Chapter Text
Bitter is the night
And the burn stings
But the sunrise makes a sight
That causes my heart to sing
Rain falls heavily on my shoulders, and it heralds a truly terrible day. I am glad that I forewent the meager rations, because I know it would all come back up if I had. I barely feel the stinging fingers of cold that would surely would have made themselves known if my stomach wasn’t in knots and if my hands didn’t tremble. It's not the cold that causes them to do so, and I catch my face in the reflection of gathered water before me, a small divot caused by age and the wear of sentries throughout the decades of watch. I study the stones, bonded together in their mortar, and I can’t help but wonder what my parents, if they were still alive, would think of me now.
My mother, who had taught me to heal, and my father, who taught me to control myself and how to comport myself in a manner befitting our quaint little slice of existence. I look away, and watch the foe march ever closer. That knot in my stomach started when they told me I was to fight, so many weeks ago. First they had promised me I would only heal, then they promised I would only have to fight once, and now here I stand. Weeks later and feeling years older. I never enjoyed fighting, never liked the shadow of glee I felt at causing others pain, that little masochistic side to me that I had felt even as a young boy, fighting in the grass of the hills.
All for good reason, in my eyes. My parents had been furious. A brittle smile fights its way onto my face from the decent memory. Today; I stand and man the battlements, not as a healer, but a footsman. I was never much for swordplay, and today I hold a rusted mace at my belt. I circle some magelight throughout my body, feeling the warmth it brings, and the strength it graces my admittedly dwindling physique. They always praised me at the village, even from a young age. It stands only to make each patient I have failed or lost to priority care taste bitter in my mouth.
Still, I am here. Cheap leather on my body, cheap weapon in hand, and the assurance that today will be the most important battle of the war so far. I am exhausted already. Hours ago, I was sleeping curled up in the corner of the musty room they called the ‘infirmary’, it didn’t even have enough bandages for the casualties. Instead, the Lords that retreated back here decided to abuse the few healers they had than care about the extensive costs of a well-functioning hospital. Now I go into battle, with scant few hours of rest within the past week, and my reserves of magelight barely high enough for an enemy mage to tell I am too, a mage.
Good thing then, that the enemy has barely any of them. Our enemy is not some far off sentient race, but one that borders our own kingdom. I had seen their kind plenty, had bartered with them and made merry with them, and of the dozens of the Beastmen I’ve met, I have never met a male before of any of their multitude of subspecies. It is frowned upon to call their collective Beastmen, but that taboo was dashed away at the onset of this bloody and foolhardy war. Our kingdom was broken hearted already, having lost most of the women to the Scourge. Then starved by failing crops, then the looming diseases brought on by unburied corpses.
And so here I stand, at what feels like the edge of Oblivion, standing shoulder to shoulder with men who had also lost everything, against a foe that both outnumbers us and stands two feet higher than us on average. I have personally killed an eleven foot beast of a woman just a few days ago, surprising her with a gout of fire. The only good thing about me being so lowly, is that they never expect me to be almost on par with the best courtmages, or so I have been told. I have almost no one else to compare myself to. Mages are the most sought out foe by our enemy. Most detested, us few who try to hold together this ailing land. I couldn’t care. This kingdom never helped my village in times of need, never sent relief when our crops failed, nor did they bat an eye when a tenth of our number fell to disease.
But they cared when they heard rumor of me. A dual mage, blessed in the healing arts and flame alike. Flame from my father, the smith. Healing from my mother. I took to both like a fish in water. Years studying dusty tomes bought for far too much, and the scars that cross my body from self-experimentation testament to my dedication. I feel no satisfaction for the desecration of my parent’s memory. I hate myself a little more each time a patient comes to me with hope in their eyes, and trust in me to save them. But I can’t. I can’t save everyone. My teeth grind at the latest memory.
It was a young boy, perhaps fourteen with his entire life ahead of him. I could save him. Even with his guts hanging out of him like badly stored rope. I could save him, even if he was cold to the touch. I had his guts back where they belong, healed the membrane to keep them there, and had stitched his abdomen back together. All I had to do was tend one wound next, his severed hand. Tourniquet still bound tight at the wrist. I could save him.
Then the Lord decided his son was on death’s door, and heavy hands dragged me away from my patient. My patient. Not theirs; mine. My responsibility. I protested, and the steel fingertips only dug deeper into my shoulder as they hauled me off to the main castle. It was there, in one of the many chambers used to house the ‘nobility’ and the rest of their families. The so called ‘close-to-death’ noble had a gash on his chest. Not even big enough to really require stitching. But anyone could do that. I bit my tongue, listening to the rambling of idiotic nobles as I drew out my needle and thread.
I think it was the gall of the father that made me explode. I was sitting on a little stool beside the blonde haired man, propped up on so many down feather pillows, half eaten plate of food on his bedside table, as I began to stitch the wound. I was barely even three passes in before a cough drew my attention, the father before me was rotund, a thick beard dropping almost down to his chest. I locked eyes with him, and I saw the frustration lined onto his face. “I thought you were a healer, Sir Mage. Why aren’t you healing him?”, he asked me.
I looked away and continued on, jaw clenched and I’m sure he saw the brittle anger written on my own face. “I am healing him. I have to save my magelight for more important patients”, I said, even as my hands worked deft and fast.
Even without his face in my sight, I knew I picked the wrong verbiage. “Is my son not important? The son of the Duke? Not important? How dare you”, the fat man hissed at me. I couldn’t help from snarling. Thinking of the barely adolescent boy whose life was not yet secure.
“Death doesn’t give a flying fuck what position you are. I have a fourteen year old boy downstairs, who just minutes ago had his insides on his outsides and I get hauled away to what?”, I dropped both the needle and thread on the chest of my patient, who had remained silent the entire while. “To tend a scratch on some noble’s son?”, I stood then. “You know, I saw that same boy face down an enemy twice his height and four times his weight. What have you done?”, I spat. Not my finest moment, but I will defend myself. I have slept barely more than three hours a day for the past four days, and have eaten very little, and tried to save as much as I could.
It was almost impressive, how red his fat-creased face got. From pale blubber to crimson in less than a second, I didn’t even feel when he struck me. One second, I was staring him down. I was taller than him, by a few inches no less. Then I was looking at the wall, and saw his hand still drawn as if to hit me again. I pounced. Another funny thing about disciplining a mage, and a healer no less, lashes only hurt until they’re healed. I did have to consent to the punishment. By rights, I would have been hanged that same night, but a healer and firemage are hard to find nowadays. Especially so when our foe is so dogged in their pursuit to end us.
I couldn’t give a rat’s ass. That noble was still bearing the bruises I left on him the last I’d seen him. My back still has fading scars. Even if it did just happen recently, I could have fully healed them over the course of a night. And still have some magelight to toy around with. Instead, I am here on the wall, in the rain, looking with dulled eyes at the enemy as they march towards us. Siege engines and the like ready to reap their toll on the last bastion before the rest of the kingdom falls. It has already fallen, yet the ‘Lords’ don’t seem to realize a kingdom that can’t make the next generation of citizens is not a kingdom. It’s just a corpse writhing around until the brain dies.
Exhaustion creeps into me. As it did when I finally returned to that young boy I had tried to save, to find his cold corpse set upon a pile of those as unfortunate as himself. I ask myself, if I had been more in control of my emotions, could I have made it back in time to save the lad? I suppose it no longer matters, but the dissenters in my mind seem to loathe the idea of not taking that responsibility and grief. I love to hurt, I suppose.
It beats being numb, like I had when I lost my mother, and my father was lugged off to fight this pathetic war. I hate it all. Hate that my arts are tarnished, that for all my strength, I am forced to do things I don’t want to do. I want to save people, not help put them in the dirt. Subdued wishes seem to quiet my mind if but for a moment. My eyes blink, and I scan the wall to each side of me. There are perhaps four mages worth noting on this wall. And I am one of them. With an exhausted supply of magelight, I am a glorified foot soldier. A few dozen meters down this high wall is Alf, a simplistic fire mage. Beyond him is a young wind mage, who seemed to prefer casting much too complex spells for no reason than to show off.
Making something simple complex isn’t intelligent. Intelligence is being able to make something complex simple. The only other mage is a few dozen meters to my right, clapping the shoulders of the men around him. Zora, a man who is rarely bereft of a smile. I liked him, and we have shared plenty of down time together, speaking of better days the days to come. He was the oldest of the small group of mages here. Never did he tell me what his element is, and I have seen him cast something from each school a couple times. I suspect he is a dual type, similar to myself.
Fire and healing aren’t too dis-similiar, at least to me. The body generates energy, whether it is digestion, locomotion, or the various organs and tidbits interacting. Fire is much the same, it is heat. Which is also energy. Most look at me like a fool when I say that, but it makes sense to me. Fire is energy, and the body needs to continue to produce energy to live. Just a few dozen stipulations to ensure that it can continue to do so.
Zora stands a little taller than me, his greying hair is fought valiantly off by the few strands of brown hair, and his eyebrows are thin, face gaunt and long by the meager foodstuffs supplied to us. We had tried to explain to the lords and captains several times now, that magelight is energy, just like food. The more magelight we utilize, the more food we require. Yet, they never seem to listen nor care.
I sigh heavily, drawing some looks from the men around me. Few of them are lucky enough to wear steel and hold weapons unmarred by rust. It is going to be a horrid day for me and the other hundreds of men on this wall. Our enemy seems to number in the thousands. We scant few, numbering in the hundreds may be able to hold the castle for a week more. Food is already running thin, and besides the noble, no one bears any excess fat. We are thin and lean on the demands of war.
Thoughts of desertion have been building within my mind, to be frank. And I am sure it has been in the minds of others. We are doomed, if not today, then next year, with most of the men called off to war, and little left to man the fields, we are doomed. Even if we won today, and each battle that follows, there will be no more young men to recruit past the boys back home. In ten years, we will all be old men manning the walls. Even if we did that impossible task, there is no more women to bear children, and our kingdom will become a ghost. Bereft of the next generation.
I know as well as others, that this war is a war of pride and self righteous nobles who would rather sacrifice the rest of us than ever dream of losing their standing to the Beastmen outside our walls. I couldn’t care less. I have nothing left to lose besides my life. If I die today, no one will mourn my nameless, brief existence. No wife to cry for me, nor children to grow wondering who I was, or parents to fret upon my return. No, I am a healer, a mage, a soldier. I am all these things and little else now. Dreams of running my own forge are dull and lifeless now, once grand imaginings of learning the healing arts at the Capital long dashed away.
All I can hope for, is to live through this day, and perhaps if I am lucky, a Beastwoman will take interest in me, and treat me well. I could fight to my death, and although its call is sweet to my ears, I know deep down that I do not want to die. Long ago, I was quite sweet on a rather catching beastwoman. Perhaps two years my senior, with silken fur and bright green eyes and a touch that could melt the coldest of men with a graze. She had only stayed in the village for perhaps two weeks, and when she left with the rest of her caravan of traders, the world seemed just a little less colorful.
Ah, young longing from a tender heart. I can’t help but let the self aggrandizing grin plaster itself on my dirtied face. If only… I wish things had been different, wish this world hadn’t taken my parents, and guide me to the ranks of this foolhardy army. If only I had never told that damned recruiter what I was, I could be at home forging swords by the dozens, with naught but ghosts and phantoms for company. Warm food, a long broken in bed. I like to think living in the same house my mother died in wouldn’t haunt me, but I think if I had been left alone, I may have taken my own life. I was always a momma’s boy. I loved my father just as much, and both their losses sting.
I toss the thought aside, as I see the first volleys of arrows be sent over the tall wall, and as gravity bends their arcs into the flesh of our foe. Grass no longer covers the ground for quite a distance from the wall, it is churned up mud, dyed a dirty rust from the blood and the corpses the dogs still devour. Even as the beasts outside churn it once more, and their barks, roars, and the giggling of hyenas sound out. They are better prepared than us, with newer arms and armor, their shields carried a certain heft brought on by their superior strength.
If the strongest man I ever met fought the weakest beastwoman, he may win once out of ten. Perhaps if he was trained and lucky, then maybe three out ten. But we have one boon they do not, we have mages. They too employ us, but not to the same degree. It must be difficult for them to bribe a man to fight against his own, and sell their brothers into servitude. I wonder if I would be treated tenderly, if I only told them I was a healer. Not like I have the magelight for any grand spells.
In neat rows, they sprint to our walls. Through dwindling storms of arrows we haven’t had the time to replete, and the intermittent spells launched against them, they bear down on us. Ballistae launch at us, and heavy boulders fly from long armed engines, rams are carried on the backs of the giant women amongst them, and ladders are carried by groups towards our wall. Adrenaline builds in my beyond exhausted body, and I cycle my magelight once more, a faint blue aura comes from my skin, like fog. It is much weaker than I had hoped for. Watered down and not given respite, it is thin and watery where it should be thick like molasses and dark like storm clouds.
Ah, hopefully if my death comes, it comes quick. I could perhaps heal two or three debilitating injuries, and cast several bolts of fire before I am no better than a common thug. I was never one of martial arts, and I pray the mace that has found its way into my palm is sturdy enough to crack some skulls. Men shout around me, and I can’t help but detest them. Like a drowning man complaining of being wet. This will hopefully be the last day of this blasted war, whether I live or die, I just want to rest.
I am tired of the struggle, of being tossed around like a commodity by men who do not understand and obviously never read about the utilization of mages in siegecraft or war. You can not just treat a mage like a common soldier. To get the full effect, you must ensure two things above all else; food and rest. As much as the soldiery would complain that mages would be much better fed, they would not complain when said mage tears apart squads of enemies in moments, or reattaches a limb, or some such thing a normal man can hardly dream of.
Maybe I am arrogant. I don’t care. I have killed enough in my long few weeks of war, and have saved twice that number, and lost too many patients who would otherwise be here with me if my ‘betters’ ever listened to reason and logic. I hate them more each day, these fools who by the grace of the Gods have somehow come to command others, and stand and boast of their lineage as if they somehow were always meant to be nobility. Who grow fat off the labor of others, and detest the very people they swear to serve, who tax the poor to ensure their manors look more gilded than one another at banquets not a single one of them had a hand in producing. Who had never gone hungry, or looked to their fields then to their leaking roofs, and decided it was better to sleep wet and cold than to let their fields fail, and thus be forced out of their generational home by moron nobles who had never popped a blister twice in one day.
I stop myself, and force my eyes to focus on the enemy who has now descended the hill, and batter on our walls and gates. It is difficult to think clearly, as depleted as I am. But I can lift a mace, and strike down, and hope that will be enough. I have consigned myself to forego use of magelight. I would rather die than aid in this idiot struggle in a meaningful way.
Around me, tired men rally themselves with whoops and jeers, and their merry scrapes against me, why are they so excited to kill and be killed? I have saved some of the men around me, tended to their flesh like my father before me tended to steel and broken tools. My words of self-care have fallen on deaf ears, I suppose. For they would not be here, weapons aloft and fire in their eyes if they had listened. If I could have it my way, I would be far away from here, anywhere. I do not want to be here. I would prefer to be in a warm bed, with food aplenty and perhaps a woman as well.
I sigh, and brush these far off dreams aside, as the calls for blood just below us rise in a crescendo. Even as dozens of their numbers are culled by arrows and falling detritus, they do not stop in their mad scramble to get the siege ladders up. Our wall is not terribly tall for what it is meant to defend, it stands about fifty feet high, and about the same thickness at the base. The gates had been sealed for weeks now, and their only hope of shattering them lay in their multiple siege engines. I have yet to see a single enemy mage bring forth their destruction, and hope they remain out of range.
My mace hangs heavy in my hands, and I am glad I can not see myself. The cascade of noise batters me, but I am too bone deep exhausted to care or pay heed. I will strike the enemy until either they or I am dead, and be merry that I get my rest at last. The dead do not hunger.
A brittle smile tugs at my lips, and I can feel how heavy my eyelids are as they struggle in vain against the dull and far off adrenaline. Men rush towards the ladders now, pushing them off in teams and cutting grapples, and I do not join them. I hold myself in reserve. Down the line, my eyes reaches Zora’s own from across the way, his eyes are twin storms of silver peeking out of his unmanaged hair. He smiles. I do not return it, but I offer a nod. Today will hopefully be the last day of the siege, even if we lose.
No one here will be written about in the history books, and no one here has wives to return to. We are all dead men already, who refuse to stop moving. Dark thoughts cycle through my mind, bitterness leaking into my posture. I clench my jaw when I see furred hands grabbing men off the ledge, hauling them off where they stand to meet the unforgiving ground below. I do not move. I wait for when I am needed. Already, the petulant wind mage is casting much too complex spells, eating too much magelight already. His windblades cull dozens, but I know for certain he could have expended half the magelight he had used to the same results. I can not deny the morale boost it gives to the men around.
Rain continues to fall around us mortals as we strive against one another, with claw and sword, the ringing of metal meeting barely yielding armor, and the wet tearing noise of men being hewed. Blood runs down the cobbles, and I clench the unleathered grip of the mace, feeling the cold steel almost burn in my hands. They too are slick with water and sweat, and the smell of the battlefield reaches me once more. Just like the infirmary, blood, sweat, urine and shit. Rain can hardly cover the stench of bloodletting. I let it swirl around in my head as I tense my muscles to move. What muscles my starving body hasn’t yet eaten.
We bulge before me, siege ladders are gaining momentum on my section and I am sure my squad leader is bellowing orders, but I do not hear him over the cacophony of the siege engines and their launched boulders and the sound of thunder as they hit the wall. Below my feet, it feels as if it sways, as if it were a boat. I steady myself, and look at what area in my section needs my attention the most.
Before me, half a dozen beastwomen fight to gain a foothold. Thrice their number encircle them to little effect, they are stalwart and fighting defensively, to give time for their allies to help secure their section. I join the fray. My worn leather boots splash through the crimson puddles, and I let my mace hang low as I come from behind my fellow men. I cycle through my magelight, letting it coalesce into hot waves within me, eventually it consolidates and I let loose an unimpressive fireball. Just enough to burn and perhaps blind, but not enough to prevent them from fighting once they regain their bearings.
It jumps over the heads of the men, exploding just above the center of the defensive beastwomen. At the center of the explosion is a stout woman, a few inches shorter than most of the other women. I assume her to be the leader, as her armor has more steel than the rest, and her orders are barked efficiently and with confidence. I hear her scream as her fur alights wherever it's exposed, and my men push forwards with me. Eager to finally push off the invaders off our wall and down to their shallow grave.
As I push forwards, my eyes meet her own, and they seemed to glow with fury from within her full helm. She knows who the mage is and who to focus on. I hear her bark out more orders, pointing right at me as I push with the close knit group of men. Perhaps if I was smarter, I would back off and cast more spells, but I would rather push our advantage and save what magelight I can. Even though I did just tell myself I would try not to use any, and have already violated my own self imposed order.
No one's keeping tallies, after all. Before us lie about six of their numbers, standing head and shoulders above us, their armor a mix of leathers and steel, certainly more steel than what we have. Their weapons are rust free and cared for, and their squad dynamic is much better trained than ours. Screams sound out and I am shocked still for a moment, when a massive unhelmed wolf tugs a spear towards her, and catches the wielder with both hands. The wolf grabs the man by a leg and by his head. Lifts him up as if he weren’t a full grown man and weighing at least eight stone, perhaps ten in his gear, and pulls.
His screams are drowned out as his head tears away from his shoulders. Ligaments and veins and all the rest make an outright bone chilling noise, his spine breaks and tears away with the sound of an axe snapping against wood. I will never forget this scene.
Renewed screams of rage pull forwards from hoarse throats, and I am unsure if I match them or not. Battle has come, and I will answer. Worries and wants flee from my mind, and I focus on the skirmish before me. I have no shield, so I will fill the gaps wherever I can. A man screams at me to cast more spells, but I do not heed him. With a word, the beastwomen surge forward, and I answer with the other men, I lash out at hands that seek to open our struggling shield wall whenever I can, letting the spearmen do their jobs as I try to keep awareness about me.
The rest of the wall fades away, and I am suddenly exposed when the man before me is torn away from the wall by his shield. I move with speed I did not expect, and fill the gap with my flesh, and we begin to inch back their number one bloody foot at a time. Before us now remains four of their number, but I see the ladder banging and moving to and fro, and now that within seconds, more will come. I let my magelight surge within me. My body still moves, deflecting two strikes from my much larger opponent, what appears to be a slim cat, eyes yellow slits under her leather helmet.
Her fur is matted in blood and viscera, a cut mars her left elbow joint, too shallow to do anything but weep gently. Fangs are exposed from their fleshy maw, as I continue to try to hold the line with my underwhelming physicality and my even more pitiful macemanship. I can tell she is setting me up for something, and the two men on either side of me are just as occupied. More figures appear behind the three beastwomen, their numbers replenished back up to their half dozen, then several more join them. We are hopelessly outmatched now, and I focus on the woman before me. It is actually perfect now, my spell is set, my magelight coalescing.
With a flash of steel that comes from outside my sight, it unravels around me. We are less than a dozen paces from the edge. My ears ring with the blow, and I think I may have a fractured skull. Before me, the cat leers at my weakness, before a spear tags itself against her shoulder, barely missing her and scraping through the leather of her helmet. I almost fall forwards, but turn it into a drunken lunge fueled by desperation. Surprise flickers across her face, but recovers quicker than I can capitalize.
I see the killing blow descend upon my unprotected skull. It glides through the air, the edge of her slender sword cutting raindrops as I prepare to meet the Creator. Before it lands, a force launches me forwards. I am sent off my feet, the force strong enough to throw the cat away from me just like my own body. All of us are flung towards the edge of the wall, and I crash heavily at her feet, mace gone and bells ringing in my ears, my hands are bleeding from where they scraped against the rough stone of the wall.
Screams and cries of agony assail me, and I get on my bottocks and with drunken eyes I look about me, serene. Men and beastwomen alike are burning around me, some just pink flesh and empty, burnt out sockets for eyes. I am stunned, and I can not contend with what I am seeing. My mind goes silent. Dead. I must be dead. What was that? That had to have been fire magic. It comes to me like a far off tree in a foggy landscape, and although the realization is made, it bears no weight nor meaning. Friendly fire. My head drags to the left, and I see more fire coming our way. I lunge forwards without looking, and feel unrelenting steel hit my shoulder as the fireball lands.
I wake to a terrible cold. Within my skull, my brain batters against its confinement. Spikes of hellfire lance down my body, and try to rub my face with a hand before agony sparks an inferno down my left arm. It is utterly mangled. White bone pokes out of crimson and pulped flesh. Tendons are barely holding the flesh to my body. I gag.
Thankful I had not eaten before the battle, and with eyes that seem more intent on snapping shut than heeding my command, I force my tired, drunken mind to flit through my body and identify what needs what. Besides broken bones that would cost far too much magelight to heal, I send my own sluggish essence to a slow and steady cycling. I am midway through the process when I grit my teeth and raise my ‘good’ hand to the mangled scrap of flesh that makes up my left.
I draw blood from my lip as I try my best to orient the arm into a semblance of a normal limb. A groan escapes my hoarse throat and tears prick my eyes when the worst comes. Darkness greets me once more, the sheer depth of agony overriding my ailing body, and I pray to whatever Gods still live, that I will never experience it again.
Rain patters off my forehead, its ice laden digits striking deeply into my exposed form. For a moment, I have no idea where I am or what I am laying on. My breath rasps out as I come to unwelcome consciousness. Within me, my magelight surges, much surer than before, its depth and vibrancy a welcome change. My bloodshot eyes look around for the first time. Corpses. Men and beast alike, above me haloed by clouds is the tall wall I had been launched off of. The memory is stark, and the level of emotions are unwarranted as anger surges through me.
Death’s scent is heavy here, and I hear distant cries for aid sound from somewhere far off, between the wall and the distant hill is nothing but corpses, hounds lope through, eating the tastier bits of this horrid menagerie that abounds with easy meals. Gods, the noises. Chewing and braying, the squawk of vultures and ravens alike sends shivers down my spine, but it is not from the freezing rain. Hypothermia is a real concern now, with my starved half-corpse of a body, beaten and dragged through the low halls of hell itself.
For once, I am grateful for the rain, as without it, I would surely be in much more pain. My arm remains broken, as savaged as before. Now, I have magelight. Once more, I let it flow through me, its eddies and tides building as I center it on the limb. Luck has held out; the forearm has yet to necrotize. A long suffering sigh escapes my throat at the hellish itch that devolves into that deep well of agony once more, as flesh knits and the bones creak to come back together once more.
Minutes pass as I fight through the stomach churning discomfort, until the limb is whole once more. Weeks will be needed for it to be hale again, but with routine healing magic, should be back to full within perhaps four days at most, granted if I consume enough calories. Warmth from my self administered torture and the heavy use of magelight drives off the wolfish rain for a moment, and my heavy head flops back down, and I hiss in pain as the memory of the pommel from the cat striking my skull.
Almost had forgotten that one. Wind stirs the back of my head, and I open tear drenched eyes to the stormclouds hovering above, mimicking the birds feasting on this pile of bodies. How fat they will grow in the coming days! Least now, my head is comfortable, the corpse below me a soft enough cushion despite it being steel-reinforced leathers. I wonder if it is the same stout, broad shouldered woman who I had, like a terrified child, had leapt into her core.
If only she hadn’t been there, I am sure the burns across my back wouldn’t either. My body shudders and freezes when I feel an arm drape itself across my hips. Clear as day, the corpse below me is not a corpse at all. A swallow forces itself down the stone in my throat as I think of what to say. She beats me to it.
“Nifty trick you did to your arm”, her voice is husky in my ears, edged with her own hidden pains. “Try anything, and we both get to see if you can outheal a slit throat”, the hard edge of a blade rests against my carotid, and through the cold of the rain, I struggle in vain not to shiver at both the threat and the oppressive chill.
I do not move. “Let’s make a deal”, I say, urgent in my need for continued survival. I swallow once more, the dagger unmoving and drawing a thin bead of blood from my skin. “I can heal you as much as I can, and you get me out of here. Alive”, I say.
A chuff of air ruffles the hair on the back of my head, “Then what?”, she says, dull amusement but an undercurrent and even the warrior she must be can not drown out the agony she must be feeling, same as me. “Well… I don’t know”, I say hesitant, I did not think I would make it this far, to be frank. “I am a healer”, I say.
The dagger drags less than an inch, drawing blood more freely. “And a firemage, thought I’d forgotten that, pretty boy? I ought to bleed you dry for what you did to my girls”, even I, as dense as I am, know that wasn’t idle anger.
“That was yesterday, today is today. I had to do what I had to do. Besides, that wolf of yours tore a mans head off, for fuck’s sake! All I did was singe a little hair”.
Minutely, the dagger draws away from my skin, yet still poised to end my dreams and my life with less effort than it takes to put on a damn pair of boots. “Heal me then, and we’ll see what happens back at camp”, she says, once more her dagger comes close, “I smell a hint of fire, I’m slicing through your plump little carotid”.
I nod as much as I can, “I need to turn around to see what I’ll be working with, and don’t expect miracles. I barely had enough magelight to heal my own blasted arm”.
Thankfully, her dagger retreats from my neck, and the arm around my waist tightens, and she throws me away from her. I roll, agony shocks me into a belligerent round of curses as every nerve from my head to my toes sing in lightning blasts of torture. Perdition. It calms down, but whether it is seconds or hours escapes me, my breath rattles out as I try to exhale all my suffering with the groan that leaves me. A foot catches my shin, a new bruise sure to form amongst the multitude I believe there to be.
I shift to my back, resting it against the torso of another corpse, and look at my ‘patient’ for the first time since the fall. Taller than me by at least a half a foot, maybe closer to one. Broader than myself by near double, her head hangs lower than most of the beast I’ve seen. Not regal and held highly as dignified foxes, nor the halfway of canids, nor the grace of cats, no I see now she is a badger woman.
Scars stand out from her white mottled black fur off her head, an ear is torn near in half, and she bares her teeth at me in what I hope is her facsimile of a smile. Her nose is wet and black as her pitch black eyes meet my own. What a turn of events. I wonder where her helm has gone, and I study the rest of her. Wide chest, modest breasts, or at least hidden under her cuirass, robust core followed by wide hips and legs like tree trunks. My God, she is stout. Like an oak tree but much less pretty.
A wrestler would despise her, her center of gravity seems to hang much lower than any other beast or man I’ve seen. Mere seconds pass before I speak, “What hurts the most?”, I ask.
The once-corpse across from me, who eyes me even as her shoulders remain on the ground, lets her eyes squint at me. “Everything, you fucking idiot. I feel fifty feet and your ass didn’t help either, asshole”, her words are sharp, and I don’t even begin to wonder if she was always like this.
I sigh, “Whatever. I have to examine you, have you ever felt magelight before?”.
She matches my sigh then exceeds it, “No I haven’t ‘felt magelight’ before. Except for your fire”, she says.
Almost a nod, but stopped when I dully remember my own skull injury, “Okay. It’s going to be warm and it's going to tingle, so bear with it. It only takes a moment”, I fall forwards into a crawl, much too depleted to even attempt to stand. Can’t fall if you’re already down, afterall.
I get close when I see her hand clench the dagger tighter, and I stop and sigh once more, reaching with two fingers for my own. I draw, and reverse the grip, point directed at myself. Suspicious and shards of obsidian meet my eyes, and she eyes the grip, “Keep it, I suppose if you were going to kill me, it would’ve been when I first held the knife to your neck”.
With easy restraint, I deign to not refute her and tell her I barely had enough magelight to even be considered a mage. Instead of looking a gift horse in the mouth, I resheathe my chipped and worn dagger, and continue crawling towards her. I settle besides her, good elbow propping me up as my bad arm flops itself onto her chest. If my move startles her, she doesn’t let it show, instead, her wide head turns to my face as I send the first searching pulses through her.
The readout is… lengthy, to say the least. Besides the new injuries that amount in a handful of broken bones and deep bruises and organ damage, the older ones almost freeze my breath in my chest. Hundreds of scars, herniated discs, diminished cartilage in most of her joints, inflamed wounds caused by filth, I can tell she has dealt with more broken bones than I’ve ever treated. Fingers, knuckles, nose. She has led a life fit for an immortal warrior, for certain.
It puts my guard up. This isn’t just the laundry list of a soldier, but someone who has been beaten, stabbed, clubbed, tortured. Even managing to get up a siege ladder is an impressive feat, and I am glad I did not face her then or before she got these legions of injuries.
Once more do I sigh, and prioritize the most dangerous of them. She will live, and if I have the time, I could erase most of her long standing injuries. I tell her thus, “I see you have many aches and pains, frankly, it's appalling. Get me out of here and I swear I will heal every single one”.
That draws a startled look from her, eyes wide and mouth opened a fraction. She says nothing for a beat, “Just get me up on my feet”, she looks away. I wonder if I offended her, and begin to send my magelight into her most prominent injuries. I have to be scrupulous with what meagre dregs I have left. I decide to ensure she is mostly mobile before anything else. Her short legs are mostly fine, and they appear to be similar to humans, if not for the bone density, muscle density, and the thickness of her tendons and cartilage found there. Albeit covered in her short, coarse looking fur.
It drains me much more than I thought it would, and I slump besides her, concentration layering itself onto mending her wide shoulder blades, not fully, but enough to carry me, as I expect the next action will require. Her skull is fine, brain is what it is. No internal bleeding, but I see she has a fracture on one of her vertebrae and I pulse my magic there, letting it coalesce and knit the hardy bone back together. A sigh escapes her, almost a moan, and I can not parse whether it's from discomfort or relief.
My eyes remain shut, and I use my very last reserves to soothe her battered organs. Another bit of wind leaks from her maw, and my eyes close and my hand stays on her chest as I feel all strength flee from me. “I need you to carry me”, I mumble.
I feel her shift, and stand, my hand falls into the mud, and I can feel her presence loom over me. Hopeful that she doesn’t have a weapon in hand, I open one dry eye. Rain still falls on us, it drips off her fur, down her muzzle and falls onto me. Grinning. She is grinning with every single tooth she has, and her eyes are alight with what I hope is only mischief, and that there is no further plot.
“Oh, I got plans for you”, if her voice wasn’t so hoarse, it might’ve come out seductively, and perhaps if she wasn’t a near seven foot badger. Accepting whatever my fate may be, I shut my eyes and groan in further agony as she hefts me over her broad back. Across her renewed shoulders, as if I were a sack of foodstuffs or lumber. I shift when I feel a wide hand rest of my ass. “Watch it, woman”, I try to sound firm, but it doesn’t help with how exhausted I am.
A yelp escapes me when she clenches her hand. A laugh comes from her throat as I writhe around in search of a means to fight back. I send out a searching hand for the nape of her neck, where her fur is longest and almost makes her look like a hunchback. I pinch a bit of fur between my forefinger and thumb, and tug as hard as I can. Said fur comes free. She growls, low and deep, and I think she may kill me now. At last her hand unclenches, “Asshole”, she grinds out, “Do that again and I’ll tear out your throat”. I freeze upon her and shrug. “Don’t touch the merchandise”, I reply.
Between the bone deep pain and exhaustion, I slip away into unconsciousness before I hear her surely pleasant reply.
No longer am I cold, and I tire of waking in unfamiliar surroundings. Something rising below me, and the sensation of what I could best describe as badly tended fur scrape against my bare flesh in the constant rhythm that tells me several things: I am alive, I am asleep on top of someone, I believe that someone to be the same woman who I had fallen with and then healed. One, well, two things otherwise to note are two very comfortable orbs of flesh pressing into my shoulders.
Breath tickles my hair, and I wonder how I ever managed to sleep with the awful odor that escapes the maw of my rather sizable sleeping companion. Besides that, there is no smell of blood, sweat, or bodily odor. A smidge of discomfort needles its way into my mind at the realization that someone had washed me as I slept. Gods only know how badly I needed that sleep. Strength, in some small measure, has crept its way back to my wiry limbs.
As an adolescent, I discovered that I could push my body to its utmost limits, then heal it. Every young man has a phase, and mine was overabundant physical training. More curiosity than anything else. Within weeks I had outgrown my clothes, and I was forbidden from doing it more by my very irate father when he found out that I was stealing his own larger clothes. Not to mention my mother who grew weary of having to cook for five rather than three.
Even at my current age, fully grown, I am much diminished, perhaps four stone less in weight than I once was. A sigh escapes me, and I can not help but let the small smile form on my lips. I am warm, clean, safe, and despite the company, the position is not too bad at all. For once, I am comfortable. Except for the gnawing hunger and thirst. Wriggling around a little, I notice two large muscle corded arms wrapped around me, and I realize just how exhausted my body was by the lack of the ubiquitous morning wood that I’ve had for almost all my life.
My eyes rove what I assume to be the ‘roof’ of the tent, it is not yet sunrise, but I have to tend to several things. I have to piss a river, and sate both hunger and thirst. First, I keep my promise. Slow magelight cycles through me, almost hesitant at my urging. I delve deep into the massive form beneath me, the same catalogue of injuries both old and new are added to the map in my mind. I note things I can not mend with just magic, such as infection. There is no point in healing an infected wound without first killing the infection. Many novice healers have tried, to then have to fight magelight fed bacteria.
It is no easy task to do that, and medicine is best for deep rooted infection. Gladly, there are no such dangerous infections I can find, just dirty wounds from battle, covered and forgotten by most likely, dirty bandages. Dirty being anything not sterile. I am sure the field medics are in short supply, and that they make do, but I am anything if not thorough.
Eyes closed, I get to work. Sending my magelight deep into her own body. I soothe the worst of the oldest wounds, that back to be precise. I am halfway through when I feel the arms tighten around my core, and a groan of relief and what I think may be pleasure ruffles the back of my head. My body is shuffled upwards, and I feel what I assume to be her chin rest on the crown of my head. I wonder if she is still asleep when I hear the most pitiful whine, low and drawn out, like a dog taking its last breath. Something stirs in me, and I can not rightly describe it, but I would rather go my entire life without ever hearing it again. I set to work on the joints next, paying them special attention. Finally, with plenty of magelight left, I get to work on her shoulders and the dozen hairline fractures I can find.
It is duly impressive that she managed to carry me to wherever we are, out of the butchers cesspit and here, safe and hale. Clean no less. Now her breathing is coming faster, and I am fairly certain she is now fully awake. Some wounds will take longer to fix, and I can do that in the coming days, but I would like to keep as much magelight in reserve as possible. If I were to expend every ounce of what I had, it would take perhaps a week to regain it all back, and be at my full potential.
Yet, if I used half, it would be back in about a day. I approximate that I have around a third left, after tending to my unlikely savior. Promise kept, I run through my own list of injuries, and find there is nothing worth trading magelight for, at least until I know what more I contend with. My existence itself will be my bargaining chip, both firemage and healer. My utilities are numberless here, and whatever I need may be gained from offering my services. You woke up today achy and joints inflamed? Healed. You broke a bone and it set incorrectly? It will take me but around an hour.
Endless possibilities. Besides, whoever leads the army would be a fool to deny hot water on demand. Once more are we settled, and I feel her arms retreat around me, before I feel her chest rise mightily, “Why?”.
The question comes so silently, I thought it was an imagining of my own, twisted into the layers of my tinnitus that never seemed to go away, no matter how much magelight I expended. Confusion falls into place in my mind, and I can only reckon that it is quite the loaded question. Perhaps she is not used to people who hold their words in high regards, as I do. My word is my life. As dramatic and grand that statement is, I do try.
I roll over until my arms are now wrapped around her, because I feel like it. “I said I would, so I did. But before we get into philosophy, I gotta piss, drink, and eat”, I say, I leave the smile on my lips as I stare up at her face. She is turned upwards, and I can not see her face from here. An arms rises, and she points at one of the walls of the tent, “I have a waterskin on my belt”, she mumbles. Whether it be sleep addling her voice or something else, I do not know.
Shifting my weight, it takes a lot more effort than I thought to shimmy off her prodigious size. Not an ounce of fat on her, all of it burnt away in the toil of war. I can appreciate that on a woman, unlike some men I’ve heard back in the village. With my back resting against her hip, and my knee drawn up, I squint into the darkness of predawn, and I can not see a damned thing. A flame flickers to life from a snap of my fingers, poised just above my index finger, no larger than a normal candle.
I feel the muscles cording down her hip and legs tense beneath me, and I rest my right hand, the one without flame, against her knee, “Relax, I wouldn’t heal you just to hurt you”, I say, body still turned away from her when my eyes find the aforementioned waterskin. I remove my hand from her knee and reach for the water skin. Letting my magelight fade, the flame pops out of existence, and darkness once more covers us. I can feel that she has sat up now, and I bring the waterskin to my lips, the cap coming off with the force of my teeth. A deep swig later and I am coughing.
“What the hell is”, I cough once more and hold the offending waterskin accountable with a suspicious grimace, “In this?”.
The sound of a chuff, halfway to a chuckle, sounds behind me. “Vinegar and whatever ‘spice’ the cooks could scrounge”, she says.
With tentative hands, I bring it back up, and drink as much as I can before I turn to her. Even in the dark, I can see the line of hard muscle tense under her fur, and the sheer amount of scars capture my eyes as they race across her form. I knew she had them, but more in a depersonalized way through magelight, but in actual person? Surely, if I was not a well seasoned healer, my breath would have come late. I hand the oversized waterskin to her, and she takes it with one hand, her brutish finger brushing mine.
Never had I been in such close proximity with a woman in such an intimate moment. Two people, barely clothed, sharing a waterskin in the cool predawn. Multiple questions rise within me and tickle the tip of my tongue, but I do not heed them. Instead, I watch how her muscles shift in the dark with the simple action of raising her hand to her mouth to drink. Mesmerizing. Something stirs within me that I had never known, like a side to me that never saw daylight before.
I swallow, sudden nervousness creeping into me as I watch the muscles of her esophagus empty the waterskin. Her eyes meet mine as the waterskin falls with the hand holding it, eyes locking onto my own like I had offended her. “What? Never seen someone drink before, fool man?”, her eyes are hard, suspicion tinging the edges of her obsidian eyes. Around her nose, her skin wrinkles and she sniffs the air, a stubby ear flicking.
A shit eating grin plasters itself on her wide jaw, vicious. “Little man scared?”, her hand reaches for my shoulder closest to her, “I can smell it”, she says with all the confidence in the world, before she nails the last nail into my proverbial coffin. “I like it”, she says, and there is no warmth in her beady eyes.
As a hybrid mage, confidence is something ingrained in my being. Being able to heal from mortal injury in a few moments then fart a fireball certainly helps. “Scared of your breath, more like”, I say, tone sharp and defensive. “Did you eat a corpse on our way back, or is that just how your breath smells?”, I ask.
Her hand tightens on my shoulder, and her dull claws dig into my skin, painful for sure, but I am no stranger to it, “What to see if you can heal a cut off nutsack, you bald monkey?”, she asks, voice heavily laden with aggression.
I raise both hands in surrender, “Before we do that, I do have to piss”, hunger gnaws once more at me, and I let a grimace form on my face, “Then eat”, I add.
Slowly, her hand retreats and she nods. Being already clothed in pants and a shirt, all I need are my boots. I am searching for them when I hear her stand, and I turn and watch, eyes held captive when she stretches. Muscles draw taut, and the boulders she has for shoulders rise as she raises her arms overhead, head tilted upwards, her abdomen bulges with her muscle there, each like a stone. Her quads are well defined, and all she wears is loose underwear. My mind betrays me, as it imagines the internal muscles in her core, and how delightfully tight she has to be, deviant thoughts. Bah! I brush them aside, but I can not just wave my hand and banish my erect manhood. Any man would have the same reaction as me, I believe.
This woman, brutish and covered in scars, and utterly unfeminine, yet the swell of her hips and the bounty of her breasts offset her well muscled form in such a huge disparity it is entrancing. God, I could study each and every muscle on her for eternity, a perfect weapon honed by dedication and blood, hewn from flesh, and the idea of the fact I had just slept on her sends a pleasant electric shock off in my brain and down my spine. I feel my manhood run slick from need, never before had I ever gotten so hard so fast, so utterly aroused.
I swallow a mouthful of saliva, now just realizing how close I was to drooling. When her eyes reach mine at the end of her stretch, I freeze. My eyes are wide, pupils open ever wider to drink in the statuesque Goddess before me. In real time, I see her eyes harden once more, before going utterly blank when she takes a deep breath through her nose. All thoughts of pissing or eating flee from my mind then, as my arousal is so inundated throughout my body, that I am sure I would rather release my sexual urges than tend to a mortal wound.
It almost hurts how tense my testicles are. Never before have I been so ready. Time freezes between us, and her nose never stops taking in deeper and deeper breaths. I jolt backwards when she drops her head lower, into her more natural stance. “What… is that smell?”, she asks, voice low.
Fear grips me then, and I avert my eyes, “And why is your face so red?”, she questions once more. My mouth won’t work. All my brainpower is telling me to do my damndest to get my bone in her. It's maddening. “I uhh….”, I swallow, and feel as though I am on fire. “Like…”, my voice trails off into a mumble and I swear I could ejaculate if I dare to move even a muscle. It has been months since I had time to tend to my needs. Months.
With a half stride, she is above me, at her full height while I remain on the floor, head barely coming midway to her thigh, “You like what, fool man?”, she asks. Her voice takes an edge I am yet to learn.
I swallow again, my eyes boring into the wall, now or never. “I like your muscles”, it comes out faster than I wanted, and I no longer feel like a seasoned medic, nor a decent firemage, or someone that faced Death yesterday.
In the gloom before dawn, in our tent that seems far removed from the rest of the world, her chest rises as if she is preparing for battle, and my pulse thunders in my ears. Eyes wide as if in rage, her ears pointed towards me and me alone, I feel the full weight of her undivided attention, and a knot of nerves settles heavily in my gut, erasing all the hunger that has not left me since I had awoken.
One more step, and her legs are nearly touching me, and she is too high above me for my eyes to reach her own. I swallow. The shallow noise seems to break whatever spell beset us, and I can hear the steady pull of her breath, filling lungs undoubtedly as large as a bull’s. Her body heat radiates in the chill of the morning, and my nose drinks deep of her clean scent, underbitten by her natural scent, something even lower begins to rear its head, the mix of petrichor and iron and spice. She is unmoving above me, and my hands begin to shake. My untended manhood pitching uncomfortably against my pants, fear and arousal builds even higher in me, and it feels drunken.
I raise a hand to move to my face, a nervous tendency I have to feel the grit of what was once stubble and is now an unkempt short beard. My hand doesn’t reach my skin, instead she takes my wrist in an iron grip, her wide brutish fingers easily encircling my thin wrist. Through my mouth I breathe, as her building scent has overridden my nose and I fear what would happen if I let whatever it is that lies within that scent drive me mad.
Slowly, she raises my hand to her stomach, her legs bending to let me reach. Her stomach feels like sun warmed stones beneath me, against my hand her muscles contract and I can feel her radiating warmth from beneath her short coarse hair. My hand searches without my own conscious effort, tracing each muscle I find, feeling her breath come and go faster as I get on both knees and add my other hand in searching her form.
A rumble comes from her mouth, eyes locked on the top of my head as I try my best not to salivate like a starving hound. I try to rise to my feet, hands resting against her core as her rumbles and pants come from her. Before my feet themselves below me, she yanks on my wrists, painful in her suddenness, and she falls back onto the bedroll, carrying me down with her. I land with a grunt atop the giantess, my hardness straining through my trousers and digging deep into her thigh, and she chuffs at me.
With both my hands running across her body, tracing the lines of hard earned muscle and scarred skin, they drink deep of her. Massaging flesh and I pant into her core and my cock surges when I feel a wide hand reach my waistline, tugging off my pants. I wear no underwear, and the cold air shocks me as my wet member is exposed. I drip onto her, precum oozing out in steady pulses of animalistic need.
I groan and once more my cock throbs when her rough hewn hand reaches my shaft, kneading the turgid flesh with a care I would never expect from someone like her. I lift my head to the roof of the tent, teeth clenched tight as the pleasure builds so high it’s almost painful. Short thrusts into her hand makes her loose a sigh of her own, and my shaking hands reach for her own beltline, tugging with all the force I can exert. Short legs aid me in my endeavor, lifting her sizable posterior as I tug like a needy beast to get her naked.
Her hand finds its way back to my manhood, pushing me ever closer to what is sure to be the largest orgasm of my life. Instead, she clenches and shoves me back gently. Before me lies heaven. Between two mountainous thighs big as a horse’s, above a hidden chocolate bud and her plump rear, I see her slit. Labia as black as her eyes crowd the gentle pink flesh within, her clit is engorged and looks so dainty compared to the rest of her, her need drips from just as mine does, but hers falls into her fur and onto the ground, then the smell hits me.
Like a fog, it settles into my mind, and my own arousal is forgotten but for a moment, as I lean forwards and smell her most intimate place. In the free air, my cock bobs and drips even more, falling in between her wide spread legs. Closer I lean, until all I can see is my prize, and my tongue greets her in the middle of her flower, and it tastes better than anything I have ever tasted, smells more divine than the most favored candlemaker in the world. Music sounds when she exhales, a sudden gasp mixed with surprise and excitement in equal measures, and my tongue explores every crevice and fold it can reach, nose fencing with her clit as I continue in my administrations, my eyes fall to a half lidded position as I turn all the focus I can muster into her.
Instinct guides me, and each time she writhes below me sends a shiver from my brain to my toes, I know something is going well when her thighs pinch my skull in place, and I hasten my efforts, hands rising to search her body even more. With legs draped over my shoulders, I lift her up until most her weight rests on her shoulder blades, one hand finds the top of my head while another splays out for support, and my tongue doesn’t stop for a moment, not to swallow, not to breathe, the entire world has collapsed into a singularity.
A man could hold a sword to my neck in this moment and I would not notice until my head rolls free. The fur of her thighs comes around my head, and her legs tenses around me, refusing to let go, and my small human tongue fights valiantly to sate itself. Each one of her lustful moans and animalistic rumblings set me on fire, and my cock tenses, and my nuts contract so hard it feels like they might be cramping.
Her orgasm comes with a shock of warmth exploding on my tongue and face, and the excitement gets to me, and I cum with her. Never did I think I could cum without physical stimulation, but the sheer excitement and arousal from pleasing such a mighty woman lit a passion within me I never knew existed. My head swims as I pump rope after rope of the densest cum my body has ever made through the empty air and onto her furred buttcheeks, her legs still held over my shoulders, and the overwhelming heat of her vagina still affecting my face.
Both of us shudder in the bliss, and heavy gasps of breath fill the tent as we come down from our highs, my cock hasn’t softened in the slightest, and I bury my face into her thigh, kissing it and rubbing my face across the softer fur there, on hand coming up to massage the prodigious limb, losing myself in her scent and presence.
I am lost in the motions when I feel her legs slide away from me, and for a moment she is laying flat on her back, legs on either side of me from where I kneel, cock pointing upwards, rivulets of cum still leaking down my shaft, and our eyes meet. Hers feel like they’re glowing, her maw is closed and her eyes are afire. Her breasts rise with her breath, and I think I fucked up until she reverses our position with the raising of one leg and a twist of her wide hips, I am suddenly looking up at her, cock pointing towards her chin as her breasts sway lightly above it, she growls at me.
A shiver runs down my body once again, and one of her hands splays itself on my stomach, so wide she could kill me if she so much as squeezed hard enough. Warmth drips onto my thighs and I see over my own heaving chest the most beautiful sight I had ever seen. I did not calm her down at all, it seems. Teeth gleam in the darkness, and she rests her knees on each side of my abdomen, her hands trailing twin paths from my hips, across my ribs, up the underside of my arms and she lifts them above my head, eyes never leaving mine. Manhood straining with my hips to try to reach her own womanhood, but the distance is too far, I reach just close enough to feel the furnace heat that escapes her. Gods above, the scent in the tent is driving me insane. Spiced and clean odor of sex and primal lust so potent one would chop off their own hands to satisfy.
Her body quivers on top of me as she rests, cock tracing a wet line across the fur of her hot core, sliding across the muscles there. “And to think I was planning on handing you over”, she says, disbelief evident in her voice, as if she did not think she was speaking aloud. With my hands entrapped in her own, I retreat my hips just a few inches and thrust, feeling the fur glide across my fever hot head and shaft.
One of her hands retreats from my own, and rests near the side of my head, and she leans most of her weight onto me, I writhe in pleasure and try my best not to cum from the simple action. Her mouth lowers to my ear, something wet and delightfully warm traces behind my ear, and once more lightning courses through me. “Tell me you want this”, her words are husky in my ears, rough and seductive in their simplicity and even tone.
Hips answer before my mouth does and I let out a wailing groan of absolute need. “I need this”, I say, swallowing once more my saliva that tastes of her. Retreating, I watch in mild confusion as she puts distance between our heads, coming to rest her sizable buttocks on my thighs, cockhead once more smearing its excess across the toned ridgeline of her statuesque abs. Obsidian eyes hold mine captive as a rough hand traces down from her neckline, over a painfully hard looking nipple, down her hip and over her overflowing pussy.
It collects some of her own ambrosia, and then she smears her cunt honey over my cock, and the warmth causes me to thrust in vain into her grip, a smile graces itself across her face, looking more wolfish than a badger ought to. She is stunning. Something warm builds in my heart as I watch her movements, one pump is all she gives me, without even letting me enjoy its company for but half a second before retreating.
With grace unbefitting her, she raises her hips until her heat washes over my cock, she oozes and it falls onto my balls, so warm and viscous I grunt in pleasure. My eyes drink in her form, from her maw and fierce eyes, the tiny ears that adorn her skull, the slight sway of her modest breasts and her dark as night nipples, to the shift of fur when the wind blows, how her breath steams, her wide core and even wider hips, and finally rests of the end goal; needy flesh that promises a safe haven from the rest of the world and the promise of the most exquisite pleasure known to all sentient races.
Once more her hand wraps around my manhood, wrapping forefinger and thumb around my base, holding it straight up into the air, but she doesn’t sink down onto it. Instead, her eyes reach mine, “Do it”, she commands, and I obey. Strength surges into my legs from a place I do not know, and I lose myself in the moment. A single thrust and I am gone. A tremor racks my body. Sensation overrides all logic and all that remains of who I am is the tiny reptilian part of my brain that demands me to breed.
Overwhelming heat that feels degrees away from scalding my tender flesh, velvet that is softer than any silk on earth, ridged and muscles that contract around me and pull me ever deeper within her. My back creaks dangerously, hip thrusting her entire weight on shaking legs, refusing to budge even an inch backwards. Her moan is drawn out and low, her head comes close my own and she begins to lick me all over, my hair, my eyebrows, every inch of my face and neck are bedecked in kisses from her wide rough tongue. I cum.
No warning, no moan of pleasure, just a single grunt and I am rocking my hips against her, cockhead resting against her womb, rope after rope hitting her pristine walls, painting over her delightful pink in overwhelming white. A rush goes through my head, dizziness grips me and she clenches tight around me, enough to bruise. Never letting go, if my hips drop, I am sure she could hold me up with nothing but the strength of her walls of velvet. She milks me, and I lose count after fourteen spurts of semen into her tender hole.
For a time, ringing overrides my ears, and I stare without seeing at the ceiling, breath coming quick as if I had sprinted a marathon, she rests against me, head nuzzling against my chin and cheeks, tongue flashing out to savor the sweat that built up in our brief but insanely intense session, I still sit within her, head poised to once more revolt against her succulent cunt and flood her womb with every single drop of semen that stays in my nuts. My hands find her rear, scratching and massaging her round ass and I caress her short tail. Her pussy clenches around me and we moan into one another’s necks.
Warmth unlike anything I have experienced before fills my entire body, my cock rests in the most wondrous paradise I never dared to dream of, and peace fills me as I sit there and throb within her. Walls wrap around me with tender caresses, and her breasts push into my chest, tongue lashing every inch of skin she can find. My hands go up her back, delighting in the feel of muscle tensing and spasming under my caress, feeling her coarse fur drag across my palms and through my fingers, through the much longer fur that goes from behind her ears down her shoulderblade halfway.
They come to her ears, rubbing and scratching and massaging the cartilage. Delight fills me when she sighs contentedly into my ministrations, a smile spreads across my sticky face, and I grasp her ears gently and bring her close to my face. Eyes still shut, she doesn’t see me lay my lips onto hers. A breathy moan later and her tongue is invading my mouth, its width easily capturing mine and makes my never softening length within her thrum with even more vitality.
I thrust lightly, and she clenches around me delightfully, the mix of our releases coat our thighs and let loose the most obscene of noises of flesh meeting flesh, and below, the sound of her sex squelching around mine in our union. I work into it until she is a melting mess of a warrior, mumbles and throaty growls fill the tent as I get into the desperate pace of a man about to die. I wrap an arm around her neck and bite my lips as the pleasure builds in my loins, her fiery snatch stealing any thought of resistance easily, as I focus every nerve, sinew, bone and muscle into burying myself as deeply as possible into my new lover, and filling her with cum until she is heavy with our child.
The thought sends a current of pleasure through everyone of my nerves, and her head retreats from my arm as my orgasm draws close. She begins to bounce against me, forgetting her own strength and bruising my hips against her stouter own, the mix of pleasure and mild pain send me straight to oblivion. I am brought back to the mortal plane when she shakes above, taken by another orgasm, and my own is a beat behind when she lowers her head to my shoulder and clamps down on the flesh.
Teeth dig deep and my hands clench her ass with all the strength they can muster. For a moment, there is no pain or pleasure, and everything seems to freeze. Then it hits me. Another orgasm so strong my core cramps as I expel all my unnoticed need into the pussy of a giant who could kill me easily, who’s harsh words make all of this all the sweeter. The stabbing pain in my shoulder, her all encompassing warmth, and the way her muscles contort to milk me for my worth from within her heavenly folds, wet with our combined lust and smoother than angel feathers send me straight to unconsciousness.
I think I am smiling when I go.