by Harry Nix
My hands trailed down her back, feeling the smooth lines and her curves. There was a touch of unreality as I touched the base of her tail. It was where you’d expect it to be, waving gently from side to side. Scarlet sighed into our kiss as my fingers strayed across it.
“Too many months in that forsaken place,” she whispered, kissing me with purpose now. Small kisses on the sides of my mouth, another near my chin, tilting my head back and pressing her whole self against me.
Although she’d been lost in the kiss, her body was positioned just right and she began grinding against me. I could hardly move with her weight against me, but I managed to get a hand free to pull my ragged pants out of the way. I couldn’t get them off entirely but it was enough.
Scarlet kept moving against me, her kisses more urgent and then she slipped her hand away, gripping me at just the right angle. She paused for a moment, her face close to mine, holding her breath as she pushed me against her.
She was wet, incredibly so, but still there was a moment of pressure, of resistance, before I slipped inside her.
Her body was warm, her mouth hot but this was like a bath, a touch too high. Scarlet finally let out her breath, slightly moaning at the end. I joined her, feeling like I was sunk up to my waist in a volcanic pool.
“Oh Demoness, it has been too long,” Scarlet said, starting to move against me.
We went from slow and sensual to hard and fast in under a minute. I had one hand on her waist, the other on the back of her neck. Her face was close to mine as she jolted back and forth on top of me.
I was lost in the pleasure but not so lost that I couldn’t marvel at how incredible this system was.
Those dodgy Russians were going to be the first trillionaires with this. It was reality but better. Just this moment, this girl, it was a few hundred billion in sales right there. It was beyond... anything. Even reality itself.
I could feel my ragged graveyard pants down by my knees. The grass on my back. The slight scratch of Scarlet’s nail and the tiny kiss of pain as she moved her hand and accidentally scraped it across my shoulder. I could even smell the stone wall, slightly damp but not unpleasant.
And her. Spice and heat and pressed against me in desperate connection.
I lost myself in the moment, the sound of her gasps and soon I was on my back, both hands on her hips, pushing her back and forth as she rode atop me. It had only been a few minutes but I was already sweating, the heat seeming to radiate off Scarlet. She had her eyes closed, her hands on my stomach, moving at just the right speed, in just the right way. When she opened her eyes I saw flames burning in them, matching the red gem on her necklace. It was swinging when she leaned forward. As I looked up at her, a tiny droplet of sweat rolled down her from her neck, between her breasts, sizzling as it hit the gem.
Such an intense moment is not made to last. Maybe it was being outside too, open to attack or being spotted.
Between her gasps and moans and mine, the electric feeling gathered and the world narrowed. Scarlet was all there was. She was mine.
Scarlet let out a shuddering cry and her pace broke a little as she came, but it wasn’t enough to slow me down. I had her hips, moving her back and forth. She let out two sharp gasps that tipped me over the edge. I came as she collapsed over me, her hair on my face, her lips beside my ear.
We moved slower then, riding the waves of pleasure, not hard and fast now but softer. I felt her clench and squeeze me and when I opened my eyes she was looking at me with a devilish smile.
“Are you glad you woke up in my graveyard?”
I mumbled something, possibly yes. A stray thought crossed my mind and suddenly the HUD was back, faint lines over my vision.
Bonding increased! Relaxed! Bliss! Drained!
Drained? The text opened at a glance.
The Demoness has taken some of your health and mana. I told ya they can’t be trusted. Although it looks like you’re not complaining and ain’t gonna listen anyway, right?
My health bar was missing maybe the top ten percent. Mana the same, although still grayed out.
Scarlet must have seen a look on my face. It’s why I suck at poker and sometimes piss off people I work with: I can’t always hide what I’m thinking.
“Something wrong?” she said, pulling off me.
The kiss of cool air brought me further back to reality, which was then like a bad loop as she drew back even farther.
“No, nothing. I just didn’t realize that sex with a Demoness meant stealing my health and mana.”
That sounds innocuous right but nope, must have had the wrong tone on it.
“Stealing? It’s a bond so it’s a two-way street. You got something out of it too. Relaxed? Bliss?”
She was pulling on her dress now, in a huff and I was suddenly just a guy who should shut up with his dick hanging out. I pulled up my rags and stood up.
“No, I don’t mean it in a bad way. And I do have bliss and relaxed,” I said, kinda trailing away as I glanced at them to see if they actually were good.
Bliss
Enhanced experience gain and Demoness bonding. If you can stop saying stupid things, that is.
Again, the game giving me shit.
Relaxed
You’re too tense, she used to say. You need to relax she used to say. Me, tense? Maybe I’m tense because I faked leaving for work. I circled the block and ten minutes later the neighbor came over. You think I’m stupid I said. The knife was right there and yeah, now I’m relaxed.
Okay, so mixed bag on whether relaxed was actually good or not. There was no stat info like bliss.
I realized then I’d spent too long reading and not paying attention to the moment. Scarlet was fully dressed but doing that thing where she kept adjusting her clothes, biting her lip as she looked at me and not in that sexy come-hither way.
I went to speak again but then remembered something my dad had said to me once. He’d been a few sheets to the wind at the time but it was still good advice.
There are a few key moments you should use your tongue on a woman but when she’s upset isn’t one of them. The less you say, the better it is. Hug her and shut the hell up.
He and my mom have been married thirty years so I guess it worked.
I shut my stupid mouth, went to cross the grass between us to hug her and tripped on my staff. Somehow it tangled in my legs, spun, and cracked Scarlet in the ankle before I went down in the worst fall of my life. I don’t mean worst like it nearly killed me, but in how it went. It was like in stages, trying to get my balance, half-toppling, waving my arms, barely missing hitting Scarlet, twisting on the way down and then full face-plant.
At least it was into thick grass.
By the time I got to my feet, Scarlet was laughing so much she was crying. She’d actually doubled over, tears streaming down her face.
Clowning level up! You can now perform level one pratfalls! Agility up!
I scowled at the golden text.
“Yeah, very funny, Lucy,” I said aloud. Adaptive Ai can kiss both my sore knees and my ass.
Scarlet stood up, wiping away tears.
“Who’s Lucy?” she asked, still grinning like crazy.
“She’s the uh—”
I paused, not sure what quite to say. The Goddess who ruled over this place? The Creator?
“Who do you think created the Nine Realms?” I finally said.
Scarlet shrugged.
“Plenty of Gods, Goddesses, Demons, and Demonesses all over the place. They all claim to be the real creator. I think they’re all full of it.”
I chewed this over for a moment before shrugging myself. Lucy’s adaptive Ai, so let’s see how she adapts to this.
“She’s the true creator of the Nine Realms. She made it, every bit, and she manipulates it as we experience it all.”
Scarlet pulled her graveyard spike out and started cleaning her nails with it.
“The creator of everything is called Lucy? I had a dog called Lucy.
A cute little puppy.”
She put her hands together, showing how small the puppy had been.
“Yeah, her name is Lucy.”
“Can you talk to her?”
“Well, I guess. She hasn’t talked back directly. She does in messages to me.”
“You’re getting messages from this ‘Lucy’,” she said, throwing air-quotes in there.
“I see information about... the world. I think it’s written by Lucy. Maybe there were others.”
“Others? Like, other Gods, Goddesses, Demons, and Demonesses who all claim to be the true one and the rest are fakes and liars kind of thing? Like I said a second ago?”
I sighed and picked up my staff. There was a small dot of blood on the tip of it, where it had hit Scarlet. As soon as I had it in my grasp, the blood-soaked into the wood, running down it to my hand.
Absorbed Demoness blood. Keep doing this and you can gain new abilities, new spells. Of course, you might turn into a demon monster hybrid who scares old ladies and children too but fuck ‘em.
I flipped open my stats and there was a new screen. There were endless question marks with empty lines beside them. I had one new entry, Demoness. The line beside it had the slightest glint of red in it.
“You know, you should watch it with that invisible world. Take your eyes off reality and you never know what might happen,” Scarlet said before closing the distance between us. It took a moment for me to realize she had her graveyard spike pointed under my chin.
She wasn’t angry though, or laughing like a mad-woman but seemed to have done that things girls do where they suddenly forgive you and move past it even though you haven’t said or done anything.
Keeping my father’s advice in mind, I wrapped my arms around her, despite the spike at my throat. Again, she was stiff for a moment but then relaxed.
Good old dad, he knew his shit.
When we broke apart it was like the sunny day after the storm clears. Scarlet was relaxed again.
“Only because you’re so cute,” she said, tapping me on the end of the nose.
I hefted my staff again.
“So, bunnies?”
Scarlet pointed across the grass to the trees.
I led the way across to the forest, crossing the dirt track. Hopefully, this was like every other game, and the starting area would be filled with low-level enemies and things to give you that early experience boost to get you going.
“Do you plan on eating the bunnies after you kill them?” Scarlet asked me as we walked into the forest.
Although I was focusing on the game of the game I was still a little off-balance. You know that new relationship thing where you’ve slept together but it feels weird to just up and hold their hand outta nowhere. It was like that.
“Um… sure,” I said. I hadn’t really thought about it. Although the sensations from the game were as real as could be, I hadn’t thought about food or other bodily functions. Would I get hungry and thirsty? Would I have to find a convenient tree every now and then?
My entire plan had been to kill rabbits or whatever low-level things we came across, stuff their carcasses in my bag and continue on until I leveled up.
Sasha had said alcohol would get me drunk, so I suppose food and drink did work here. Maybe we’d end up roasting a rabbit tonight if we didn’t make it to Bron’s before dark.
We crept through the forest and it wasn’t long before we found a rabbit. It was sitting on the grass, nibbling away. I was currently level one so I had no spells to cast. My only weapon was the staff and that was only useful as a blunt instrument. I lifted it above my head and leaped out, aiming a killing blow.
The rabbit hopped sideways, squealing in terror. I swung and missed.
“Damn,” I grunted, taking another swing. This one connected, knocking the rabbit head over fluffy little tail. It rolled to a stop near the base of a tree. A tiny cloud appeared above it. Stunned.
I hefted the staff and swung like I was going for a home run. There was a crack, a spray of blood and the rabbit was dead.
“Shall I find you some more helpless animals to slaughter?” Scarlet asked.
I looked down at its corpse feeling an unwelcome unease in the pit of my stomach. The system was incredibly real. I’d heard the terrified squeals; I’d felt the rabbit’s skull crack. Little droplets of blood glistened on the grass and there was a trickle seeping from one nostril.
A moment later experience rose up from its corpse in a golden cloud. Not enough to level up.
“Don’t kill me, I want to parlay,” a voice suddenly said from the underbrush.
I stepped back and lifted my staff again. The end of it was red with blood.
“Hey, chill. I just want to talk,” the voice said.
“Okay, come out but if you try anything, you’re going the same way as him.”
I waited, ready to swing... and a tiny rabbit in a waistcoat came crawling out. It sat up near the bloody grass and looked at the dead rabbit.
“My brother-in-law, dead by your hand. How could you?” he asked in an anguished tone.
“I was just –”
“He was a meal, just like you’ll be rabbit if you don’t tell us what you want,” Scarlet said. She brandished the graveyard spike, apparently unaffected by the news that 1) the dead rabbit had a brother-in-law and 2) oh, by the way, rabbits talked like we were in goddamn Narnia.
“Don’t get your non-existent panties in a bunch,” the rabbit said, its loss suddenly forgotten. “I’m Augustus. A family of moles has moved near my home. I want you to kill the bastards. There’s a lucky rabbit’s paw in it for you. I figure you owe me for killing Reginald here.”
Mole Money, Mole Problems
Get the mole family to move... one way or the other.
Reward: Lucky Rabbit’s Paw.
I tapped accept although I was already having second thoughts. What if they talked too? It was one thing to kill an animal in a game where it vanished into pixels and entirely another when an upset family member came to talk to you about it.
I hadn’t just killed a rabbit. I’d killed Reginald.
“Lead the way,” I told Augustus.
“One second,” he said before whipping out a meat cleaver from nowhere. With four practiced swings he cut the front and back paws off his brother-in-law. The bloody paws and machete vanished somewhere into his waistcoat pockets as soon as he was done.
I looked at what was left of Reginald before picking up the tiny body and stuffing it into my bag. It vanished into the black before a small image of the mutilated rabbit appeared in my inventory.
“Word to the wise—keep that corpse out of sight if you know what’s good for you,” Augustus said, motioning at us to follow him through the trees.
“So that heartbroken thing was just an act?” I asked as we walked.
“He was an asshole. Slept with my wife, he did,” Augustus said. Then he put his furry paw over his mouth and shushed us.
Slept with his wife... but wasn’t Reginald his brother-in-law?
I decided I wouldn’t ask. Talking rabbits okay. Talking incestuous rabbits... no.
We crowded up behind Augustus as he pointed to some mounds on the other side of a small clearing. As we watched, a small clod of dirt flung up into the air.
“Fuckers keep digging and digging and wrecking our burrows. Off with their heads and all that. I’ll wait here,” Augustus said.
“Stay close and attack if I do,” I whispered to Scarlet. She nodded, the gravespike ready in her hand.
I moved sideways around the perimeter of the clearing through the forest, careful where I was placing my feet. As I did, I looked over the quest info again. It told me to get the mole family to move, one way or the other. Not kill them as Augustus wanted. Did that mean I could just talk to them? Maybe pass a speech check and convince them to go?
Speech checks were always a tricky thing in my experience. Half the time it was purely stat-based and if you were lower than what was required
, you were out of luck. The other half of the time you could pass but it was entirely based on whether you’d been lucky enough to come across something else so you had the option to talk about it. Like if I’d picked up a golden snail or whatever by walking the other direction then the mole might want it in return for leaving. But because I’d gone this way, I didn’t have it.
In other words, I was sure I was screwed being it was pretty much impossible to pass a speech check so early in a game.
If the moles didn’t talk or wouldn’t move then my staff might end up with more blood on it. This was a game but if any of those moles were wearing clothes... I wasn’t sure I had it in me.
“It’s the circle of life. Kill or be killed. You’re either on top of the food chain or you’re in it,” Scarlet whispered to me like she was suddenly giving me a motivational speech.
“Let’s talk first if we can,” I said.
The closer we came to the mounds, the louder the sounds of digging became. Dirt was raining down, launched out of four holes. I assumed this meant there were at least four moles.
I saw a flash of a brown furry animal down one of the holes. Well, no waistcoat at least. Maybe they were just dumb animals I wouldn’t feel too bad about killing.
Before I could step out of the forest, a little brown face appeared from a hole and then a mole crawled out, standing on its hind legs. The other three just kept digging.
“We can hear you stomping. Come out so we can talk,” he said.
I put my staff on my shoulder, so I could easily swing it if I needed to and stepped out to face the mole, Scarlet close behind me.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Orson. But don’t worry about that. Which of them sent you—Reginald or Augustus?”
He crossed his little paws and shook his head at me like he was a disappointed father.
“Augustus. He wants you to move.”
“Course he does, little psychopath. We had a deal with Reginald and we paid him fair and square for this clearing. It’s not our fault he ripped Augustus off.”
“He’s lying. Let’s just kill him and the rest,” Scarlet said in a bored tone.
