent of a female breath would drive his male body wild. My own urges were growing as well. I was starting to need him as badly as I knew he needed me.
“Do you want this, Lefay?” I whispered. “There’s no judgment here. I won’t try to control you. I won’t be cruel to you. And if you want, I’ll let you fuck me.”
His eyes widened slightly and he sucked in a quick breath, his muscles tightening beneath my thighs. I rubbed my cheek against his face, letting my soft hair trail over his skin, and rocked harder against his cock.
“Yes,” he replied. “God, yes.”
As soon as he’d given his consent, I lifted myself up and plunged down onto his hard, girthy member, crying out in delight as he slid easily inside of me. He stretched me out, but I was so wet that the size of his massive cock was hardly an impediment—I could expand to take it all. And I did take it all, rocking up and down and back and forth, moving my hips in a gyrating rhythm and grinding my hot, slick cunt against his member in a wild frenzy of need. I dropped my head back too, nodding along with the motion while I rode the bound elf like a stallion, my pleasure building with each passing moment.
