Chapter 32: Chapter 32 – Heavy Things

Chapter 32 - Heavy Things

After my ever so dear companions laughed themselves out, we all settled down to make some much needed adjustments to our wardrobe. Unfortunately, we had neither thread nor a needle to sew it with, so it was all a very improvised affair. The two of them decided that it simply would not do to have me hanging loose all the time, as they claimed it was far too distracting, so while I stood there in the buff, my back turned and hands cupping my privates, they discussed what to do with my pants.

“I suppose the easiest thing to do would be to cut out the seam of the leg and make a loincloth out of it,” Hess suggested finally.

“Hmm…” Jax grunted in agreement. Without another word, she began working at picking the thread apart, wanting to preserve as much cloth as possible.

“It’s a shame, though,” Hess continued, “To cover it up again, you know? Donum is starting to develop a nice little ass, don’t you think?”

“Mmmhaah~!” Jax gasped out. “S-stop that! I be tryin’ to work here.”

Hess cackled loudly.

Hoo… boy… nope nope nope… don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.

“How ye doin’ that, anyways?” Jax asked.

“Doing what?” Hess replied innocently. “All I did was mention what a nice, tight little…”

“EeehHaaa!”

I started bouncing on my toes. 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34… uh… 55?

“What is it?” Hess asked. “Why did you stop?”

I could practically feel Jax’s eyes boring into me.

“Nothin’” Jax replied, this time herself affecting innocence. “Just figured sommat out be all.”

Shit.

 

After all of that was settled, Hess showed me how to go about tying my new loincloth. Surprisingly, there was more to it than you would think. Apparently, you had to tuck the thing between your legs and then wrap it around your waist a couple of times before tying it in the back. Somewhat like tying a necktie, it sounds simple, but I was certainly in a mental knot about it the first few times. However, after a couple of repetitions, I had it down. I was left with what was basically a baggy set of briefs and a bit of a flap down the front where, to my chagrin, my last remaining pocket was now hanging like a fanny pack. There was supposed to have been another flap down the back to cover my cheeks, but we did not quite have enough fabric for that.

I glanced up at Hess, for a moment, as she helped to tuck in the final bit, “You certainly seem to be taking this in stride.”

She looked at me, “I’m not sure I understand what walking has to do with it… but if you’re talking about that well…” she glanced behind me to where Jax was fiddling with something. “Who do you think was carrying her around all day?”

“You knew all this time and you didn’t say anything?” I asked, aghast.

“Not the whole time,” she admitted. “But after you got knocked out, and I had to carry you two up here, I certainly put a few things together. Plus, I wanted to see your reaction when you figured out your buddy had become a girl. Shame I missed it.”

“I ain’t a girl, cow!” Jax groused.

“I hate to dust your mirror, but you’re just as much a cow as I am now, little thing,” Hess teased. But then amended, “Almost.”

“No, I ain’t!” she said, getting louder.

“Almost?” I said quietly, curiosity etched into every corner of my face. “You looked?”

She smiled a bit, “You bet I did. Do you…”

“Don’t tell him!” Jax yelled.

“Oh, hush,” Hess smiled. “What? Are you afraid of what he’ll think about your little…”

“Hess,” she growled in warning. There was an animalistic undertone to it.

She just winked at her and spun me around, “She’s done.”

At first I was a little confused, because Jax had somehow miraculously acquired a top from out of nowhere. But then the pieces started to click. “Is that your underwear?”

“Ye got ‘er!” Jax said happily, with a slight bounce on her toes. She had apparently turned the thing upside down and cut out a hole for her head to go through. Her arms had gone through the leg holes and then she had used the drawstring to cinch it just under her little breasts. It… worked. In a way. The garment was obviously not designed for that use, and you could tell it in the shoulders and from the bunching at her armpits.

“I don’t know why you even bothered,” Hess said, continuing her little game. “It’s not like you have much of anything to support.”

“I got almost as much as ye, despite yer great bulk, ye jacky tube,” Jax shot back sullenly, crossing her arms.

“Ha! You only wish you did, you little…”

“Ladies!” I interrupted loudly. “Settle, please. As much fun as you seem to be having lashing out at each other all the time, from my end, it’s getting a little tiring. Now, for just a little while, can we not say anything cruel to one another?”

“Tell that to her!” Jax said, pointing for emphasis.

“Oh? All my doing is it? Never said anything rude to me, have you?”

“Don’t make me make it a command,” I said, starting to get genuinely pissed off.

Jax’s eyes widened, “That ain’t fair! Ye can nay command her yet!”

I crossed my own arms to mirror her, “I’ll settle for what I can get.”

Jax balled her hands into fists but then flinched, unused to her new claws. “Fine,” she grumped, rubbing them sorrowfully. “If she stays in line, then so will I.”

“Hey, there ya go,” Hess whispered, elbowing me. “I knew you could take charge if you needed to.”

I sighed, “Hess… I really don’t appreciate being put into that position. It’s… kind of a stereotype.”

Her eyebrows knitted together slightly, “You have some very strange sayings. But, okay. I’m sorry. You know I was only teasing?”

“Yes, I do,” I admitted. “I’m just saying that, if you’re going to do it, it would be nice if you could find a way to tease her that doesn’t end in a shouting match?”

“Hmm…” She looked at the ceiling for a moment, thinking. “Challenge accepted.”

I closed my eyes and sighed.

 

“I never seen the like,” Jax said, fascinated.

Hess nodded solemnly, “You’d never see one held in the open like this on the streets. Believe it or not, even these are sold, but only in very large, very rich places.”

The Gem of Power in her hand glimmered brightly enough to cast a green pallor over everything about a foot in every direction and was perhaps as wide as half the length of a pinky finger. Big enough to be quite a mouthful. Hess had pulled it out a moment before during her recounting of some of the events we had missed.

“What Rank is it?” I asked.

“This, dear little man, is a Grand Rank Three. This, by itself, would take someone in the Second Stratum up almost an entire Layer,” she explained.

That did not mean a great deal to me, so I asked, “How many Minor Rank Ones would you need to get close to that?”

“Maybe a thousand?” Hess estimated.

“A thousand!?” Jax exclaimed. And then a moment later, added, “Is that more’n a hundred?”

Hess and I shared a look. “Yes,” we said at the same time.

Jax seemed excited by the answer, either unaware or uncaring that it was slightly at her expense. Fidgeting for a moment, she quietly said, “Wonder what it’d feel like if Donum’d eat that one!”

Hess quickly closed her hand around the stone, saying, “It would feel like death. This contains too much power for someone in the Foundation Layers to survive. And even if you somehow could live through it, it would be a terrible waste.” She then tucked the little stone into her wrap at her chest.

As I watched it disappear, I wondered if that were true. After all, Jax and I had… sort of accidentally discovered an interesting little ritual. Not that I was keen to repeat the experience, but there remained the possibility of getting around the problem Hess had just described. Then again, I had no idea if it would still work with a stone as strong as that.

“You’re not going to eat it?” I asked instead.

One corner of her mouth quirked up and she sighed, “Sadly, it would be a waste for me, also. I only need a stone half this strength to get to my next Layer.”

“Well, that sucks,” I said, making a face. “After all we did to take out that flower, you can’t even use the Gem from it?”

She gave a light shrug, “That’s the way of it at times. What’s worse, that explosion didn’t even kill the thing in the end. I had to go back three times to finish it off.”

“That why yer so filthy?” Jax asked.

She chuckled at the light barb, but instead of rising to it, she just flicked a speck of vegetable matter in Jax’s general direction, “That’s right. Ended up having to pull the roots out to finally make it stop moving.”

I grimaced, “That may be my fault. I had a bit of a mishap with the fire.”

“That’s okay,” she said, smiling with a conciliatory pat on my back.. “Can’t expect every plan to give up the grease. Besides, it did plenty to weaken it for me. I’d have never killed it otherwise.”

“What about yon chest?” Jax asked after a moment of scrubbing her nose. “What were in it?”

The corners of her mouth pulled down, “About that…”

 

“Don’t that take the biscuit…” Jax spat as we stared down at the chest.

Hess had led us through what appeared to be a sewer or a storm drain of some kind to get back here. From what she had said, there were tunnels spread out all under the town, and from their complexity and size, it seemed to be massively over-engineered for such a little hamlet. Then again, it was not as if it were a real town. The Dungeon did not have to make sense if it did not want to.

It was still difficult to navigate that section of the underground, despite the scant starlight filtering through the drains in the ceiling. Hess no longer had a lit torch, after all.

“How did you figure out where the safe room is?” I had asked, looking off at one of the many side branches that we were passing by.

“Got lucky,” she had replied. “It was the first ladder I found in here. Thought I’d take a look.”

The rest of the short journey had been a straight shot back to the Tongue-Flower’s room, minus the spot where the upper and lower passages reconverged, which was fortunate. The holes in the ceiling stopped as soon as we went beyond the domain of the village and we again descended into the tunnel, so the lack of light quickly became an issue. However, in the room itself, and slightly beyond, it was fairly easy to see, as most of the sconces were still lit.

And speaking of, it was a disaster area. Although the walls seemed to be undamaged, save for various scorch marks marring their surface, the rest of the area was littered with bits of severed vines, flower petals, and stray dagger-sharp thorns everywhere. The middle of the room now also featured a large mound of soil from where Hess had apparently been busy digging up the last living remnants of the thing, though of course, no sign of any roots or the body of the plant remained in evidence as it had been converted and nestled into Hess’ bosom.

The three of us could not be bothered with any of that, however. Our attention was focused on the completely unmarked chest sitting to one side of the room and the rather obvious and completely intact lock that was currently holding it closed.

“You have it right,” Hess replied. “It’s just like the Dungeon to taunt us with a chest guarded by an almost unkillable monster and then have the thing be locked.”

“It did have a fairly fatal flaw, though,” I allowed as I leaned over to examine the lock. The key hole looked almost exactly like the ones we had seen before, with the triangular gem socket. “I don’t suppose you could break this? Or pick it?” I asked.

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She shook her head, “I’ve never heard of anyone who could break open a Dungeon chest. As for picking it, that is a skill, but I’ve never gotten it.”

“Jax and I have skill points now,” I offered. “Why don’t we see if it’s an option?”

“That’ll make you very popular, if you do. A healer and a locksmith?” Hess said as she folded a leg over the chest to wait.

It did not take me very long to discover a few things. One, lock picking, as a skill, was completely unavailable to me, in the manual sense, due to a class conflict. Two, I could purchase a spell that would accomplish the same thing, but it also was not available ‘at my current Layer’, unless of course, I was willing to get the version that only worked on mundane locks. So that was out. However, when I decided to go as vague as I possibly could with my query, asking for any skill that would help me get into this chest, I finally got a hit.

I frowned. Well… that was an option, anyway. Not a good one, but it could be helpful in finding the key. I was familiar with the concept of spells like these, and had even used them in various games. The problem was that they did not account for obstacles, pathing, or distance. So, if the object was any further than a few miles away, invariably you would get a heading that pointed you toward the ground due to the curvature of the Earth, leaving you to wonder if you needed to start walking or digging. Trying to find anything with them was tedious at best, but arguably better than nothing.

“I got a fat goose’s egg,” Jax said. “Says I ain’t got the right class type.”

I nodded. Probably, if we had gone with Scout, way back when, it would have been different. “I have something here which might be useful,” I began. However, when I described the skill, Hess jumped in.

“Oh, I have something like that already. Picked it up for a treasure hunt back in…” she coughed into her hand, “You know, it’s a long story. Anyway, it’s… not very good. I usually forget I even have it, but I’ll show you if you want.”

Hmm. That sounded like it might have been juicy, but if she did not want to talk about it… In any case, somewhat relieved, I gestured for her to go ahead.

With a bemused smile, she hunted around for a moment before settling on one of the thorns lying about. Holding it in front of her, she spoke a few Words and then dropped it. I could not tell if anything interesting had happened, but after she examined it, she pronounced, “It’s that way.”

“The wall?” Jax asked incredulously.

From where she was pointing, the heading was somewhere in the direction of the right-hand wall as you were coming from the graveyard but angled such that it might have been off somewhere in the storm drain area.

“I think we’re going to need to triangulate,” I mused.

 

After a few more casts and backtracking, we discovered that it was indeed located somewhere in the maze-like drainage area under the town. And it was there that Hess made an unpopular announcement.

“I think this is a project you two can handle by yourselves,” she began. “I’m filthy, and I’ve only had two hours of sleep in as many days. So, I’m going to go wash up and wrestle down my eyelids. I’ll be in the safe room once you’re done.”

“Y’expect us to wander this warren all by our ownselves?” Jax exclaimed. “What if we run into beasties?”

“I’ve only seen a few big rats so far,” she replied. “They only dropped Minor Rank Ones, so you should be fine. If you find something you can’t handle… I don’t know. Run away, I guess?”

“What if we get lost?” I asked.

“Oh… uh…. Yeah, don’t do that,” she replied unhelpfully. And without another word, she turned and walked back up the path toward the fountain, presumably to scrape some of the gunk off of her skin..

Jax growled low in her throat. “I’ll be glad when ye finally bind that bitch. I’ll relish seein’ her under yer heel, I will.”

I rocked back onto my heels at that. “Geez, Jax. That’s a bit harsh.” Ever since she had woken up, she had seemed particularly aggressive toward Sherr Hess, even going so far as to actually attack her. I had a few suspicions as to why… not that they made any sense to me. In any case, the first order of business was to try to mend this rift that had formed between my two companions. “Despite her tone, she’s right. While we’ve been sleeping, she’s been all alone doing the grunt work to keep us alive. She’s practically carried us through this Dungeon so far. Literally, on several occasions. She hasn’t even eaten since we got here. Besides, it won’t hurt us to carry our own weight for a while.”

“Ye mean ye hope it won’t hurt us,” she snapped. But, as she considered what I’d said, she slowly melted. Finally, she said, “I suppose ye’ve the right of it. Still, I wish she’d not act so…” she stopped, as if looking for the right word.

“Entitled?” I supplied.

She grunted noncommittally, “Maybe. More like… unconcerned?”

There was some truth to that. Hess could be a bit much at times. But her laxness had given me the occasion to grow, not that it was at all likely to have been intentional on her part. Heaving a sigh, I squatting down, took up a stray white pebble and scratched an arrow along the last heading Hess had divined for us into the cobblestone. After I had done, I stayed there, staring down at the mark. Finally, I asked, “Why would you want me to bind her, anyway? The way you talk, I would have thought you’d want to get rid of her.”

“Get rid o’ her?” she scoffed. “Doubt that. Yer in her blood, Donum.”

“Her blood?” I looked up at her in surprise. “What do you mean by that?”

“Before, when I scratched her?” she said, squatting down next to me. “I scented ye on her blood. Yer a part o’ her now.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but there were too many questions I wanted to ask all at once. And for some reason, the first one to escape my lips was, perhaps, the least important. “I have a scent?” The idea bothered me. I could not point a finger as to why, but for some reason it did. And not just in the usual sense.

Jax laughed, taken aback, “Course ye do. I could find ye n’a crowd easy enough. Don’t ask me to put words to ‘er, though.”

I twisted my mouth self-consciously before asking, “I don’t smell bad, though, do I?”

“Well…” Jax began teasingly, “yer a bit ripe, I’d say. A splash o’ flower water’d do ye some good, mayhap.” Then she flicked my nose, “But that ain’t the real question. Ye want to know ‘bout her blood. How ye got in there. And what it means.”

I nodded, “That’s right. How did you know that?”

She quirked an eyebrow at me, “Cause, I’d like to know them things, too.”

“Ah.” Of course. She had been so strangely knowledgeable lately, that I had forgotten that it seemed to be mostly a combination of guesswork and instinct that was driving her. It was not reasonable to assume that she would suddenly have all of the answers. Then again, one does not usually expect a person to pick up another person’s scent. Blood or no. I was a bit adrift here. “Well… I don’t know anything about this blood business, but I can tell you that I got a notice recently. It said something about my influence and how she was now a candidate for the binding. Maybe that has something to do with it?”

She narrowed her eyes, “Mayhap it be to do with that kiss she mentioned.”

I sighed. Here that was again. “Jax… why is something like that bothering you? Not a week ago, you were talking about taking me to a whore house to relieve tension. Now? I don’t know. It’s like you’re jealous.”

Her eyes flashed at the mention of prostitutes, but she could not deny her own words. Taking on a hunted expression, she cast about for how to answer, “I… I don’t…” Closing her eyes, she took a breath, “I were different then. Less whole. I don’t… I hate the idea of some… someone not yer own samplin’ o’ ye.”

I blinked a few times at that. “Someone… not my own? Like Hess?”

“Her?” she laughed dismissively. “Nay, nay. Like ye said. She be a candidate proper now. I do nay mind that.”

“What?” I was seriously confused now, “That can’t be true, or else you wouldn’t be so bent out of shape about the kiss thing.”

Her back stiffened, “That be sommat else entire.”

“Something else? What…” I stammered. “Jax, if we aren’t talking about the kiss… What were you talking about?”

“Whores, Donum!” she shouted. “It be two different things! Some trollop and Hess gettin’ a kiss when even I ain’t…” She stopped suddenly, her face flushing crimson.

I stared at her. I did not yet have the whole picture, but some of it had certainly just been filled in. “So… you are jealous then.”

Slowly, her face transformed into a mask of fury and she jumped to her feet, “It ain’t a question o’ jealousy! It be a question o’ place! Yer mine! I be first! First Lilim! If someone gonna k— k— kiss ye…” he voice trailed off and she began to breath hard, “If someone gonna k-kiss yaaaaaah~!” She grit her teeth and stamped the ground angrily as a shadow clone materialized next to her, “Whore’s fud! I’m gonna k-kiss…” she suddenly seized up, trembling, and collapsed to her hands and knees.

Reaching forward in concern, I grabbed her shoulders, “Jax, are you okay?”

Still panting, she looked up and our eyes met. Without another word, she pushed through my arms and our lips locked together. She was incessant and greedy, uncompromising. Slowly, she began to work my teeth open with her tongue and whimper. And despite myself, I began to respond. As I began to stiffen, she broke away, her eyes heavy, “Ah~ There ye be…” Reaching down, she grasped my length, and began to roughly stroke it through the fabric of my loincloth. “I knew it. I knew ye’d rise fer me if I…”

She froze, and her head whipped around, her ears twitching as she scanned the dimly lit hallway.

“Jax?” I started, but she clapped a hand over my mouth.

Out of the darkness, we heard a hiss, and something jumped at us only to be intercepted by Jax’s shadow. As it rapidly faded, Jax bared her teeth and snarled, “Damned Rats!” Materializing her axe to her hand, she leapt at it and started hacking, “I’ll be teachin’ ye. To interrupt. Me. While. I. Be. Feeding!”

As her axe fell for the last time, we were both infused with a rush of Life Energy. Jax threw her head back and stood exulting in it for a long moment, her gaze fixed on the grate above and the star light filtering through it. Finally, she turned to look at me from over her shoulder. I was feeling… intensely conflicted. Joy and fulfillment from the after effects of the Life infusion, a bit confused yet still slightly aroused from that kiss, and underlying it was a sense of worry and shame. But I did not say anything. I only stared back at her.

Leaving the rat to bleed out on the cobblestone, she slowly approached me, letting the axe drop and dissolve into the air. Squatting down in front of me, she gently caressed my cheek. I could not be totally sure from the dim light, but it almost seemed as if tears were glistening in her eyes. “Someday,” she whispered. “Someday, ye’ll look at me without guilt in yer heart.”

 

As we slowly shuffled along in the dark, the events of the last half hour kept playing themselves out in my mind, over and over. My emotions were in complete turmoil. I was not equipped for this. Not emotionally. I had thought that someday I would manage to find a nice girl who thought my jokes were funny and maybe, if I was lucky, would be kind of into the nerd scene. That was what my mental framework had been built around, and the anticipation of that sort of relationship was all that I had been prepared for. But this?

What even was this? Jax had been a man not so long ago. Had been an entirely different species, in point of fact. And she was not done yet. Worse, she seemed to have developed some sort of feelings for me. I could not tell what they were, either. Lust seemed to be there, certainly. Perhaps love, even. But the pieces were not fitting together properly in my mind. This had… an alien — perhaps you could even call it inhuman — quality to all of it that had me completely at a loss. And that only served to reinforce how strange it all was and how weird I felt about it.

She had been upset that she had been interrupted while she was feeding, she had said. Not making out. Not sharing a moment of intimacy. Feeding.

And then she had cried because I felt guilty about it? What the fuck?

Of course, I would feel guilty about it! I was all too keenly aware of the fact that none of this would have happened had I not cast that binding in the first place. Everything between the two of us could be traced to that one act, and my lack of knowledge over what that meant was eating at me constantly. How much control did Jax really have over her own actions? Did she want to kiss me for her own sake? Was it just to feed? Or was something else involved? I knew my aura was supposed to ramp up her level of arousal a little, and I had finally figured out that at high levels it seemed to really reinforce her sexual thoughts. But then, there remained the question of whether that was just in general or specifically thoughts about me, and I was terrified of what the answer might be.

“This be ridiculous!” Jax hissed and stopped. “I can nay see a bloody thing, I can smell rats everywhere, and you keep peltin’ me with yer self-loathin’! How’m I supposed to find jobby all like this?”

“Sorry,” I said quietly.

“Do nay be sorry!” she snapped. “Explain yer ownself! Explain why ye hate yerself fer kissin’ me! Explain why ye flinch when I touch you. Am I so ugly to yer eyes? Is it because I ain’t complete, yet? Is it…” she stopped, beginning to choke on her words.

“What? No. No!” I said, perhaps a bit too loudly. Nervously, I paused to listen for a few breaths before letting out a sigh. This conversation really needed to happen, but it was a horrible time to be having it. Taking a slow, calming breath, I quietly began to put to words what had been steadily growing and eating away at me for days now.

“Rape me?” Jax said, like that might have been the stupidest thing she had ever heard. “Donum, ye could nay rape me if ye wanted to! Ne’er even if ye tried!”

“I’m not talking about holding you down against your will,” I said, trying to explain it better. “I’m saying that I’m afraid that somehow I’ve removed your will entirely. That somehow I’ve… I don’t know. Circumvented your will. That this… whatever this is… is not because you… or I want it to be, but because of the binding and the effect it’s having on you.”

“Donum,” she reached out like she might choke me, but she closed her eyes to calm herself. “Donum, I hear ye,” she enunciated very deliberately, like she was trying not to scream. “Now hear me. And listen clear. This bindin’ yer so afraid of… I ain’t bound only to ye. We be bound together.”

I shook my head, “Jax… I can give you commands, though. I can make you do things against your will.”

“Aye. I know it. Were it yer will, then, fer me to push ye down? Kiss ye breathless?” she asked, aggressively. “Were it yer will for me to take hold o’ ye?”

“No,” I had to admit.

“No, and well I know it,” she snarled. “I wanted that. If anything, it were I what…” She stopped. Then, her eyes drifting away, she repeated, quietly, “It were I what…” Slowly, she brought her hands to her face and began to tremble. “That be it…” she whispered to herself.

“Jax,” I began, but she spoke over me.

“No, no, that be it! I almost r—” she made a noise, like she was going to be sick and dropped to her knees. Panting, she started again, “I almost r-raped ye! I did. If it hadn’t been for that rat…”

I shook my head to deny it, but she was emphatic. Quickly becoming more and more agitated.

“I did! I did! Oh by Law! Ye nay’ven realize it!” she was steadily getting louder, and I tried to shush her. But she could not be stopped, “Ye reacted just like they did!”

I flinched back. The implication she had just dropped was as heavy as a block of lead, and my eyes widened. But over her increasingly frantic sobs, I began hearing skittering in the dark. This was not the time!

“Jax…” I shout whispered, trying to get her attention, but she could not be distracted.

“I thought… I thought ye were excited fer me kiss, I did! I felt yer desire. Wanted it so bad. I did nay think! I… I ruined it!” she cried.

“Jax, please, not now! Rats…”

“Don’t ye understand? They got wet, too! The boys always said it were because they wanted it, but I knew! They always looked at me with such hatred, I could nay but hate them back. Hate them as I… as I… But I knew! I knew it weren’t for me. Weren’t only fer me. Understand? They hated themselves!” Jax was such a sobbing wreck, that in that moment, I truly began to understand the phrase ‘sympathy for the devil’. But I could not console her, could not afford anger, could not let myself feel disgust. They were coming.

“Jax!” I yelled, forcefully, despising myself for what I was about to do. What I had to do. “Stand up! Summon your axe! Defend us!”

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