Chapter 5

After saving the man’s life, Kal was invited back to his house for lunch. He Insisted it was the very least he could do as thanks. His wife was wary of the mage until her son excitedly told the story of how a cat-girl fell out of the sky and ripped open his father’s arm then moments later Kal appeared and healed him. The man confirmed the boy’s story and explained their guest was the magic user who saved him while bringing to her attention the sleeve shredded by the cat-girl. Kal had cleaned the blood from his shirt with a little bit of magic.

As the man showed her the torn fabric, the mage reminded him to be careful with that arm as he had only taken the one healing potion and he would probably need another to mend the bone fully. He also mentioned that the man had lost a fair amount of blood and probably should be getting something to eat soon. Kal’s explanation along with her husband’s tattered shirt and pallid complexion finally convinced her their story was true. Sobbing, the woman ran into her husband’s arms.

Kal was going to quietly exit and leave them to their moment but the son stopped him, reminding his father loudly that he invited the mage over for the midday meal. In the hour that followed, Kal sat beside a low table on a large, circular rug that took up most of the room and was treated to the best meal he had experienced in the city. He also slipped the man another vial of healing potion while his wife was in the other room. Finding out she nearly lost her husband seemed to make her quite amorous and clingy; Kal didn’t want the man to accidentally re-break his arm due to some overly excited appreciation.

Leaving their home, he ran across another of the cow-girl rickshaws. The woman was on a quiet side street away from any onlookers, squatting. Concerned at first she might be hurt, a moment later he heard the sound of splashing liquid. Kal could understand that the city folk might not want to see the girls take care of this particular function out on the busy roads.

As she stood up, Kal asked if she was available. His overly full stomach was not relishing the thought of hiking back across town and he thought the covered cart might make him a little harder to find just in case the cat girl hadn’t given up for the day. With how scared she appeared when fleeing from him, he doubted she was going to make a second attempt.

Blushing bright red and casting embarrassed glances at the puddle, which was quickly soaking into the dusty street, the cow-girl nodded. The woman had roughly the same build as the cow-girl from earlier except her pale skin was covered with large blotches of black tint. It looked as though someone threw ink on her and it stained her skin except for her bovine legs where the tinted skin became coarse black hair. She also had two tiny horns, one on either side of her head, that curved up and poked through her large straw hat.

Much like the girl this morning, she took note of his interest beyond just being a mode of transport and began to preen for him. On this nearly deserted side road she was much more overt than the woman from earlier as well. Staring at him with hungry eyes, she pressed her breasts together as if presenting them to him but what caught his attention was when she pulled a small brush off her harness and bent over to flick the dust off her hooves and reveal they were polished to a glossy shine. Kal resigned himself to never understanding women’s obsession with their feet no matter what their species. To him, it was just another tidbit of proof that monster girls were women and not animals.

Unfortunately for the cow-girl, it wasn’t her shiny hooves that caught his attention but the view from the seat of the rickshaw. Kal retrieved some coins from Ria. He briefly contemplated summoning the avatar just for someone to talk with, but decided against it. He was probably going to get an earful anyway for not calling her immediately after being attacked. Kal counted out the coins into the woman’s hand, then counted out the same amount a second time, instructing her to stay off the main roads and to make sure her hooves stayed clean.

Confused at first, the cow-girl’s eyes lit up and she was nearly shivering with excitement when she realized what he was asking of her.

The mage climbed into the covered cart and got comfortable as the woman pulling it flicked her tail to one side, making it lay across one of the poles connecting the cart to her harness. Taking her small brush, she dusted her hooves off once again. As she bent over, the mage could already see the moisture coating the lips of her sex and a moment later he breathed deeply through his nose as the scent of her arousal reached him. Checking to see his reaction as she stood back up, she glanced at his crotch before replacing the small brush and leaning into the harness.

Kal smiled. After the day he had, he was going to enjoy the trip back to the Inn.

He wondered on the way why he was doing this. Part of him still wanted to go chasing after the cat-girl despite the trail being cold as ice by now. He was angry that he had been attacked, confused as to why someone targeted him, and feeling guilty that he hadn’t told Ria of any of this yet. He realized part of it was avoiding how angry he was and trying to let his head cool before tackling the situation he was in. This flirty and amorous ride back to where he was staying was doing an excellent job of distracting him whenever he felt the rage build up inside him.

Close to his destination, he asked the cow-girl to take him to a place like where he found her. He assumed that she would know plenty of secretive spots for taking care of such business. A few minutes later she pulled Kal into an alley barely wide enough for her cart and with one end blocked off. Hopping out of the seat, Kal used the strength rune to leap over the cow-girl’s head, surprising her.

Instructing her to wait here, he handed her the small fee she required. Dropping the coins into her pouch, she nervously glanced behind her to see if anyone was watching before pushing her hat back off her head then bending over and opening her mouth, her broad, soft tongue extending in invitation. With a pleading expression, the woman’s eyes shifted between his face and crotch.

Kal and the cow-girl both wanted to do something entirely different but back in Carriston Jerran had been quite firm that the cow-girl slaves would not allow a man to have sex with them, no matter how badly she wanted to, and that they were not allowed to touch themselves for fear of having them openly masturbating between fares. There was a hint of bitterness in the guild leader’s voice that made Kal wonder if he had personal experience with being rebuffed by one of the bovine women.

However, there were workarounds. As tempting as the woman’s tongue looked, he wanted to do something just for her as thanks for hauling him around and giving him such a wonderful show in the process. Coaxing her back into a standing position he wetted two fingers in his mouth and reached for the large woman’s sex. The cow-girl tensed in anticipation and Kal stopped, there was a little bit of fear hidden behind her lust. Unsure if she was scared being discovered or if there was something else in the slave collar’s restrictions he didn’t know about, he decided to be cautious.

Moving slowly, he gently touched her mound, running his fingers through the white hair that was surprisingly soft. Continuing down, his fingers found the top of her sex and pressed in slightly until he felt her clit beneath his fingertips. He continued sliding his hand back until he heard a whimper from the bovine woman. Looking up, he saw the fear again as she shook her head so slightly it was barely noticeable. Moving his hand forward again made her visibly relax, until his fingertips brushed across her pearl. With her teeth and lips clamped together she let out a moan that sounded a lot like a cow’s lowing.

“Ria,” he called quietly as he began teasing the woman’s clit in earnest.

The sprite appeared and quickly took in the situation before landing on his shoulder and whispering, “How can I help?”

“I want you to give her one of those treats you’ve been saving for Ikuno just before she comes.”

Ria nodded before flying down between her legs for a better view.

The cow-girl started to roll her hips toward him and he was beginning to have difficulty keeping his fingers away from her entrance. It wasn’t long before the woman’s panting, muffled moans were nearly on top of one another and her body started to clench up.

The woman whined in protest when Kal’s fingers stopped. “Keep silent and open your mouth,” he said quietly to the cow-girl. Confused, but too close to climaxing to care, she once again opened her mouth and extended her tongue. Three specks of light flew up and landed on the outstretched tongue, each turning into small white pools of his seed.

Her eyes widened as the taste flooded her senses. At the same time, Kal’s fingers began vibrating back and forth on her pearl. She felt the human’s hand cover her mouth the moment her world exploded.

“Ria! Soundstone!” the mage called out as quietly as possible. As soon as the small enchanted rock appeared on the ground, Kal spoke the command to activate it. It was a gift from Ikuno so he and Perra could be as loud as they wanted the night of Perra’s birthday when she gave Kal her virginity. No noise could escape the area while people inside could hear any sounds coming in. When Kal removed his hand from the cow-girl’s mouth, her orgasmic shriek bounced off the walls of the small alley until it hit the edge of the stone’s enchantment.

Panting, the bovine woman leaned forward and laid her chin on his shoulder as she recovered. When her breathing returned to normal, she lightly kissed his cheek before standing back up and mouthing the words ‘thank you’ which got her a small jolt from her collar. Ignoring the moment of pain, she put her hat back on her head and carefully backed the rickshaw out of the alley. With a final smile in Kal’s direction, she trotted off toward one of the main roads in search of her next fare.

“That girl’s going to be grinning like that the rest of the day thanks to you,” Ria chuckled.

“I needed to do something good for someone else to offset how bad the rest of this day has been,” he sighed before picking up the soundstone and deactivating it.

The sprite was still facing the end of the alley where the cow-girl disappeared but turned toward Kal at the unusual tone in his voice. “That doesn’t sound good.”

Kal looked at the sprite hovering just above him, “Someone tried to kill me, Ria.”

“This is not how someone who is being hunted should be acting!” the sprite yelled at him the next morning. A bump in the road made the avatar bounce off Kal’s shoulder for the fifth or sixth time since he rented the rickshaw.

The mage ignored her. Though it looked like he was staring intently at the backside of the cow-girl in front of him, in truth he was focusing on any signal from the ward he cast before they left the inn. A frown flickered across his face at the memory of learning the spell from the cleric assigned to his small hometown.

Kal looked on in confusion as Elta stepped out the front door of her house. He had specifically not sent any word to the woman that he was coming to check up on her, yet the blonde woman stood calmly in her white robes on the steps in front of her door as though expecting him.

“Stop there, mage,” she growled.

“You knew I was coming?”

“No, when Perra mentioned you were stopping on your way through I cast a ward, so we didn’t cross paths while I was unprepared.”

“Perra said you had gotten better when it came to me.”

“Just because I can hear your name without soaking my undergarments doesn’t mean that I can deal with walking around a corner and bumping into you face to face,” she snapped. “The people of Telsin don’t need their connection to the Goddess ripping her clothes off and bouncing on the cock of the man she claims to hate.”

“Do you still hate me?”

Elta looked away, “No, I don’t. You didn’t cause me to be like this, and instead of jumping at the chance to get me into your harem, you saw it as a last resort to save me. Now that I know how monster girls were made, I can’t even hate you for consorting with demons.” Her eyes met his again, “But I can hate you for making me feel like this every time I see you.”

“I thought you were getting help from the Tanner’s son.”

“That ... didn’t last long. It helped my urges but not my heart. I felt so guilty after each time we were together it was making me ill. Eventually, it became too much, and I had to put an end to it.”

“Guilty? Why were you feeling guilty?”

“Because I wasn’t thinking about him,” she said while giving him a stern glare.

“Oh,” Kal replied lamely. “You said you set up a ward to know I was coming?” he asked quickly in a poorly veiled attempt to change the subject. “Ikuno used wards to warn her of any possible intruders but I didn’t know it could target a specific person.”

“They can do more than that,” said Elta, summoning a magic circle in front of her hand. “As you probably know, wards ignore anything under the size of a normal dragonfly and alert you if anything else crosses the boundary. But wards can detect types of creatures as well. If you were out hunting and set one for ‘deer’ then it would alert you every time a deer or elk entered the area.” As she spoke one of the glyphs changed from ‘creature’ to ‘deer.’ “But if you saw a huge deer that you wanted to bring home for the supper table and got a tuft of its hair from a tree branch,” the magic circle changed again, the glyph changing from ‘deer’ to ‘human’ before sigils in the outer ring shifted to allow three new glyphs for ‘one,’ ‘match,’ and a third which allowed the caster to choose a target. Holding up a small vial on a necklace she pulled from her robes, she removed the stopper and carefully pulled out its contents, a couple of hairs that matched those on Kal’s head. Holding them up, she activated the spell and Kal’s magic sight let him see the bubble of magic form, banishing and replacing the one already there. He had noted the existing ward on his way there but didn’t know as he passed through that it was specifically for him.

“It looks like I have some studying to do when I get back,” said Kal as the cleric’s spell faded and she lowered her hand.

“You need to leave,” said Elta.

Taken aback, the mage was about to ask why when he realized he had crossed half the distance to the cleric while studying the variants of the ward spell she was showing him. Looking more closely, he saw that her face was flushed, and she was breathing heavily as she stared at him with desire burning in her eyes.

“She’s about to break, Kal. Get out of there, she’s not ready for this ... yet,” came Perra’s thoughts through their bond.

Nodding as much in response to Perra’s instructions as Elta’s words, Kal said, “I suppose you are right.” Activating the flight rune pressed to his back and hidden beneath his shirt, Kal floated about a pace off the ground before activating the Jump spell his flight rune was partially based off. The spell sent him streaking straight up into the air before he turned and moved at a more languid pace toward Telsin’s inn. Those last few moments had gotten tense, and he was thinking a tankard of ale might be a good way to relax.

Elta watched until he was out of sight, then stared longingly after him until one of the townswomen walked up to check if she was okay. Pretending she hadn’t heard the woman call out to her, the cleric turned and slipped back inside her home before the lady could get close enough to see or smell the evidence of her arousal.

“You’re neglecting your women,” said a black-haired dog girl later that night as she entered the library in his tent.

Kal looked up and smiled. Daxas’s pack was still dedicated to patrolling around his farm in Kal’s absence and it looked like the pack’s Beta drew the assignment for the next few days. The woman’s belly bulge from his last visit was gone as she had given birth to her and Kal’s daughter while he was still at Prentas’s Tower. Unfortunately, her milk-heavy breasts now looked too large for her frame.

“Hello, Alina. I’m not neglecting them nearly as much as you might think. Perra is still angry at me for checking on Elta earlier.”

“Enough that you are sleeping out here?”

The mage shook his head, chuckling, “No, I’ll be joining her and Talin later, I just need to look into learning more about wards. Before things got weird between me and Elta earlier, I learned they are a lot more useful than I at first thought. Part of the problem with learning magic from an immortal is that they always feel like they can come back and learn more about a subject later. They seem to stop once they learn the points of most immediate use then forget to revisit the topic. Even though I knew Ikuno used wards I never studied them because they felt so limited.

“Once I got this tent, I found it did the same thing automatically that Ikuno used them for. That took away any incentive to learn more. But after what Elta told me, I think I need to look into them again.”

“Why is that?” asked Alina, moving closer.

“I could use them to warn me if a monster girl is nearby, though I don’t think I have the glyph right as it didn’t signal me before you came in. Or maybe if mine and Perra’s positions were reversed and I was mad at her I could make the ward warn me she was coming while ignoring everyone else.”

“You had a ward up to warn you if I was coming?” said the dog girl, sounding hurt.

“Not you specifically, but I’m playing with the glyphs and there isn’t one I can find that covers all monster girls. I found symbols for canine- or insect-type monster girls and even harpies but nothing that encompasses all of you.

“Since you are here, would you mind helping me for a little bit? Elta uses the held version of the spell but I’m playing with the drawn version. I’d like to test what I’ve gotten so far.”

“Do I get a reward for helping you?” Alina asked, her canine ears lifting slightly as she glanced at his crotch.

Kal raised an eyebrow, “Did you honestly think you were going to get out of here without letting me feel that amazing mouth of yours?”

The black-haired retriever licked her lips and smiled, “I certainly hoped not.”

As the rickshaw bounced down the road, Kal focused on the ward, worried that he might miss the spell’s warning. The main restriction with wards was that their range was tied directly to their complexity. ‘Creatures’ had the largest radius but that shrank significantly when a type was added and continued to get smaller as the constraints piled up until it got to what he was doing, looking for a specific person. Luckily for him, the fleeing cat girl lost a few hairs from her paws or tail when she landed on the man yesterday and Kal plucked them off before cleaning the blood from his shirt.

“Are you even listening to me?!” said Ria, her voice getting loud enough to make some of the people on the street take notice.

“Yes, I’m listening,” he replied a few moments later. “I understand this is not how I should be acting knowing that someone is hunting me, but I think that’s exactly why I should be doing this. When I was chasing after the cat-girl, she wasn’t just fleeing, she was terrified, she was shaken. She stuck a knife in a man’s throat and instead of dying he pulled it out and was running after her. Now I’m wandering around the city as though nothing happened. She’s tried to kill me twice if my guess is correct. Yet here I am, acting like I don’t care. On her next attempt, I want her just as shaken and unsure, I want to force her to make a mistake.” Looking forward at the cow-girl pulling the cart he added, “Plus, the view from back here should raise my spirits a little.”

The bovine woman’s step faltered at his words and she stole a glance over her shoulder at him. When the cow-girl looked forward again there was a slight smile on her lips and a sway in her hips that wasn’t there a second ago.

Kal called out to the woman pulling the rickshaw, “Just so you know, I don’t have any real destination, I’m just looking to keep moving for most of the day. If you can think of any interesting views or places to go, then head in that direction. You know this city better than I do.”

“Would you quit thinking with your dick and take this a little more seriously?” Ria growled.

“I am taking it seriously,” he replied, his eyes losing focus as he concentrated on the ward for a moment. When they focused again, he looked over at the glowing woman sitting on his shoulder. “But I won’t sit in my tent, cowering in fear.” He looked down at his arms where his normal thick leather vambraces had replaced the lighter, less noticeable ones he made for his trip into the city, “This time I know she will be coming. This time I’m prepared.” Though Ria couldn’t see it, each of the runes on the arm guards were glowing but were so faint they would only be visible in a pitch-black room.

“So why the tour around town for the entire day?” asked the sprite.

Kal smiled, “You’ll see.”

Kashka cursed this infuriating human as she leapt from one rooftop to another, trying to keep up with the man’s cart. She thought yesterday that he had two different cloaks when she didn’t see the glow from the magic dye his cloak had been marked with at the bazaar. When he emerged from the Inn that morning, she was certain it was the same cloak he was wearing when she poisoned him, but he had somehow removed a dye that was supposed to be permanent.

Why was he doing this? There’s no way that he could think she wouldn’t try again. Did he think it was just a fluke that she attacked him? Did he feel like he ran her off and was safe now? Questions flooded her mind as she sprung over to the next rooftop, stumbling slightly as her feet came down on the sun-baked, clay-like material. It was approaching noon and she had been trailing the human’s rickshaw for hours now with only brief respites when the cow-girl stopped to get a drink from one of the public fountains or to relieve herself. Her only indication he was even still in the cart was the way the bovine driver posed and presented herself to her rider whenever they got a few moments alone.

The silver clip holding her tan cloak closed warmed against her skin indicating the border of a ward was nearby. It seemed to be the only precaution the man had taken, though she wasn’t sure if the ward was working since the rickshaw had passed numerous other cat-girls out on the street and the mage didn’t appear to take notice of them.

She didn’t think it was possible the ward was tuned specifically to her.

As she watched from a distant rooftop, the cow-girl half turned and pointed to her mouth before rubbing her belly. Though the mage’s ward kept her too far away to hear what they were saying, it was easy to tell that he gave her permission to get something to eat. The rickshaw drivers only ate at one of three stables positioned around the city. A smile came to the cat girl’s face, she already knew where the nearest one was located.

As the mage’s cart started moving, she whispered the command word activating the magic in her cloak which made her unnoticeable to those not specifically looking for her. Seeing the bovine woman turn in the direction of the nearest stable, she darted off to check the place out before their arrival. With luck she would be done with this frustrating human within the next hour or so.

“She’s gone,” Ria reported, becoming visible once again.

“Good,” he replied before calling out to the cow-girl, “Change of plans. You indicated there were a few places you could go to eat, take me to the one furthest from here and get there as quickly as you can.”

The woman pouted while rubbing her belly.

The mage gave her an apologetic smile, “I’ll make it up to you when we get there, I promise.”

The cart driver’s pout was replaced by a smile and a shiver of anticipation before turning the rickshaw around and heading west at a jog.

As they bounced along, Ria floated just above her normal perch on his shoulder. “I’m confused. You let her follow you for half a day and now you are running away from her.”

The mage nodded though a bump nearly hid the motion as he bounced around inside the cart. “She has spent all that time leaping from rooftop to rooftop or following behind us on foot. Now, when she realizes I’m not going where she thinks I am she is going to spend a good amount of time running around trying to find me. If I time things right, you and I will get back to the inn about the time she gives up and comes back to wait for me.”

“What is the point of doing all this just to have her catch up with you at the inn?”

“You’ll see,” the mage chuckled.

“Dammit, Kal! Don’t screw with me, I’m worried about you!”

“I know Ria, but I think you will understand better when you see her. I don’t want to insult you, but my reasons are specific to the living. Besides, it’s kind of fun to tease you.”

“Fine, whatever,” she said, crossing her arms. “Call me if you’re wrong and she ends up catching up with you,” she snapped before fading away.

Directing his attention to the piece of leather pressed against his back, he activated the wind-screen that slowed the air rushing at him so he could breathe properly when flying. The topaz brooch that kept the dust and sand off him was getting overwhelmed by the dust kicked up by the jogging cow-girl’s hooves.

It was close to an hour later when Kashka returned to the last place she saw the mage. In a nearby shadowy alley, the cat-girl grabbed up a beggar by the rags he was wearing, “Which way did he go,” she snarled in his face.

“Fuck off pussy-cat. I already told ya, Guild ain’t said nothin’ about reportin’ to you.”

Unsheathing one of the daggers on her belt, she jabbed it toward the man’s chin, “I don’t care what the guild has or hasn’t told you. If you know which way the man with sprite went, then tell me.”

He flinched away before giving her a toothless grin. “Kitty hurtin’ a human. You’ll piss off the guild bad doing that.”

“If I don’t kill this man, then my master will kill me. Do you know what that means?”

The beggar’s eyes narrowed, “What?”

“If you don’t help me, then I’m dead and I don’t need to give a damn what the Beggar’s Guild thinks.”

The man laughed, “Just another dead pussy rotting in an alley,” he scoffed until the dagger slid under his chin and into his brain.

“You first,” she said, letting his body drop and cleaning the dagger on his clothes before kicking some of the nearby trash and dirt over him.

Kashka was disgusted with herself for killing an unarmed man out of anger. Thinking back to all the times she hid outside one of the city’s inn and listened to the bards and minstrels sing songs of heroism and honor, she wondered about what those heroes would think of what she just did.

When she killed for Bozun, she was just a weapon and killing was her duty. She need not be any more concerned about honor than the daggers on her sides. But killing the beggar was her choice and the thought didn’t settle well with her.

Stepping away from the dead human, the cat-girl bounded between buildings until she reached the rooftops. Looking to the east, she decided to check the next of the rickshaw driver’s stables in the direction she last saw the man traveling. After a day of following the mage, her only chance to rest had been the short time she sat waiting for him to arrive at the stable. As she leapt from building to building, the distance between them felt like it was growing as soreness began creeping into her legs.

The stable they arrived at was a long wooden building, making it stand out from the mud-brick structures surrounding it. Trotting into the large wooden doors on one end, he saw that a third of the building was filled with rickshaws like the one he was riding, all parked and driverless. Beyond the carts was another wall with two more large doors and a smaller one next to the human woman’s booth. ‘Smaller’ was relative, the door was sized for the tall bovine women it was made for.

The older woman sitting in a small booth inside the stable regarded Kal skeptically. “Well, you seem young enough to go for a while, how much do you want for taking care of a few of my girls?”

“I’m sorry ... what?” asked Kal, thinking he had misheard her.

“How much do you want to fuck Popeh here,” she waved at the cow-girl who had brought him, “and as many of the others as you can handle.”

Kal stood there, dumbfounded for a moment. He had somehow forgotten that having sex with monster girls was so distasteful to the people of this city they had to pay men to take care of the bovine women’s needs. He had only been joking when he considered the idea as a way to make some money if needed, now that he was standing there...

“I’ll pass,” he said.

“Well damn,” replied the woman as Popeh let out a groan of disappointment.

“On the coins. I’ll pass on the coins,” he looked up at the cow-girl next to him, “I’m not quite ready to become a prostitute yet.”