Chapter 5

Arakel awoke at about the same time as Saern, Dai and Dorn began to ascend the mountain, and he began to prepare himself for the day. Today, of all the days of his long life, would be the most important, certainly since the Ryu-Sincar swept through the Isle of Dreams. He opened his wardrobe, and pulled on a rust-splotched quilted shirt, and then a pair of cotton trousers. Over that he pulled on a chain mail shirt and trousers, the steel links polished until they shone. A black-enameled steel cuirass came next, followed by a heavy leather sword belt about his waist. Over everything he pulled his chain overcoat, and then looked at the mirror on the inside of a door.

That look told him what he needed to know. The priests of the Isle of Dreams had been trained as warriors in a land that had no other military force. They had all worn this kind of armour, and over the long years Arakel had fashioned his own set. The broad-bladed bastard sword he lifted from the back of the wardrobe, however, had been his fathers, locked in the vault of his family home. As he attached the sword to his belt, he strode to the main room. Treck and Lym were already awake, lying on the couch nude. Treck’s eyes were closed as Lym slowly bobbed her head up and down on his long shaft, her cheeks hollowed out and her eyes closed.

“Time enough for that later,” Arakel said. Treck’s eyes opened and he looked at the steel-covered necromancer. Lym, however, merely continued her work on Treck’s cock, sliding her unpainted lips further down.

“So ... are we expecting company,” Treck asked, his voice strained as he tried not to fill Lym’s mouth with his seed.

“Yes. Three of the Ryu-Sincar seem to have followed me,” Arakel stated, and that caused Lym’s head to come up, letting Treck’s shaft bob in the air.

“How did they follow you,” she asked, a note of fear in her voice.

“My guess is that they were in the city when I was, and followed my tracks, either from curiosity or knowing who I am. Either way, it doesn’t matter. They need to disappear, or they will return with the rest of them. Treck, you and I can likely handle them. Lym, I need you to go to the pool room. The Nek-Tem is close to hatching, and will need to feed soon after. You know how they do this, yes?”

Lym’s lips curved into a sultry smile. “Oh yes. You’ve told me before of the tentacle creatures that your people worshipped, and how they enjoy using a girl. I’ve always wondered what they feel like.”

“Well, if you agree to it, then you can be its first feeding. Go into the pool and wait. Do not be afraid. Nek-Tem do not kill their mates, unless the mate shows hostility. No matter what happens, if you do not attempt to harm it, it will not harm you.”

Lym nodded and kissed Treck’s cockhead, then walked down the hall to the steamy pool room, her hips rocking side to side, a sight both men watched until she vanished into the steam. Then they shook themselves out of the trance, and walked towards the cave entrance. Halfway there, Treck began to shift, his bones cracking and popping as his human skin seemed to melt off, revealing the leopard-spotted fur Arakel had seen barely a night before as Lym had laid under that bestial body. At the entrance of the cave, they stopped, waiting now for the inevitable conflict.

It wasn’t long before Saern, Dai and Dorn appeared on the path, walking out of the obscuring rain to stop just outside the cave. Treck let out a deep cat-like hiss and moved off to one side, flexing his massive furred hands, claws sliding out of each fingertip until he had two hands full of sharp razor blades. Saern drew his heavy broad-bladed sword and the two began to circle each other.

Dai reached for her sabre, but her brother put a hand lightly on her wrist. Something passed between them as Arakel drew his sword, and Dorn drew both of his. Without any words exchanged, the fight was on. Dorn used both blades in sweeping strikes, rarely using them independently as one might expect. Arakel swept his bastard sword about with ease, rarely blocking Dorn’s strikes but deflecting them instead, diverting them with an angled blade so they sheared away harmlessly, allowing him to strike out in reply, but Dorn was able to dodge those blows by moving with his blades in a fluid, disconcerting style.

Treck and Saern, however, showed no such grace. Treck merely lashed out, his massive claws slashing at Saern who continually took the blows on his armour or the arm that wasn’t wielding his sword while striking stinging cuts onto Treck’s chest and belly. No finesse was involved in their fight, just the brute force of one against the other.

As the two pairs fought, however, Dai moved swiftly around them, running for the back of the cave. She hated to abandon her brother in a fight, but he needed her to kill the Nek-Tem. That, more than the death of the necromancer, was what had to happen, and she drew her sabre as the rough cave became smoother.

As Lym entered the pool area, she had a moment of fear. The egg was broken, cracked in three large pieces and floating at the edge of the pool. She rushed over to it, terror growing in her throat that something had gone wrong when something wrapped around her ankle. She let out a small scream as she fell forward, putting her hands out to break her fall on the wet stones, but the impact never came. Instead, something wrapped around her waist even as the thing that had grabbed her ankle began to slide up her leg, winding about and never slackening its grip.

Lym forgot all about why she had come in and simply began to panic, her limbs flailing around as she simply tried to escape. Her limbs were quickly restrained, which heightened her panic, but that panic dissipated when something nudged her dripping pussy. She moaned, and her body relaxed slightly, her head moving side to side to see tentacles around her wrists, and then she remembered the Nek-Tem. Relief flooded her body as she realized the egg had been broken because it had hatched, not for some other reason.

Once she had stopped struggling so hard, the tentacle between her legs pushed slowly at her wet entrance, rubbing and working to get into her, but it seemed, to Lym, to be a bit big for this new body, a fact that had her groaning and wriggling with desire. Two more tentacles wrapped about her breasts, squeezing and kneading them, making her gasp between groans. Sexual satisfaction, she decided, must be pre-programmed into them.

Then, between her legs, she felt the tip of the tentacle spread apart, and something else, something wet and oddly shaped, pushed into her body, drawing a long satisfied groan from her. It never stopped moving, though her body tried to clamp down on the intruder. The tentacle rocked against her body, pulling out and pushing back inside as groaned, her head rolling back. Her purple eyes, still open, spotted another thick tentacle arched near her head, and she opened her mouth, eager to have something to suck on. Instead of shoving itself down her throat, however, the tip of it split open, rolling aside as something slid out of it, a slimy member that resembled the penis of a dog. Lym realized at once that this is what she had felt between her legs, and that thought itself set her off, her body writhing in the tight grip of the Nek-Tem, a cry escaping her open mouth as her first orgasm washed over her body. As she came, the tentacle slipped into her mouth, and she instinctively closed her lips on it, sucking and working her tongue over the slimy member, savouring the taste.