Stench from the South Pt. 02

In truth, she'd sensed the tightening within him, and had resolved to intensify her ministrations. Her saliva coated his shaft in a glistening sheen, though it could barely be seen in the near-pitch darkness. Her lips suckled and kissed at his head every time she slid up to it, followed by a deep twirling of her tongue around its' swollen pink form. Her heart welled up within her, knowing that she could possess him this way, make his body quake and his cock throb with nothing more than her mouth. There was no malevolence to it-just a sweet, mischievous strain of feminine pride in her own abilities as a lover.

She traced the long, thick vein that traveled up the length of his shaft with her tongue, her eyes hooded as she waited for him to give her the sign. He hadn't just yet, but she knew he was getting close-she always did. His gasps were getting louder; she had to finish this before this got too...expressive. She thrust him in and out harder and faster than ever, sliding her hands beneath his shapely buttocks to assist him. He had to bite down on his forearm as he felt the sudden, violent surge within the depths of his loins, reaching down with his free hand to grasp Maelee's head. She got the message, and-due to her talent of being quick to respond-immediately whipped upwards, his cock suddenly freeing itself from her mouth with a soft 'pop'. Though they could not see it, a long, thin string of saliva still connected the two, Maelee wiping her mouth with the back of one hand as she smiled. Gravin's orgasm receded, but his near-animal desire for her did not, as his erection still stood tall and proud.

"Now," she whispered, climbing on top of his panting, sweating body, like a spider about to subdue an insect, "I will have my fill of you."

She'd meant it as a sort of sultry joke, but it came off in Gravin's mind as oddly and mildly threatening-which, in his mind, only made it more appealing. Gravin was, in truth, the sort of man who appreciated women who weren't afraid to take charge. He'd courted a few ladies in his younger days who were more on the shy and submissive side, and while they had all been lovely partners who had always satisfied him sexually, he'd always found that something was...missing. Something a little more intense, more...direct. Maelee hadn't come off as the kind of woman he secretly harbored an intense desire for when he'd first met her back at the Copper Hills Outpost, but once their relationship had begun, he'd realized all too quickly that she more than fit that particular bill.

And that was just fine with him.

Though none of them would ever realize it, Mosullah fired several streams of his hot seed inside of Seilin's near-gushing, quivering womb at the exact moment that Maelee slipped her waiting lover's shaft inside of her own slick and ready passage. The two women even gasped almost simultaneously, Seilin's body immediately being engulfed by a racking orgasm (as she always experienced whenever a man finished inside of her). She bucked and spasmed, her eyes rolling back as she rode the wave, Mosullah's face buried in the pillow next to her head, as both of them were lost in the ecstasy that only mutual climax could provide. Gravin, meanwhile, almost cried out as he entered Maelee (she too struggled mightily not to do the same, but in her desire to appear cool and dominant, she would never have admitted it), the pleasure doubling from when she had sucked him. As Mosullah and Seilin came down together from their respective highs and settled into a shared afterglow, their fellow troopers were only getting started on their own ascension.

"Remember, we have to be quick," Maelee hissed as she and Gravin locked eyes.

Gravin did not reply. He only moaned softly as she began riding him in earnest. There was no easing into a rhythm, no buildup, she merely began to fuck him like an animal bent on carnal satisfaction. She gripped him like a wet, muscular vise as she worked him, slamming down onto his groin like a woman who meant to milk her man dry. He certainly felt as if here were being used as nothing more than a living marital aid, as she ground and pounded away at him with near-reckless abandon.

Her skin was slick with a light sheen of perspiration, the cold outside the walls doing little to penetrate the heat that their vigorous coupling was creating in the bedroom. His hands slid almost wetly over her hard, yet somehow incredibly soft body; she had that little bit of extra insulation in exactly the right places that he appreciated so much on a woman-namely in her breasts, hips, and thighs. It never ceased to amaze him how she could have both the body of a trained fighter, but also possess in equal measure the refined sexual allure he imagined only a goddess could have. As her hands groped his chest and her nails dug light pink trails into his skin, he could only think that he was truly the luckiest man in the Western Kingdoms, to have come upon a woman so perfectly attuned to his needs and desires.

But now, she was in charge, and he knew it. She swept down upon him, still pistoning him in and out of her passage as her own thick, white emissions coated his shaft like fresh paint. Her own orgasm was welling up now; she could feel it building within her like a bolt of lightning within a dark cloud. She pulled his mouth to hers and their tongues began a needful and almost violently intense waltz, writhing together like a pair of serpents. Their lips were speaking volumes of love that words could not enunciate; no amount of eloquent poetry could hope to have replicated the feeling of this moment. There was something primal, something base about their sex that could only be communicated and understood on an instinctual, almost cellular level.

And they spoke these silent words to each other beautifully.

The sensation was returning, Gravin feeling the buildup of seed coming on even stronger than it had been before. This was what she always did; she always liked to edge him a few times, so that his eventual release would very nearly put him out of action. He felt his monster of an orgasm flying up his shaft, managing to just barely contain his moan as he fired off what felt like an endless spray of his seed into his future wife's deep, all-too-welcoming recesses.

She gasped as she felt it push against her, that wonderful and always-fulfilling heat sending her over the edge. She came in that instance, her body seizing as she felt stream after stream surge into her body. So powerful was the feeling, in fact, that she felt tears well up in her eyes, her emotions boiling over as powerfully as Gravin's own orgasm. There was but one thought looping through her mind in the moment, one phrase that she felt resonating within her very being.

I love him, she thought. I love him so very, very much.

And she did, as they eventually pulled apart and came together in the strange bed they were sharing, in this strange house that they had never before set foot in before that day, in a strange and hostile land where they were surrounded by terror and death that lurked ever-present between the trees and inside the buildings. Even in this time and place of great horror, uncertainty, and confusion, their love shone as bright as a lighthouse lamp-an island in a sea of unending and terrible darkness.

*****

"I owe you another apology, Balthus."

"Yeah?"

"I know I've been difficult since we met-"

"You could say that," Balthus grumbled. Mattison, still seated opposite the Captain on the decorative bench, sighed quietly.

"I'm a combative person by nature, and I have been most of my life."

"You don't say."

"You might be too, if you grew up smaller than most of your peers and wound up living in the shadow of someone like Master Jakobus. From the time I could walk, I was always picking fights and starting arguments with the people who doubted me, who thought that I was just another easy target. It was the wrong way to go about things, surely, but it was the path I chose to take."

Balthus rolled his eyes. "You stink of insecurity when you give others a hard time, Mattison, this much was already obvious. But I appreciate the context all the same."

"I know you've no reason to forgive me," Mattison continued, "but I'd like it if we could wipe the slate clean, maybe start over. We'll be depending on one another for a while, it seems, so we might as well bury the hatchet, wouldn't you agree?"

Balthus fought back the urge to snap back that Mattison would likely be far more dependent upon his help than the other way around for the duration of their journey, but ultimately decided against it. The assistant seemed to be making a genuine effort to patch things up, it seemed, so he might as well meet the lad halfway.

"Fine," Balthus sighed, "we'll start fresh."

Balthus could sense the vampire's smile, even if he couldn't quite see it. "Fantastic," he whispered, "I'm glad that you're receptive, Captain."

"So you were a runt, eh?"

"Absolutely," Mattison replied with a nod, "where I grew up, I was small enough to be considered a misfit of sorts. So I learned to compensate for my diminutive size with my tongue-and occasionally my fists, if that didn't work."

"You lay out a lot of bullies, then?"

Mattison chuckled softly. "No, not many. You see, I was far more skilled with one of those things than I was the other."

"I see."

"Made a lot of mistakes along the way; took my share of lumps and bruises, sure, but I came out of it all right. Made a few connections, got into a good mage's guild, and eventually worked my way up to training with the Master Mage of the Ralleah himself. Not bad as far as upswings go, wouldn't you agree?"

"I suppose I would, yes."

"I know I need to work on my personality," Mattison said softly, looking out at the bodies which still dotted the yard below. "It also didn't help that my parents were domineering, placing more pressure on me than they really ought to have, but they had to have their golden child, I suppose."

"You made it, lad. You said it yourself-you're working and studying under a Master. Why are you still like this? Though I suppose you're to be commended for at least being self-aware, at any rate-for what that's worth."

"I earned that, I suppose. But it just became part of me, I would guess-being snarky and combative. It's...well, it's what I default to. That, and I know I have skill; more than many do, in fact. I suppose that that's boosted my ego to an unwarranted level."

"Clearly," Balthus mumbled, rolling his eyes.

"I did used to be worse, you know. Ask Master Jakobus sometime, he'll tell you all about it. I took more than my share of blows from the back of his hand in the very beginning, just after I'd met him."

"How long have you been a vampire, Mattison?"

"I wondered when this would come up. It always does for us. I wager it's been...oh, thirty-five, thirty-six years since my turning? I was twenty-two years of age at the time."

"Was it...?" Balthus didn't quite know how to phrase it.

"...intentional?" He could actually sense Mattison's grin through the darkness.

"I...suppose?"

"Yes," he replied, the outline of his head nodding, "it was. I decided that to truly give myself the time necessary to study and master the arcane arts, then granting myself the longest lifespan possible in which to do so was the only logical choice. And, seeing as vampires can sometimes live in excess of three hundred years-"

"You had yourself turned. I see the logic."

"Yes, precisely."

"Do you ever-?"

"Regret it? No, never. We're only given one life, one chance, Captain, so why not game the system if you think it's worth doing so? Sure," he continued with a shrug, "it has its' tradeoffs, as you already know, but it does have its' perks."

"I see."

"What about you, Captain? What set you on the path of combat and service?"

"Well, unlike you, when I was a lad I could actually win the brawls I got into." Balthus believed that Mattison could sense his shit-eating grin in that moment.

"I believe you. So what, that was how you found your calling? Breaking a few bullies' noses?"

"That, and killing a pair of brigands with my pa's splitting ax when I was fifteen."

Mattison sat up. "Really, now?"

"Really."

"Tell me what happened," Mattison said quietly, "I want to hear this."

"Not much to tell, if I'm honest," Balthus intoned softly. "Grew up in Easterling, which is only about thirty miles from Wincher's Mill, remember?"

"I do."

"Well, one day, I'm in the kitchen of my old family home, doing the dishes and scrubbing up in general; I have two brothers, and a house full of young men tends to be a messy one, right? So, all of a sudden, while I'm wiping down a cutting board, I hear a commotion out in the backyard. Sounded like the sows and hogs going crazy, all the squealing and oinking. So, thinking there might be a wolf, mountain cat, or some other beast out there trying to make a meal of our livestock, I grab the ax from its' hook on the wall by the back door, and run out to see what the problem was."

"But there were no wolves or wild cats," Mattison said quietly, nodding. Balthus exhaled softly and nodded in kind.

"No, no there certainly were not," he said as he looked down into the yard to see a new pair of the crazed people stumbling across its' expanse. "It was a pair of thieves: a young man, and a woman who looked like she was maybe a little older than he was-mid-twenties, maybe. They looked up and saw me, their eyes went wide when they saw my ax, and...I thought they would run, honestly."

"They didn't, of course."

"No, they both pulled daggers and brandished them at me. 'Don't yell,' the boy says, 'or we'll gut you'. 'We just want a sow or two', the woman says after that, 'it ain't worth your life, not a pair of useless ol' pigs. We're gonna have 'em, and you can't stop us. Now, you go on back inside, and we won't 'urt you'."

"That must have been frightening," Mattison muttered.

"It was, but it also wasn't the first time I'd been faced down by hoodlums. See, I've always been big, and even then I was larger and stouter than most of the other lads in Easterling. But I'd never had a weapon pulled on me before-that was new. These people were armed; they seemed serious, determined. But even so, I felt more angry than afraid-we needed those pigs, and I wasn't about to just let these thieves take them."

"So you fought back."

"'Fought back' implies that they attacked first. No, I came in with a feint, and the boy took the bait. He struck, and I caught him on the jaw with the end of the ax's handle; knocked him on his filthy, thieving ass. The woman was taken by surprise, I think, because she stopped and looked at him for a split-second, just...sort of dumbstruck. It was enough time for me to take a few steps in, whereupon I gave her a right hook to the eye."

"Ouch."

"I'm sure it hurt, but the bitch was tougher than she looked. She recovered, took a swipe at me. Almost got my hand, but I came in with the ax in both hands and bashed her on the nose with the middle of the handle-that knocked her down; you should've seen the blood, lad. The boy was back up then, he charged at me and I-"

He paused, sighed. "I...well, I didn't even have time to think of an alternative. I swung the business end of that old splitting ax 'round and sunk it right into that lad's neck. The only time I'd ever seen that much blood fly before was when we'd kill a hog or a cow for butchering."

"I see."

"Boy goes down, I wrench the bit from his neck, and I knew immediately that he was down for the count. The woman screams his name-I forget what it was-and she was up again, waving that dagger at me, wild as a cornered beast. She got in a lucky blow-sliced my collarbone pretty good. That was when my father and one of my brothers came running-the rest of my family were out somewhere-and just before they get to me, running and hollering the whole way, I push her back, she stumbles, I bring up that ax, and..."

Mattison nodded slowly, not saying a word. Balthus sighed again.

"I buried that ax deep in her gourd, lad. So deep that it went down with her and stayed right in place."

"Three above," Mattison whispered.

"I don't like killing," Balthus growled softly, "but on that day I discovered that I could still do it, if I had to. They'd made it clear that they were willing to steal from and harm me-kill me, even. They'd have come back eventually, too; people like that always do. People who refuse to be part of a community, people who just...take from others by force without ever trying to build something for themselves, or even help others do the same."

"So that's why you became a soldier," Mattison said.

"Not exactly, no."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that a friend of my mother's, who'd retired some years before from the Army, had heard about what happened and approached me. He told me that he respected the fact that I had stood up to those brigands and defended what was mine and my family's; respected that I had, by extension, protected my community from people who would have only continued to take from and harm it. He thought that that mindset would translate well to the work of soldiering. Funnily enough, before that day, I'd never even considered the possibility of joining the Army; I'd fully intended to work for the town blacksmith, or maybe help run the local trading post-stay local, you know? But...well, his reasoning was sound, I thought. My mother's friend offered to put in a good word for me with his old friends who were still in the Army, and when I was nineteen I headed to Braelon. Joined up, went through basic training, became a trooper, and...well, made the Army my career. Made soldiering, protecting people my career."

"Do you ever regret it?"

"No, but I'm sure feeling precarious right about now," Balthus chuckled softly. "We're in a hostile land surrounded by...I don't know, dead people who're somehow walking around, trying to kill and eat us. Me, I've fought men, beasts, even monsters like wyrms, giants, and even a griffin at one point-and this doesn't feel like that, Mattison. This feels...darker, somehow, more dangerous than anything I've been up against before."

"Do you think anyone is still alive in Grayspire, Captain?"

Balthus paused. "I...I'm not sure. We don't even know if its' spread that far, whatever this is. But I was ordered to find out-we were ordered to find out. And I'm going to see that order through to the best of my abilities."

"Let us hope that the Three will keep us. Or, rather, you did leave old Balugar-Soth a token of your esteem-so maybe my Master was right, and perhaps he'll lend a hand?" His smirk was, again, evident even through the gloom. Balthus shrugged.

"I'll take whatever help I can get."

"Oh," Mattison said, holding up a finger, "I'd almost forgotten. Here," he said, pulling an object from his belt with a low, metallic ring before holding it out to Balthus, "your knife, remember? You never took it back." Balthus waved him away with a flick of his hand.

"Hold onto it for now."

"Captain, I-"

"You need it more than I do. No one should be weaponless right now, even one trained in magic; you never know when you'll have need or cause to use one. Plus, you seemed to make do with it in the yard today; I know it'll be put to good use in your hands."

"I'm flattered, Captain."

"You can thank me," Balthus replied, suddenly standing, "by taking over for a few hours. I need rest, as a mere mortal often does."

"Get a full night, Captain. I'll be here."

"Mattison."

"Yes?"

The Captain, who had taken a few steps toward the bedroom that Maelee and Gravin had recently finished furiously copulating in, stopped and looked back at the Mage's assistant. "Just call me Balthus."