Descend- First Steps

by David Burke

  “It was like you were a flaming goddess, but if it was too much for you, please try to be careful,” Jay said. He found his concern for her growing as he thought about what might have happened if she had truly overloaded herself. Even while a part of him knew that there was a chemical impulse for him to feel connected to her, he couldn’t help but feel genuine concern.

  She placed her hand on his arm and said, “That means a lot that you were worried about me, but don’t be, I am alright. Did you really think that I looked like a flame goddess?” Meikiyo asked, almost entranced waiting for his answer.

  “Exactly like Fuji but more beautiful.”

  “You know about Japanese mythology?”

  “Yes, I was a history major on Earth and learned about a variety of mythologies since they play significant parts in history.”

  “That pleases me.” Meikiyo got up on her knees and leaned in, kissing Jay, who found himself caught up in the passion she expressed. Suddenly she pulled back. “Oh, I’m so sorry. Please forgive me. I don’t know what came over me.”

  “Trust me, no man is going to need an apology for receiving a kiss like that from a beautiful woman like you.”

  “I don’t know why I acted so forward. I’m sorry. I mean it isn’t that I don’t find you attractive. I uh well I’ve never done something like that.”

  Amelia appeared out of her cloak and said, “Oh you don’t have to apologize to him. All the girls are doing that with Jay.”

  Jay started to protest, but Huong said, “That isn’t true and you know it. It is whatever is in the water. Jay can’t control himself any more than the rest of us.”

  “Well thanks for sticking up for me. Anyway we probably should discuss this if we are all going to be sleeping on that platform,” Jay said.

  Huong and Meikiyo looked at him with confusion but Amelia said, “What he means is that Jay and I sorted out that the aphrodisiac seems to affect us the more relaxed that we get. In the middle of combat you don’t feel it at all. Then as the adrenaline fades you begin to feel the passion rise within you. Jay is quite attractive but even that doesn’t explain how out of control I begin to feel around him when things are calm.”

  Jay was incredibly uncomfortable with this entire conversation. Ironically, he felt since he crossed the threshold that he didn’t feel the same out-of-control impulses. Obviously he still had thoughts about how hot all 3 of them were because what 22-year-old guy wouldn’t. Now however, the feelings seemed more of a normal proportion. “We just have to agree that it would be incredibly rude for any of us to do anything on a platform that small surrounded by the others.”

  “Yeah that makes sense,” Huong said.

  “We can plan all we want, but if the urge comes on as strongly as it has in the past, do you really think I’m going to care who sees what I’m doing. All I could think about was getting him in me.”

  Jay couldn’t help but grin hearing that but did his best to wipe it off his face as quickly as it appeared. Obviously not fast enough as it was obvious from the looks he got that they had all seen his expression. “There is one other issue.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m level 6 now, so the old birth control won’t work anymore.”

  Huong’s face grew pale. “Oh my god. Du du du. You were level 4 last night weren’t you.”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “I only had the lowest level of birth control.”

  Now it was Jay’s turn to start to sweat. “What? But uh… I thought you said it was safe.”

  “I was on birth control, I just didn’t think about you being beyond level 2.”

  “Relax, there probably isn’t much risk with it being only one time.” Meikiyo tried to sound reassuring.

  Jay looked over and noticed that Amelia was clenching her fists but hadn’t said anything. He tried to get them back on track. “That’s in the past. We can’t worry about it now. Okay? Anyway, this is just another reason that we can’t do anything tonight. Okay?” He felt stupid for repeating the okay again and again but it was something that he did when he was nervous. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t think he could control himself as much as that he wasn’t sure how he would react to a bunch of hot horny women.

  “It’s only one night. We are almost halfway done with the quest. So with a little extra work, we will be able to finish the quest tomorrow,” Meikiyo said and Huong nodded vigorously in agreement.

  Amelia added, “And then we will all get another thousand credits so buying the upgraded birth control for 200 credits won’t be a problem.”

  “I hate that we are spending so much energy dwelling on this issue. Whoever brought us here really has a messed-up sense of humor,” Jay said while laughing to himself. All three of the girls just gave him a withering glare. He couldn’t help but wonder if all women got special training from their mothers in how to make that look or if it was just an inborn trait.

  Trying to salvage the moment Jay said, “Okay well you all just get situated and I am gonna do a loop around the area and make sure there is nothing big here.”

  “It’s getting pretty dark out there, are you sure that is a good idea?” Huong asked.

  Jay answered, “I will be fine. Between my life sense and precognitive ability it is very hard for anything to sneak up on me, but I promise that if I get in any trouble I will send you a telepathic message.”

  While none of them seemed to be very happy with his decision to go scouting in the dim light of dusk, they couldn’t really argue with his logic. Thus while they were climbing into the tree Jay starting going around the tree that was their home for the night in an expanding circle. He sent pulses of life sense every few seconds.

  A short distance from the tree he ran into the stream and wondered if it would be okay to limit his search to this side of the tree. He scoffed at himself and dismissed that idea. He didn’t want to make the assumption that the predators here would be dissuaded by a twenty-foot-wide, three-foot-deep stream. Besides, jumping across the stream allowed him the opportunity to further practice his strength and speed.

  On his third circle out from the tree he detected a trio of what felt like lizats approaching. They didn’t seem to be hunting him and maybe hadn’t even found him yet. They were likely on their way to the stream for water. That gave him pause in deciding if it was a good idea that they had set up their camp so close to the water, but then again the tree was still more than 100 feet from the stream and their little platform was 30 feet up in the air. It would have to be good enough.

  As for the approaching lizats though, Jay felt he could take on three of them, especially since he was the one who had the jump on them this time. So he scrambled up into the closest tree and prepared a rock to take out the first one. He almost felt bad when the first rock splattered the brains of the creature it hit everywhere. That feeling wasn’t enough to keep him from jumping down onto another and skewering it on his spear. The enhanced strength and speed along with a small amount of acceleration on the spear tip nearly split the second lizat in half and ended its life.

  The third beast didn’t show any fear despite the effortless slaughter of its two companions. In the back of his mind, Jay just chalked that up to its lizard brain. Interestingly though, when it started to move to attack him, he had a premonition of the way in which it would move at him. That early warning allowed him to tailor his kinetic bolt so it hit exactly where the creature was mid leap.

  The blast was still too wide to penetrate the leathery hide but forceful enough to knock it into the base of a tree. As it stumbled back to its feet, Jay pulled his spear free and then charged across the ground at his maximum speed. The thirty feet of distance allowed him to build up a bit more speed than he had anticipated and when his spear struck the tree, it not only impaled the lizat, ripping it wide open in the process, but also shattered the shaft of the weapon and sent a fair amount of force rebounding back into him.

  Jay felt fingers snap and even possibly his forearms crack.
The pain was acute and he involuntarily cried out but none of that was as painful as the internal lashing that he gave himself. He couldn’t believe his stupidity. His maximum speed in a dead sprint had probably been close to 100 mph which was nothing that his hardened body couldn’t handle for the most part.

  Each jump in the skill was significant though and while his body hardening had gone up he had not applied it, counting on its passive effect to be enough. What he hadn’t counted on was the cumulative effect of doubling his passive speed and the impact of being able to do a 4th boost now that he had crossed the threshold.

  He sat there on the ground gritting his teeth in pain while cursing himself. His hands and arms would heal. Even with just his own regeneration it would be pretty fast and more so with Huong’s healing. What he couldn’t replace was his spear. He had no skill that could replace its functionality. Without it he was limited to either ranged combat or risky battles with a dagger.

  As he thought back over the fight he made a couple of observations that cheered him up a little but not enough to change his mood. The fight had been trivially easy and checking on the quest status it pushed him over the 50% mark for clearing the dungeon. In fact the other groups must have killed at least some creatures since he last checked because the quest was now almost at 60% complete.

  The other thing that he was thrilled about was the simple math which told him that he must have been moving over 300 miles per hour based on how he thought the skills worked. If he could master hardening his body to the same degree then that kind of speed would tear through simple flesh-and-blood enemies, maybe even without a spear but then again that did nothing but frustrate him when he recalled his lack of foresight.

  A light seemed to be moving closer to him, but he didn’t sense any danger so he assumed it must be torches lit by Meikiyo. The light bounced much as he would have expected from a handheld torch and a quick pulse of life sense revealed three human-sized creatures moving toward him. A few seconds later they came into sight.

  Huong rushed to him and knelt down to heal him, while Meikiyo ignited a ring of fire 20 feet in diameter and 6 feet high around them. It was rather impressive how she made it spring into existence and a good reminder that he was not the only one here with impressive powers. Strangely he didn’t feel any heat coming inward from the ring so she must be controlling that too.

  He wasn’t so lucky when it came to Amelia’s biting words. “What are you, an idiot? I call you bonehead but I didn’t really think you were. I swear it’s like you are a child and we need one of those leash things. And what the hell are you doing just sitting here? I can tell you hurt your hand. Were you just gonna wait for something else to come along and kill you?”

  Jay tried to respond but was stopped a couple of times as surges of pain went through him each time that Huong set one of the bones. Even broken fingers could apparently be quite painful. She would wince and say, “Sorry. I’ll try to be more gentle,” with every finger that she pulled straight but each one still hurt just as much.

  Then before he could say anything, Amelia, who had finished searching the scene of the battle and taking it all in, verbally assaulted him again. “I can’t believe you. There were three of them. You fought three and didn’t even try to call for us.”

  Once again, Jay tried to say something in his defense but she cut him off, “Aren’t you even going to say anything? At least make some kind of lame excuse about how they jumped you and you didn’t have time. No on second thought don’t do that. Don’t lie to us. I can tell from how they are laid out that you attacked them first. I think from up in the tree based on the way the rock splattered that lizat’s head from the top down.”

  Finally, he was able to get a word in edgewise. “The fight was super easy. None of them got even close to hurting me and if it hadn’t been for my own stupidity then you wouldn’t have even known about it because I would already be back at the tree.”

  “Well at least you can admit that you are stupid. Maybe now, you will agree that you need someone telling you what to do.”

  “Oh and I suppose that is supposed to be you,” Jay snapped more harshly than he had intended. He knew she was only worried about him but that didn’t mean that he wanted to have the verbal abuse heaped on him, especially after all the physical pain he had just had.

  “No, it doesn’t have to be me. If I’m not around you should listen to Huong or Meikiyo.”

  Jay laughed. “What so now you are all best friends forever?”

  He would have sworn that the ring of fire intensified and even leaned in towards them a bit and Huong who had finished healing him stood up. Amelia seemed pissed but he couldn’t tell by the flickering firelight if it was genuine anger at his words, at his mistake, or if she was just concerned. With an unnecessary flair, Jay kipped up from the ground. He leaned in and gave Huong a one-armed hug. He wasn’t sure what the exact protocol was or how he was supposed to treat them but he did want her to know that he appreciated the healing.

  That must have set Amelia off because she began another rant. “It isn’t that at all. We aren’t suddenly best friends. She may be a skank,” Amelia pointed at Huong at that point, “and she may be a wilting lily,” she said as she pointed at Meikiyo, “but they both have more common sense than you do, obviously.”

  He was only glad that it set off a brief argument between them and took the focus off of him for a minute. It didn’t last long though. They made up pretty quickly, which a part of Jay said was a bad thing. The better the three girls got along the more likely it was that they would gang up on him and pretty soon he wouldn’t even be in charge of what he thought about anything. When they all turned to head back to the tree, the cold stare of disappointment from Meikiyo was strangely more cutting than even Amelia’s rant.

  Once they were back at the tree, he helped the girls get up. He knew that they were all capable of climbing up by themselves, but it was easier for him to carry them up. He speculated that he could probably even leap up into the tree holding one of them if it was necessary but didn’t suggest it given the fact that they had just saved him from one bad decision.

  The good news was that Huong thought she might be able to make a new spear shaft for him with her control of plants and Meikiyo thought she could heat the now-deformed spearhead enough for him to beat it back into shape. It was just a rough plan and they agreed that it would have to wait until morning. The other thing that Jay thought was good news was that with them all pissed at him, they would likely be able to resist the effects of the chemicals that had now been building up in their systems for four days.

  It was yet another sign of the dramatic changes to his life in the past few days. A week ago he would have given his little finger for the chance to call any of these beauties his girlfriend. Now he was practically beating them off with a stick. Well, maybe not Meikiyo, but he could tell that even she with her reserved and calm composure felt the effects of the water. If they weren’t trapped in the dungeon on an open platform 30 feet in the air, Jay certainly would have welcomed a visit by any one of them. The thing was that it would be impossible to hide that sort of extra-curricular activity from the others and so it was best avoided.

  They mostly ate in silence, Jay smarting from the realization of how badly his actions could have gone and the girls alternating between studiously ignoring him and giving him those special glaring looks that spoke of their disappointment in him. Either way as soon as he finished eating, Jay pulled out the light blanket that he had packed and set his backpack to serve as a lumpy pillow. He got down and said good night. They all echoed it back to him and he closed his eyes.

  The jungle was not the easiest place to fall asleep at night. Jay thought that anyone who used a noise machine with rainforest settings was clearly being deceived. There was nothing soothing about the sounds. The night was punctuated with the cries of predator and screams of prey. There was no rhythm to it and it served to keep his nerves on edge and sleep far from him. Even without
opening his eyes, a quick pulse of life sense told him that the girls had all lay down. He had half expected them to move to the other end of the platform from him but instead they ended up all around him and not more than inches away.

  Jay should have known better. He had felt the pull of the aphrodisiacs in the water and that was even with his Iron Will skill. It wasn’t long though until he felt a soft hand touching his arm. Then it was up on his chest. He didn’t open his eyes and did his best impression of being asleep but that didn’t discourage whichever one of them it was. Soon he felt a warm body snuggled up against him. He thought if it stopped there that he might just be able to fall asleep.

  Perhaps he thought that too soon though, for even though the chemicals seemed to be having a reduced impact on him he still was immediately at attention. In retrospect it wasn’t really shocking because what 22-year-old guy needs help getting turned on by a hot girl pressing her firm breasts against him. That was it. The shape of her breasts told him who this was.

  He didn’t know if that made him weird or just perceptive that he could tell them apart just by that. Jay hadn’t felt Meikiyo’s but they were markedly smaller just from outward appearance so he was confident he would have known if it was her. Amelia’s were fuller and maybe just about the best breasts that he had ever had the joy of touching. These were still a perfect size but not quite as large, so he deduced that it was Huong pressing herself up against him.

  Then it suddenly became far more difficult to think as he felt a small hand loosen the drawstring at the front of his pants. When that hand snaked down and grabbed his already-erect member he thought for sure he was gonna bolt up, but he was able to maintain control enough to just keep lying there, even if his breathing did quicken. He wondered how far she would push it if she thought he was truly asleep.

  Her hand began to move up and down in a slow stroking motion and Jay was quickly moving from thinking about how awkward this was to not wanting her to stop. She was obviously patiently hoping he would wake up because she took her time, not stopping but simply varying the rhythm of her strokes. Jay’s body betrayed him as he knew he must be leaking precum from the way that her hand began gliding so much easier over his length.