TRC - Lord of the Glass Desert Ch. 04

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Shakri came back from the tent's bath holding her dress and began to lift it over her head.

"Wait," said Kal rolling onto his side, "another silver if you stay the night."

Stopping, she looked at him with curiosity, "I'm used to men wanting me gone as soon as they are done."

"Over the past few months, he's been stuck with me for a bed partner," said Ria, "I can't..." floating over top of Kal she grasped Shakri's arm with both hands, "I don't have any body heat to share."

After a moment, the woman saw the truth in the sprite's words. Looking back to Kal, she smiled and said, "Throw in a promise of a good-morning romp like this one and I think I can do that. But don't go thinking I'm going to fall in love and run off with you," she said, dropping her dress to the floor and climbing back into bed.

Kal waited until she was pressing her back against his chest before speaking. "Once I get across the desert you wouldn't be able to follow me anyway, even if you were riding a horse. Though I may extend an open invitation to visit my hometown. In the next few years there will be a new Inn there looking for help."

"Kal..." warned Ria.

"Sorry, I'll stop," responded the mage, draping an arm over Shakri and taking one of her breasts in hand.

"Stop what?" asked Shakri.

"I have been accused of trying to 'collect' every woman I sleep with, despite having several back home already."

"When you get home, thank them for me," she rubbed her ass against his softened prick, "I have enjoyed tonight more than most times I do this." Turning her head, she looked back at him, "If you wake up wanting some more later, I won't mind."

Kal smiled, "I may take you up on that."

Feeling a little envious of the contented smile on Kal's face, Ria shrank down to her normal size and watched as the two of them fell asleep. Though she had been in Shakri's position several times, she knew that for Kal it was not quite the same as lying next to a living being. Finding a place to settle in for the night, she sat down to keep watch. The server seemed nice enough, but this was a strange land and a strange city, Ria was not taking chances.

---

Their morning romp turned into a noon romp before Shakri made use of the waterspout in the bath and got ready for another night of work. She was pleasantly surprised to discover another one of the tent's tricks when she went to put on her dress and found it perfectly clean. Kal cast a mending spell that made it nearly as good as new while explaining that any clothing left out was magically cleaned once everyone in the room left or went to sleep.

Since it was already midday by the time Shakri left, Kal decided against trying to do any sightseeing and chose to spend the rest of the day studying and working in the alchemy lab. He rarely needed potions thanks to his various spells but things like the healing potion that removed scars had proven handy in the past.

Aside from healing potions there was not much he had any interest in making. Darkvision was one of the drawn spells he could cast and lasted for hours. He kept a small vial of a water breathing potion on him despite having a mask that let him do the same thing. The potion was just in case he didn't have access to it. Potions that made animals friendly toward you claimed to make animal-type monster girls friendlier, but so far, he had more issues with them being too friendly. The one for mind reading would be useful but required a gland from some rare, extremely dangerous monster that lived deep below ground.

He went over to the bookshelf and picked out a book specifically dedicated to potions. Though most of the shops were relatively mundane and he didn't relish the idea of going back to the Bazaar, he learned yesterday that you could find just about any spell or potion component you could possibly need there. He may as well take advantage of the opportunity while it presented itself. Now he just needed to check out what else was available for him to make.

A few hours later he leaned back in his chair in disappointment. While there was a wide variety of different potions most of them were whimsical and pointless other than as a joke. He really didn't need his hair to shift through the colors of the rainbow for a few hours. The few he did find that might be interesting required rare and difficult to obtain ingredients such as the sand swimming potion which needed a special organ from one of the giant sandworms that could be found in deserts like the one he was about to cross.

The mage wondered how Toba planned on dealing with any they might encounter during their trek. As one of the primary dangers in the desert besides the heat and lack of water, he decided to pick up a book on them while at the Bazaar; it only took a handful of attempts to find one written in Common. Placing the potions book back on the shelf, Kal figured this was an opportune time to read up on the large creatures.

They appeared to be what happened when the monster girl spell went wrong. The sandworms had been around for thousands of years but around a thousand years ago, at the same time as the first monster girls were created, a new version of the giant worms appeared.

Looking and behaving identically to regular sandworms, these new ones were not detected until they reached reproductive age. The first account of them came from a eunuch guarding a small harem. While far out in the desert they stopped and made camp for the night. The men of the group steadily became more anxious and irritable as they ate their evening meal. The eunuch noticed that most of them were adjusting themselves in their pants quite often. The man with the harem rose from his meal to retire to his tent when the sound of a woman's moans came from a short distance out in the desert. Lying out on the quickly cooling sands was a woman, masturbating.

The men rushed the woman, stripping as they went and fell upon her, fucking her with complete abandon. The woman took it all, accepting any cock in her pussy or ass, sucking anything put in her mouth and stroking whatever she could get her hands on. The eunuch, accustomed to resisting such temptations, stayed at his guard post.

When the girls of the harem heard the commotion and came outside, they were immediately struck by the same lust as the men. What came after was an hours long orgy centered on the woman lying on the ground. The eunuch picked up the harem women and carried them, kicking and screaming, back to the tent only to have them dash back to the orgy at the first opportunity. Eventually, he gave up and sat at his post wondering what horrible punishments his master would mete out for allowing his women to let all the men in the caravan between their legs and in their mouths.

Finally, one of the men stumbled a short distance from the writhing mass of bodies, his exhaustion overcoming the effects of the lust. The eunuch watched as the sand in front of the man's feet erupted and one of the six pointed lobes of the sandworms's mouth shot up into the air. Those in the orgy shrieked and wailed as they slid down the impossibly smooth maw of the giant worm except for the woman who started it all. Held up by a long tendril attached to the middle of her back, she slowly and calmly sank down into the huge creature's mouth.

The eunuch finished the journey to the other side of the desert and sold the caravan's camels and goods. Now a free man, after telling his story of what happened, he vowed to never set foot in the desert again and set out in search of a wizard who might be able to restore his manhood.

Once the story got around, an expedition was commissioned to find out the truth of these new sandworms as many caravans had come up missing with only their tents left behind. The fear generated by these attacks was starting to hurt trade and powerful people were losing money. Killing sandworms was difficult, but not impossible and the first few generations had yet to learn to defend themselves adequately. The hardest part was keeping them from diving to the depths of the desert once they realized they were being attacked. After killing the first of this new kind, they discovered two of the six lobes of the worm's mouth had fused and created a human shaped impression in between. The woman seen by the eunuch was effectively the monster's tongue and was attached at the juncture of the two lobes.

The appendage on the tongue was indistinguishable from a real woman by musculature and bone structure though a careful examination revealed that there were no organs to speak of, just different densities of flesh mimicking organs except for a rudimentary brain. Subsequent studies with the help of several mages found that the woman on the end of the tongue was relatively autonomous once extended from the worm's mouth. After severing the woman from the tongue, she continued to attempt having sex with any nearby males until expiring from blood loss and lack of air as her lungs didn't appear to function. Continued observation of the worm afterward revealed the creature regrew its severed bait after several weeks.

The sandworm did not appear to react to what happened to the woman-like portion of its tongue. There was no indication of pain by either the appendage or the main body when the woman was damaged, and an orgasm experienced by the worm's bait did not propagate to the rest of the creature's body. Though Kal had no desire to have sex with one of these tongue-women, it somehow made him feel better that making her climax didn't also make the sandworms climax. That would just be weird.

Though there was no direct connection between the woman and worm as far as pain and pleasure, they did communicate. Over the course of a few generations they began learning how to speak by listening to their prey and a tongue that regrew after being severed would remember the person who did it. Men researching a sandworms's corpse discovered a miniature version of a human brain inside the worm located close to its normal brain. It was connected very strongly to the worm's tongue but only had a few attachments to the worm's existing mind.

This boost to intelligence made them fearsome hunters. Previously, it was believed they only occasionally attacked surface prey and that desert animals were merely used to supplement their diets. Those who studied the worms cut one open to find its gut filled with sand coated in digestive juices yet near the tail the sand was completely dry before being excreted. Baffled, the scholars assumed the giant worms got nutrition from the sand, though they did not understand how. The more intelligent new generation refined their normal hunting practices, decimating the already strained ecology and even wiping out a few species of desert dwelling animals.

The first to fall was a giant mantid-like burrowing desert insect. After mating, sandworm's eggs were a prime target of these insects and helped keep the population down. In response, if a bundle of eggs managed to hatch, the voracious larva swarmed the area, devouring anything in their path with large, sharp teeth present only in this stage of their lives. Once the larva had eaten enough it ate a large amount of sand and the spun a cocoon around itself. The researchers who first found one of these were shocked to find the cocoon was made of tiny filaments of glass held together by a secretion that turned hard as rock. This was the insect's second opportunity at a meal as their front arms could puncture and tear the cocoon open. When the sandworms emerged from this cocoon in only a few hours, their carapace would be too hard for the insects to damage.

The new breed of intelligent sandworms were having none of this. There were numerous accounts at the time of the giant bugs being flushed to the surface only to disappear in a vortex of sand moments later. Considering the size of the desert, the sheer number of reports that came largely from caravans, all of which took a similar route, was a good sign of systematic eradication. A few of the bugs escaped to the far southern portion of the desert where the sand was shallower with stone beneath which kept the worms away. Kal's reading also said the bugs became significantly smaller as they adapted to this new environment.

The destruction of the sandworm's primary predator caused another issue, it took away the main food source of the larva. Sandworm young burrowed in a random direction after hatching then after a time began to actively hunt for food. They appeared to avoid cannibalism unless there were no other food sources available. Taking away the mantids left the sandworms' young little choice. Within a few generations they stopped burrowing away from the nest, instead preying upon their unhatched siblings.

The species might have died out because of this were it not for Prentas's spell. Like monster girls all of their young were female and this new species could only breed with humans, though how exactly that happened was still a mystery since there was no direct link from the woman-like tongue to the worm's reproductive system. However, the fake woman did have a pouch located approximately where a stomach would be with tubes connecting it to her mouth, sex, and rear. Scholars believed it was used to store a man's seed for later use. The new sandworms were no longer restricted by their ancestor's ten-year mating cycles and were able to have multiple clutches in a year if food was plentiful enough. With only one or two sandworms surviving past hatching, the increased birthrate was likely the only reason they didn't go extinct.

Kal shivered at the thought of one of the giant creatures using his seed to lay a clutch of eggs only to have a large, toothed worm hatch from one instead of a human-like baby like with the harpies, Ruce and Felli. Worse yet, the thought of something he fathered setting about killing and eating its sisters turned his stomach.

Closing the book, he decided he had enough research for one day.

----

After spending the entirety of yesterday inside other than going downstairs for supper, Kal decided to travel across town to check out the aqueduct. Hearing about how well the pillars holding it up were guarded, he wasn't expecting much but decided it might be worth checking out anyway.

Before he reached the road to the Bazaar, he noticed a man get out of a rickshaw and tell the cow-girl pulling it to wait for him. As Kal passed, he peeked inside the small two-wheeled covered cart and saw instructions for using the transport printed in Fazalan and Common. From his quick glance he saw that there was a flat fee paid to the cow-girl which would take a passenger all the way across town as well as a fee for asking her to wait as the man hiring this one had. Kal guessed there was a limit on the amount of time a customer could reserve the rickshaw before she went off in search of other fares.

Two long poles attached to the woman's harness on either side of her hips. Like most of the cow- or oxen-type monster girls he had seen, her legs retained their bovine fur and hooves. Considering the heat already coming off the dusty street this early in the morning, hooves were probably a wise choice.

Aside from her harness and slave collar, the only other thing she wore was an enormous straw hat for keeping the punishing desert sun off her skin. He noted yesterday that some of the chestier cow-girls also wore loose flaps of leather or cloth over their breasts when their hat wasn't enough to protect their sensitive nipples.

Her back and around her sides the skin was tinted reddish-brown while her legs and arms were extremely fair, bordering on white. As he walked around to her front he saw the darker skin came up her neck and covered her face except for a diamond shaped spot that extended from the bridge of her nose up under her hat where he assumed it turned her hair white as well. The owner of this one found another way to protect the woman's nipples, by using the straps of her harness to cover them then adding small pads to keep the leather from chafing. Looking down, he saw the thick hair above her sex covered her mound completely and was the same color as the lighter skin it grew from.

The bovine woman took notice of his interest and began casting coy glances down at him, tilting her large hat so no one else could see her eyes. Her brown, tufted tail whipped around and she caught it before clasping her hands together down by her waist, using her arms to press her breasts together and leaning forward slightly to show off her cleavage. The act of holding her tail out of the way was not lost on the mage.

"If you want to fuck a cow, go find your own and don't do it in the middle of the damn street," snapped the man who exited the rickshaw a few minutes ago. Kal hadn't even noticed him walk out of the shop next to them.

"I... I wasn't," he stammered, caught off guard.

"Whatever," sneered the man, his disgust with Kal showing clearly on his face. Telling the cow-girl his destination, the man dropped a few coins into her hand. Quickly counting the money, she silently nodded in acceptance before placing them into a pouch attached to her harness. She checked to be sure her passenger was seated in the one-person cart before giving Kal a look of longing and leaning into her harness to get the rickshaw moving. The look on her passenger's face as he passed the mage wasn't nearly as pleasant.

---

As Kal approached one of the aqueduct's large pillars he was seriously considering hiring one of the cow-girls for the trip back to the inn. The topaz brooch he wore kept the dust and grime off him, but it still felt like there were just too many people in this city for its size and he genuinely hated traveling the packed streets.

Looking around, he was disappointed to see that he was skirting the edge of Fazal's slums. While the rest of the city was divided among the merchant-lords, the area directly around the aqueduct belonged to the king alone and any signs of militant activity besides the King's Guard were viciously stomped out, even if it was merely a rumor. Rumors floated about the city that you could kill a man in front of one of the guards and he wouldn't leave his post to stop you, but set one foot too close to the aqueduct and you would quickly find yourself on the wrong end of a spear. Since the flow of water was where the King's power came from, it made sense that he was so protective.

Kal saw the large open area around the base of the pillar and the guards patrolling a few paces in from where the houses stopped. Looking around, he sighed with disappointment; the perimeter was so far out he wouldn't be able to see anything of interest. Well, that wasn't necessarily true, the structure itself was quite impressive. Soaring far above his head and supported on gigantic pillars like the one in front of him, the water channel arched over the city's high walls. At the end it formed a tall waterfall which poured into a gigantic pool on palace grounds. The waterfall could be seen from most places in the city and served as a constant reminder of the King's power.

The mage really didn't care about all that. He has seen dwarven stonework when he left the Kingdom of Hordinfel with Sera, but that had all been underground. This was his first time seeing what kind of effort they put into their work out on the surface and he had to say he was impressed. He understood there would be no way to move a column as massive as the one holding up the aqueduct as a single piece, but from his place at the edge of the houses, the bricks or slabs were so perfectly joined he couldn't make out any seams. Kal really wanted to fly up and get a closer look at how they made the arches. However, since he had no plans to use the flight rune while in the city, he had left it in the tent. It was probably wise choice, several guards had small crossbows slung across their backs to complement their spears or the curving swords that were customary in this part of the world.