Crusade Gone Awry Ch. 03

Talia nodded and lifted one of the pieces to her mouth. She stuck it inside and softly sucked on it. After a few moments she made a sour face. She instantly pulled the piece out.

"Wow, it's sour!" she exclaimed.

"I warned you." Renard replied.

"You always have to have the last word don't you?" she asked.

"Only when I'm right, which is always."

Talia rolled her eyes and motioned with her free hand. "You ever think that maybe the reason you have such a problem with people is that attitude?"

"You ever think that maybe the reason all of you are on a suicide mission is that you never argue with authority?"

Talia flinched and gazed down at the ground. Her eyes rested on the sword in the sand. She totally forgot that she was about to kill him. There was something about Renard that lowered her guard.

"Renard, can I ask you a question?" Talia asked.

"Of course you can, beautiful." Renard replied with a smile.

"Don't do that."

"I was just..."

"Renard, if you want to be my friend, you will never mention my looks."

That statement instantly made Renard frown. His green eyes stared at her hard. She could tell he wanted to ask why, but decided to let it go.

"Fine. We'll just have a boring, adult conversation." he replied.

"Thank you. That thing you were talking about before, about the balance of nature. That sounded really smart. Where did you learn it?"

"I can't be smart and flirt at the same time? If you must know, it's common knowledge among the Fennec Tribe. Our livelihood used to be based on wandering the desert. You learn about how the desert moves and changes."

"You haven't been in the desert for a long time though, right?"

"Yes, not since I was fifteen, about twelve years ago."

"Well why...wait, you're twenty-seven?"

"Yes, is that a problem?"

Talia stood up from the rock.

"You are twenty-seven and you act like that?"

"Like what?"

"You hit on women like you're sixteen!"

Now it was Renard's turn to look slightly offended.

"What's the problem with the way I hit on women?"

"Renard, you are a grown man, why are you acting so immature?"

"Excuse me, I've had plenty of women interested in me."

"Any of them feel like staying more than a night? You think you can find a wife that way?"

Now Renard's face fully fell. It was more than just being offended. Talia could tell that she hurt his feelings. She regretted it the second she saw it.

"It's not like a don't want to. It's just...no one is going to want to, okay?"

"Okay." Talia's voice fell. She instantly knew she hit a nerve, and didn't want to press it further. Silence hung between them for several moments. The captain felt terrible, but was unable to think of a way to make it better.

"I only have one friend." Renard said abruptly. Talia briefly jumped, almost dropping the pieces in her hand.

"One...friend?" she asked.

"Yeah he's...really nuts. Has this creepy thing about dolls."

"Can't you...get more friends? Like...from the Fennec Tribe?"

"That's not really an option. I cannot be a member of the tribe.."

"Why not?"

"Because of my caste."

"Caste? What's that?"

"Back in the desert my people had castes to divide the labor. My parents were of...shall we say...the pleasure caste."

"Pleasure?"

"They were the prostitutes of the tribe."

Talia was instantly taken aback. "Wha...really?"

"Yes, really." Renard said, gazing up at the sky. "Everyone in the city knows about it. No woman will ever take me seriously so...why even try? Why shouldn't I take everything casually? I can't go back to the tribe because they'll expect me to bend over backwards...literally. I'm just...stuck."

"That's...pretty rough." Talia admitted.

"I thought if I went out into the desert I could just...just..." Renard closed his eyes. He sighed through his nose.

"You could what?" Talia asked quietly. Renard turned and gazed at her. He grinned slightly

"Oh, it's nothing, I'm sure you have your own problems." he said. "Try this, it's a kiwi. It has a much softer taste."

Talia stared at Renard. He was holding something back, but she had already upset him tonight, she decided not to push him any further. She smiled slightly and took the fruit.

"Thanks." she said. "You know, you're not so bad Renard."

"Well, I think that's the nicest thing anyone from your army has said to me this whole trip."

Unknown to everyone in the camp, as darkness came Oren Ackler left the camp. He didn't want to be there anyway. He retraced the army's steps back to where they met the desert witch. Although wind had taken the prints away, he remembered the direction she was going in. There was a large rock in distance. After walking half of the night, he arrived at the formation to find it was a butte. At the base of it was a cave, which he strolled inside like he owned the place.

Oren sniffed the air as he wound his way through the caves. It was actually incredibly large, with a lot of twisting pathways. Oren, however, followed his nose. He was skilled at finding ingredients back in the marketplace, simply by his sense of smell. That was before a church soldier forcefully recruited him because they lacked a cook in their unit. He was baffled that they made him a major, but they might have done so to send him on this mission, as it was lacking officers. They had to get rid of his morale-destroying attitude. Whatever. He didn't care.

The major finally arrived at the entrance of a large room. He peeked around the opening to see the desert witch in her home. The place was lined with shelves, stocked with glass jars full of all kinds of substances. There was a cauldron in the middle of the room that was currently empty, but looked as if it were frequently used. There was also a bed made of straw off to one side. The witch was bent over a chest which she appeared to be searching through. The major couldn't see any garlic. He gazed up to see that there were strings with bones on them hanging from the top of the archway. He reached up and rattled one.

With amazing agility, the witch spun around, he talon-like hands at the ready. Her milky eyes were now filled with a fiery light, showing that she was about to use magic.

"Whoa! Whoa!" Oren called, his hands up. "I'm not here to fight!" The witch cocked an eyebrow and lowered her hands slightly.

"You." she croaked. "The soldier. What do you want?"

Oren stepped into the room, his hands still up. "I was just wondering if I could trade with you?"

"Trade? With me?"

"Yeah." Oren reached into a bag at his side. His hands emerged with various ingredients: radishes, carrots, and a stock of broccoli. "I brought some plants from our land you might not have, so I thought you could trade me for some garlic." The witch lowered her hands all the way and squinted her eyes.

"You walked all this way for some garlic?" she asked.

"Yes, I love cooking with new ingredients. Cooking is the only joy I have since these assholes forced me into this army."

The witch stared at him, blinking dumbly. She calmly reached into her rags of clothing and pulled something out it. It looked like a tiny onion.

"This is a clove of garlic." the witch explained. "You may have it for free. None of those things looks appetizing."

Oren's eyes brightened and he smiled. "Really? Thank you! Thank you so much!" The major stuffed his vegetables back into his back. He walked over to the witch and stood beside her. He paused for a moment and flinched, as if realizing this was a bad idea for a moment. He flinched again, then reached out and took the garlic. "Thanks a lot." Owen took a step away from the witch and took a deep breath of the garlic. It smelled just as potent as he remembered.

"You have a thing for garlic do you?" the witch asked.

"I've eaten it only once." Owen said excitedly. "Someone put it in butter and spread it on toast. It was delicious. I'm hoping I can make some of that before I get killed on this mission."

"You think you're going to die?"

Oren lifted up his eyes and cocked his eyebrow. "No one lives through a crusade. I knew that before they even sent me. They forced me into the army and when I complained they sent me to die because I annoyed them. So hang me if I want some garlic bread before I die."

The witch paused for a moment, blinking with her milky eyes. "Sounds like you don't want to be on this mission."

"That would be the thick of it." Oren said. He stuffed the garlic bulb into the pack on his waist. "By the way, are you a basilisk?"

The witch flinched and didn't immediately answer. Everything but her eyes was covered in tattered cloth, so her expression wasn't easily readable. All the same, the expression in her eyes read surprise.

"Why do you ask that?" the witch asked.

"Just a story I heard." Oren replied. "Over here in demon land there is a species of snake people called basilisks. They like to ambush prey, so they hide their scent with something strong, like garlic. That's why I remembered the story."

The witch took a step back. One of her cheeks raised, as if she were smiling.

"Close human, but not quite." she said. She then reached up with her talon-like hands and grabbed at the cloth around her body. She ripped at them and they all flew off, as if by magic. Oren jumped a little and covered his eyes as there was a flash of light. When he lowered his hands he got a rather big surprise.

There was no witch anymore. It was a woman, bigger and taller than him. She was over six feet and had scale-covered human legs that were very long and had sharp claws instead nails on the toes. Her arms were covered in white feathers that came down to human hands with long nails. Around her backside were a plume of feathers, some of the red. The rest of her body was human, with brown skin, large breasts, and a beautiful face. Her silky black hair cascaded down her back and her dark eyes, no longer ugly and milky, stared directly into Oren's brown ones.

The major stood dumbfounded for quite some time. Not only was the witch not a witch, she was a beautiful, naked woman, albeit with feathered arms and scaled legs. Oren tried not to ogle her beautiful body. It had been a really long time since he was a woman.

"I'm sorry," he began. "I'm a little out of the loop here. What are you exactly?"

"I'm a cockatrice." the woman replied. She held her arms out, as if presenting herself. "I disguise myself as a witch to make foraging easier. I'm really good at illusion magic. Impressed?"

"I um...wow..." Oren's eyes shot to her large breasts and back up to her face. "I guess so. What...uh...what exactly is a cockatrice?"

The monster human turned her head and squinted, as if looking for something. She held up her finger, as if asking to give her a moment, but kept talking.

"A long time ago, there were two monster species living in the desert." She began picking her way through bottles, clacking them together loudly. "There were these female creatures called the basan. They were basically chicken-women who lacked any real defenses. There were also these male creatures that you know, basilisks. It's rare for there to be an only-male species in this land." She pulled some bottle from the shelves and put them onto the floor. She continued searching along the shelf, running her hand along it. "Most of the monster tribes wandering the desert settled in the city of Tarbat. Getting males to mate with is difficult enough, but getting females for the snake basilisks became impossible. They were dying off, sooooo..." The cockatrice put her shoulder against the shelf and reached deep into it. Oren's eyes were treated to the site of her round ass and crevice below, sitting under a crown of feathers on her lower back. He began to sweat and turned to stare at the cave wall. "...the basan invited the basilisks into these caves to protect them. That was how the all-male basilisks and the all-female basan combined together into one tribe. I am the result, a cockatrice."

"Interesting." Oren said, sounding a little uninterested. "What exactly are you looking for...um...I didn't catch your name."

"Mirat." the cockatrice replied.

"Right, what are you looking for Mirat?"

The cockatrice stood up and held something up. It was a round, disc-like rock with a symbol on it.

"I was looking for this." she said with a smile.

"What for?"

"So I could do this." The rock in her hand glowed. Then there was a loud rumbling sound behind Oren. The major turned around very slowly, already feeling a sense of dread. It was as he expected, the entrance to the room was now closed by a large boulder. He very slowly turned back to Mirat, his eyes widened.

"What are you doing?" he asked weakly.

"Using magic to close the door." Mirat replied flatly. "It's a trap stone, originally meant to seal off people trying to kill us. I knew I kept it back there, but it was under a bunch of stuff. Say, you wanna know a secret?" She grinned wider and dropped the rock.

"Probably not, but since you have me cornered..."

Mirat launched into a lecture anyway. "The basilisks covered their scent with things like garlic so they could hunt, but the basan did that too. It had nothing to do with hunting however. The scent of a basan is highly alluring to males of any human-like species. You see, the basan would run around the desert laying their scent, and the males would follow it. When they didn't want a male, they would cover the scent with something else. When they wanted a male, they would spread their own scent everywhere. They would make the males travel long distances to test their fortitude and when the male would find the basan they would mate."

"That sounds well and good but I don't think..." Oren stopped dead. His face went a little pale. Mirat had been traveling through the desert, leaving the scent of garlic around. He had smelled it, and followed her over a large distance. Now he had found her. "Uh...listen, Mirat, this wasn't really what I meant..."

"I don't fully understand why," Mirat began. "but my whole body has been tingling since you showed up here. My insides are aching." She reached down with her hands to between her legs. Much to Oren's shock, she spread her lower lips apart, revealing bright pink flesh inside. There was even some liquid beginning to drip out of her.

"Uh...listen Mirat, this...this isn't..."

She began stepping toward him.

"You know I'm bigger than you." she announced.

"I...I know that it's just..." Oren reached back for his sword. He briefly turned his head to make sure his hand was on it, but when he returned his eyes to the cockatrice he found she was right in his face. "Oh wow you're quick." Her hand seized his wrist and twisted. Oren let out a shout of pain as she effortlessly lifted his hand away from his weapon. "And...REALLY strong!"

"Won't need this anymore!" Mirat announced. With her free hand she seized his sword, sheath and all. She ripped it from his belt, as if it were held on by paper. She gripped it tightly, her hand lighting up. She then tilted the sheath down and what was left of the sword poured out onto the ground, completely melted.

"Fat lot of good all that training did me!" Oren complained. The cockatrice jerked him over to her bed. "Come on Mirat, I'm sure we can discuss some of this. I just wanted some cooking ingredients, not a mate for...AH!" With ease, the cockatrice flipped him over onto the bed. She then grabbed both of his hands and pulled them over his head. "Look, I'm sure if we just talk this over you can..." Oren's hands abruptly felt cold. "What did you do to my hands?"

"Used magic to put them in the rock wall." Mirat replied. The major looked up to see that was indeed what she did. His wrists were now attached to solid rock, and were trapped.

"Oh come on! I didn't want...!" Abruptly, Mirat's hand covered Oren's mouth. She grinned widely and her black eyes had a twinkle in them.

"You talk too much." she said firmly. "Basans are pretty docile, but basilisks are the opposite. It's probably the basilisk blood in me that's enjoying this. Now then, let's get that armor off!" With surprising dexterity, she began unhooking his armor with her free hand while keeping her other on Oren's loud mouth. In a short time, he was down to his raggedy shirt and underpants. Mirat grinned even wider, staring at his crotch, which was standing up at attention. "Well, well, well, not interested are you?" She finally lifted her hand off of his mouth.

"That...um...I just...I haven't been around a naked woman in a while..."

Mirat moved down to the foot of her bed. She laid herself between his legs. She reached up to his underwear and hooked her sharp nails into the cloth. She slowly lowered it to his ankles, somewhat pleased to see he wasn't resisting.

"Lost your will?" she teased.

"Well, if it's gonna happen..." Oren began. Mirat opened her mouth and her tongue tumbled out. It was pink and had the texture of a human's, but was long and twisty like a snake's. The muscle coiled itself around Oren's shaft, effortlessly. "Ho...Holy...wha..." The soldier was instantly lost for words. He had never felt a sensation like that in his whole life. Her velvety tongue coated his dick in her wet saliva, and spun around it like a whirlwind. Every inch of his shaft was delightfully simulated. Oren's hips bucked a little as she stared up at him with her dark eyes, twinkling. She opened her mouth wide and engulfed his entire erection.

Inside of her mouth she sucked on his dick while her skilled tongue continued to coil around it. Hit with a double attack Oren began to moan and squirm. His legs twitched with every movement of the muscle in her mouth. He tried to jerk his hands down from the wall, but failed. They were stuck, hard. The soldier arched his entire body, feeling waves of pleasure wash over him. She was good, unbelievably good. He was being given pleasure only a monster could give. Just as Oren felt he might lose his mind, the cockatrice lifted her head, her coiling tongue trailing after her. She grinned and let it hang out of her mouth for a few moments, dripping with her spit. She sucked it back into her mouth before speaking.

"Have anything to say now?" she asked.

"What...was that?" Oren asked weakly.

"Basilisk tongue. It drove the basan women wild. Wanna have a better feel of it?"

Oren didn't immediately answer. His dick was throbbing in the air, begging for more attention, which Mirat could give. The major tried to steel his will, but he could practically feel his balls aching. When he said he hadn't been with a woman in a long time, he meant close to seven years. He had always been around sweaty men, so it wasn't like he could get much alone time either. All the pent-up frustration, which likely also contributed to his bad attitude, was begging to be released. He was told he wasn't supposed to be consorting with monsters. Then again, these were the same people that forced him here in the first place.

"Yes. I want a better feel of it." Oren said.

Mirat giggled giddily. "Your wish is my command." She grabbed him under his hips and pulled his legs up toward his stomach. Almost instantly Oren yelped. It was a very humiliating position, almost one that a man would take with a woman.

"What are you doing?" he demanded.

"You wanted a better feel. You're getting one." Mirat unfurled her tongue and leaned down. She wasn't aiming for his dick, however. Her tongue began swirling around his anus, as if coaxing it into relaxing.

"Hey! Stop that!" Oren cried in a high voice. This only caused the cockatrice to giggle even more. The basilisk in her loved seeing him squirm helplessly under her. Her deft tongue wiggled against his entrance a few more times, making sure it was coated in her saliva. Then the sharp point began poking against the hole. Oren, flushed with humiliation, did his best to resist her intrusion, but after a few moments the slippery muscle poked through.