Chapter 12

For those of you reading The Runesmith Chronicles for the first time I recommend starting with the first book, Oni and the Farmer. Mostly so you have a better understanding of how things like the magic system works and what’s going on as I often reference earlier chapters/books. Edited/Proofread by: oldfart and 2muchdiggity

“Ready?” Kal asked.

The gorgon looked around her home and nodded nervously, “I am.”

“Good there’s only a couple more things we need to take care of. The first is this.”

He gave the snake-haired woman a light shove sending her stumbling backward a couple of steps until she bumped into the wall behind her. She looked up in surprise and annoyance to see the mage holding a hand out toward her, the red strength rune shining. Stone rods extended from the wall and wrapped around her wrists and ankles, locking her in place. She cried out in alarm as a stone slab appeared next to her head and wrapped partway around her face, blocking her vision. Serpents with glowing eyes extended from around the mask and hissed viciously at him.

It had taken a couple of days, but Kal finally figured out what Gerda meant by pushing and pulling at the same time. The tendrils of magic he used to form the gorgon’s stone manacles didn’t look any different from those he made a few days ago but upon closer inspection, there were now four separate magic cords attached to the stone.

After days with no progress, he had a flash of inspiration as he was watching the snakes of the woman’s hair. In particular, a few of them liked to hold their bodies up and out from her head. The careful observation of these serpents gave him the answer needed. As the snake moved about, he saw how the muscles on one side contracted while the other side expanded, making the snake’s body move much like Gerda’s magic when she was showing him this new method. He then took a moment to call himself an idiot because it was the same way his own muscles worked, but with only a single pivot point at the joint.

At first, it still didn’t work. Once his captor had fallen asleep, he had made dozens upon dozens of attempts with no success. He couldn’t seem to figure out a way to push or pull without moving his hand. After numerous failures, he tried pushing more power into the bottom side of the tendril while leaving the top at a more normal level. The bottom part of the magical rope expanded, lifting the tiny piece of rock out of the crack in the wall. He’d waved it about in the air for a couple of minutes as he tested this newfound skill before accidentally dropping it on the floor down by his feet. He lay there for a few hours, frustrated with his carelessness until he remembered that he could just pull another pebble from the wall.

Pulling and drawing things toward him proved to be its own challenge. It consisted of strengthening all four parts of the tendril, then weakening three of the cables to tilt the piece of stone towards him, then repeating the process with each of the magical ropes in quick succession. By his last night, he had gotten fairly quick at it.

Now he was using his new skill for some playful revenge.

Kal knelt down in front of the woman with his eyes closed. He hadn’t made her mask particularly tight against her face and didn’t know just how pissed she might be with him right now.

“What the ‘ell are ye doin’?!” she yelled at him. She was now terrified that she had severely misjudged the human and he was about to kill her. Her fears were alleviated when she saw him on his knees in front of her reaching for the bottom hem of her tunic.

“Just a little payback,” he said, lifting the fabric and leaning forward. A very different hiss came from her as he extended his tongue and ran it over her lower lips, occasionally brushing over her clit lightly.

The gorgon wouldn’t say she was happy with her situation, but if he was going to keep doing what he was, she was okay with seeing where this game would take her. He continued laving her sex, spending more and more time paying attention to the tiny pearl at the top of her pussy. Her legs were shaking as she panted and moaned from the wonderful sensations his tongue was bringing her. She had just begun to feel the tightness in her belly signaling an impending orgasm when he pulled away.

“The hell?!” she shrieked indignantly while tugging at her bonds.

Kal stood and grabbed one of her nipples through the tunic, twisting it roughly and making the woman moan with desire. “I have work to do,” he said as he reached up and smoothed the surface of her shackles to a fine polish. There was no reason to let her scrape her skin raw if she wanted to struggle. “I’ll get everything packed up, you just wait right here.” With a light pat on her crotch, he walked into the other room and called for the avatar of his bag of holding.

Her nipple ached deliciously, the discomfort in the tender flesh sending jolts of pleasure straight to her sex. If he had twisted the other one as well she was certain she would have gotten off. She let out a frustrated groan, the dull pain from her breast wasn’t letting her come down from being so close to climaxing. With a sigh, she leaned forward against the piece of stone covering her eyes.

Ria spun around to take in her surroundings as she flitted up to hover in front of Kal.

“How can I help you Master Kal?”

“For starters, quit calling me ‘Master’. To me you’re a friend, not a thing,” he said with a frown.

“Grumpy today, aren’t we? However, I refuse. I will stop calling you ‘Master Kal’, but not until something special happens,” she said looking up and down his body while biting one side of her lip.

“Seriously?” he asked, unimpressed.

“Yes! Seriously!” Her voice rose as she got angry from his lack of reaction, “You keep telling me I’m a friend but still treat me like a thing! You have Kahrin and Silma and Sandy and all of the dog girls who you are only friends with but have no problems getting intimate with them. Then off to the side is the one you have traveled with the most over the last few months, me.” Her face fell, “After a couple of new owners, I won’t remember you anymore. I look around and see how much they all like being your girls or one of your women. I ... I guess I want to know what it’s like too.”

Kal looked down at the floor as he thought. After everything he had been through the last few days, Kal really wasn’t in the mood to deal with this. He had to concede that she had a point. However, Marda, Ada, and all of the harpies were people he considered friends as well and would never lay a hand on them. He felt it would be best not to bring them up. He knew what she was asking and throwing the women whom he wasn’t sleeping with in her face would only make her think that was the category she fell into.

When he looked back up at the sprite, her face was nearly invisible with embarrassment and she’d brought her hands up to cover her mouth.

“I’m so sorry, Kal!” she blurted. “I don’t know what came over me.” Her expression became worried as Kal had yet to show any change in emotion.

The mage reached out and cupped his hand behind her back just below her wings then pulled her into his chest, earning a surprised squeak from the tiny woman. “No, you’re right. You’re fundamentally different from all of the other women I’ve been with. That makes me more cautious with you than I need to be, judging by what you just said. I know you’re impatient, but I need to ask you to wait.”

The sprite sighed heavily, “What am I waiting for?”

“Look around the corner,” he replied. Letting her go, he waved at the door to the room he had just come from.

Ria zipped into the other room, filled with curiosity. A few seconds later she came flying back, her eyes wide.

“What the hell, Kal? This isn’t like you.”

“I’m not hurting her, Ria. At least not in any way she doesn’t like. This is going to sound awful but ... I need this.”

“What?!”

“Before you jump to conclusions...”

The mage took a few minutes to explain what had happened since he met the gorgon and what his experience had been like.

“And this?” asked the avatar.

“I know. Revenge like this isn’t my style and it doesn’t sit well with me, to be honest.”

“You said you needed it.”

“In order to keep myself from resenting what she did to me, yes, I need this. It’s only a fraction of what she put me through, but I think it’s important for her to understand what she did to me and the rest of her victims.

“She’s already given all of her belongings over to me. Store anything that isn’t trash and keep an eye out for books. The gorgon said she put them in a small alcove just outside the cave after an unfortunate incident with a magic-user.”

When he asked the snake-haired woman about the lack of books in her cavern, she told him about a man who bolted at first when finally released from her gaze. At the exit of her home, he stopped and turned around looking for something. Seeing the pile of books behind her he ran back to get his spellbook, making her think that he was attacking her. Like so many others, she froze him with her gaze then bit him with the fangs in her mouth, not her hair, turning him to stone. She didn’t realize until the man was completely petrified that he hadn’t even been looking at her, his attention solely focused on the book. Since others had used the drawings and writing within the pages to attack her, she considered it a weapon and didn’t give it back with the rest of their belongings. Moving the books out of sight made them assume their spellbook was lost and every magic user since had scanned the room then run back to the dwarves as quickly as their legs could carry them.

Ria nodded and flew out the exit in search of the books since she knew Kal would be most interested in them. Meanwhile, Kal wandered back into the room with the tent and the bound gorgon. Sensing his presence, the woman spat a string of dwarvish curses at him. The curses turned into a long moan as he knelt and put his tongue to work on her again.

About two hours had gone by and the gorgon hung limply from her shackles, a fine sheen of sweat covering most of her body from being kept on the very edge of orgasm for so long. Her hair had given up long ago and seemed lifeless as it hung from her head. She whimpered when she sensed him getting up from where he sat next to her. The human dropped to his knees in front of her and tears began pouring out of her eyes.

“No, please,” she begged, “I can’na take anymore. Please, stop.”

She picked up on his moment of hesitation at her words and was filled with a flash of hope that he might let her go. Instead, the damnable mage leaned in once again. A moan of both pleasure and despair escaped her lips as his tongue teased her clit. Surely, this human was trying to kill her.

Another whimper escaped her lips as she approached the point where he would stop and leave her to suffer once again. She hardly got the chance to realize he wasn’t stopping this time before his hands came up and painfully twisted her already tender nipples.

The gorgon’s world exploded. Thrashing against her bonds, she shrieked at the top of her lungs as she came.

Kal’s face went from a smirk to panicked worry as her back arched, nearly breaking his nose and pushing him backward with her pubic mound. Scrambling to his feet, he pulled his cloak over his head with one hand while holding the other out and shattering her shackles. Wrapping her in the cloak he gently guided them both to the ground, cradling the trembling woman who was still in the throes of her orgasm. He rocked her gently, massaging her bruised wrists and ankles and rubbing down her body as he kissed her face and whispered heartfelt apologies into her ear for taking things too far.

Her expression was indescribable as she looked up at him. Fear, relief, desire, happiness, panic, hatred, love, he couldn’t quite place how she was feeling. There was one exception. Hurt.

“W ... W ... Why?” she asked, her body shivering.

“Because we needed to be on the same level before we set out,” he replied, holding her tight and trying to share his warmth. “This was very close to what I experienced each and every time you had sex with me over the last few days. Instead of being fun like it should be, it was more like torture.” He clenched his teeth, “As childish as this sounds. I consider us even now.”

“S ... Sorry I didn’na know. The first dwarves I met were the only ones I’ve frozen who talked ta me afterward,” she explained, her voice getting stronger as she spoke. “Didn’na really want ta do anything with ‘em though, only humans.”

“I’d guessed that. You don’t come across as hateful, just trying to survive and enjoy your life as much as possible. Now that you’ve experienced something close to what you put me and the other humans through, I hope you will be a bit more careful the next time you do it. I want you to know that I will never do this to you again.”

She nodded and wrapped the cloak around her shoulders tighter as he started rocking her again. She had just experienced the most amazing, most intense, most mind-shattering orgasm of her life at his hands. Now that she knew what to expect, she wasn’t rejecting the idea of doing it again in the future.

After a while, Kal healed her bruises and carried the gorgon inside the tent, drawing a warm bath for her to soak and relax in. They were met by the sprite when they finally emerged again.

“What’s your name?” asked Ria.

The woman had heard the human speaking to someone but was still surprised to see the ghostly sprite come flitting in through the doorway. “The dwarves call me gorgon.”

Kal shook his head, “That’s what you are, not your name. It would be like you calling me ‘human’.”

“Am I supposed to call you something else?”

Kal froze with the realization that he hadn’t given her his own name yet.

Ria began laughing hysterically. “That’s two now! First Dax and now her!” she said, doubling over and holding her stomach.

“Dax? Two?” the gorgon asked.

“Daxas is one of my lovers,” he explained. “We got intimate and she even got pregnant before I even knew her name.”

The woman’s eyes widened and a hand went to her stomach. “Does that mean I’m... ?”

“Probably not, but it’s still early and I don’t know exactly how your body works. In humans, it can happen anywhere from a few minutes to a couple of days. Some monster girls have seasons or cycles that are the only times they can get pregnant. Others have a means of only having a baby when they decide to. Near as I can tell, they all have some means of knowing when they are with child. If you don’t know within a couple of days, then you probably aren’t. On our way back to the surface, we’ll see about getting you some gondas weed and you can use that until you decide you want to have children.”

She frowned, “There are times that I can’t calm down no matter how much I touch myself. Is that my ‘cycle’?” Those periods were unpleasant, and she’d masturbated to the point of pain on more than one occasion. Unfortunately, she hadn’t had any human visitors during those times and while male dwarves had the right equipment, she wasn’t excited enough by them to seek the stocky men out for relief.

“Most likely,” he said, nodding. “If you weren’t having one of those then there’s little chance of you being pregnant.”

Relief warred with disappointment on her face for a moment until she remembered that he agreed to help her when she wanted children. Better him than any of the others who either attacked her or ran away.

“Before we go any further, my name is Kal and this is Ria,” he said, indicating the sprite who had finally quit laughing and was now listening to them talk.

“I’m a bag of holding,” she said, pointing to the leather satchel on Kal’s belt. “I’ve stored all of your stuff except for a couple of things that looked like junk. You’ll want to look them over in case any have special meaning to you. I’ve them laid out on the floor in the other room.”

“I’ll get the tent packed up while you do that.”

The gorgon frowned as she walked into the main room of her home. It felt so empty without any of her decorations. She quickly scanned through the array of items on the floor. Most were broken, rotted, or otherwise destroyed pieces of gear and clothing she’d taken off of those turned to stone or who had run away without collecting their belongings.

She pointed, “That’s one of my first memories, none of the rest are important.”

Ria nodded. Then with a wave of her hand, the dried-up piece of snakeskin that looked to be taken from only the back half of the serpent turned into a glimmering point of light and flew into the other room where Kal was.

The woman turned to the sprite. “Ria, what should I pick for a name?”

The avatar giggled, “I’m the worst person to ask, Kal gave me my name.”

“He can do that?”

“I belong to him, of course he can.”

“Can he give me a name?”

Ria thought for a moment, “I don’t see why not. Most races assign names to their children at birth, so it might feel a little strange for him. You could always come up with a name yourself. You may want to run it past Kal first though, you don’t want to pick something that will sound awful or mean something bad by accident.”

The gorgon nodded as Kal came back into the room and tossed the fabric square of the folded tent at Ria. It only made it about halfway to her before turning into a speck of light and floating back into the sprite’s bag.

“Ready?”

Both of the women nodded.

As they made their way through the tunnels, and further away from the vein of glowing mithril ore, the gorgon’s hair fanned out looking like it was trying to go in all directions at once. When Kal asked about the serpents’ odd behavior, she explained that they were what allowed her to navigate the darkness and kept her from running into walls. He was surprised to find that she couldn’t see in the dark like most cave dwellers, relying completely on the snakes’ ability to detect minute changes in temperature. She also mentioned that between the residual heat in her body from the bath and having him walking with her, she felt like she was walking around with one of those sticks with fire on the end that humans sometimes used.

They hadn’t made it very far when a loud roar came from behind them. The gorgon cursed, knowing that it was probably her scream from earlier that attracted the monster. Turning, she walked back behind Kal and patiently waited for the beast to show itself. At the light tap on her shoulder, the woman looked over to see Kal shaking his head.

“You aren’t alone anymore,” he said. Holding out both arms, he squatted down next to her. After a couple of moments of intense concentration, he closed his hands as though grasping something and stood up like he was lifting something heavy. The red rune on his bracer shone brightly. The gorgon’s eyes bugged out as a stretch of the cave floor they’d just walked over rose up to meet the ceiling in tandem with the mage’s movements.

Kal turned and had to hold back a laugh as he saw the woman next to him staring slack-jawed at the brand-new wall in front of her. Even funnier, each of her snakes was also staring with their mouths hanging open. She slowly turned to look at him.

“Let’s go,” he said, smiling.

She threw another glance at the wall before dazedly taking the lead once again. This man could have squished her like a bug but instead chose to tie her up and drive her nearly insane with pleasure. She wasn’t sure exactly how she felt about that.

The trip back to dwarven tunnels took the better part of a day with the gorgon leading them. After spending most of the past weeks in her bag, Ria was enjoying a little bit of freedom, though she did lament being stuck flying around inside tunnels instead of out in the open air. Ria’s soft glow turned out to be a bother for the gorgon, since what she saw in the faint light didn’t match what her snakes were telling her. Kal got her to agree to a compromise and cast the darkvision spell on her. After a moment of disorientation, she was quite happy with her new sight. She still used a couple of her snakes for navigation but no longer required the full halo.

Kal couldn’t resist breathing a deep sigh of relief when he saw the telltale flicker of a burning torch coming from around a corner up ahead. It was getting close to a week since Sandy had dropped him off and he was thankful for any signs of civilization no matter how small.

Kal realized how numb he had become to the serpents on the gorgon’s head when they ran into their first dwarves. What appeared to be a group of engineers saw a woman with reptilian eyes and patches of skin walk into the small cavern, the snakes attached to her scalp pointed in their direction.

Some of the dwarves knew of the gorgon and covered their eyes immediately. Others drew short swords or small axes as they turned to face the threat, knocking over their various pieces of measuring equipment in their haste.

Kal ran forward, suddenly realizing what the snake-haired woman must look like. Holding out his empty hands towards the group of small men he called out, “Woah! We aren’t your enemy! I was asked to remove the gorgon from your mithril vein. She and I are on our way to the surface.”

“She ain’t dead?” said one of the dwarves covering his face, his face going red as he realized how dumb the question was.

“No, she’s not,” replied Kal, his voice barely above a growl.

“Well that’s a relief,” said another one lowering his hands.

“Whaddaya mean ‘a relief’?” asked a female dwarf who seemed younger than most of the others. Kal noticed those who had hidden their faces were the elders of the group.

“She can turn livin’ things straight to stone just by lookin’ at ‘em. When it got out she was found livin’ in a mithril vein, a couple o’ the nuttier dwarves were wantin’ ta start a church around her. But evr’yone knows ye don’t stand ‘tween a dwarf and his mithril. Though it sounds like when the high muckety-mucks decided to get rid o’ her, they couldn’t find anyone willin’. That’s when they started hirin’ the humans, hopin’ one of ‘em might do what this one has,” he said, indicating the mage.

“And if the humans killed her?” Kal was still unimpressed with the story, though it did explain why they hadn’t just dealt with the gorgon themselves.

One of the older dwarves shrugged, “Ye don’t stand ‘tween a dwarf and his mithril.”

Looking over his shoulder he could see the hurt in her eyes. While not necessarily friendly, she had always considered the dwarves friends as they were the first race she had contact with and had taught her how to speak to the other intelligent races. As Kal watched, her face hardened.

Stepping in front of him, she addressed the group of dwarves. “If ye ... you were willing to stand by and let someone kill me, then I believe I’m done with all of you. Which way ta ... to the surface?” she snarled as her hair hissed menacingly at the engineers. Kal noted that she was suppressing her dwarvish accent and trying to talk more like him. Because of this, she stumbled over the unfamiliar way of saying a few of the words.

Many of the dwarves covered their faces but one of the older ones smiled and pointed down an adjoining tunnel. “Yer rightly pissed,” he said. “Though I don’t imagine it’ll improve yer thinkin’ o’ dwarves, there’s a lot of us who’re goin’ ta be happy this is how things turned out.”

Without answering, the gorgon strode in the direction the barrel-chested man had indicated. Kal silently followed as there didn’t seem to be much else to say.

Ria, however, didn’t agree with the mage’s assessment. Nearly vibrating with rage, she flew in front of the dwarven engineers.

“Assholes!” she screamed.

“Git on with ye, fairy,” one of the elders said, waving her off.

Spinning around she slapped an ass cheek. “Kiss it,” she spat, before buzzing off after the gorgon and mage. When she finally caught up to them, Kal was biting a lip trying not to laugh as the snake-haired woman continued striding forward, but with a huge grin on her face.

“Fuckin’ hell!” yelled Dûldin. Upon seeing the gorgon coming towards him and Sandy, he immediately reached for his axe as well as a small hatchet for throwing.

“Stop him,” Kal said calmly even as his speed rune flared and he stepped in front of the woman while bringing his shield up. It wasn’t necessary, his companion’s glowing eyes had already locked the dwarf in place with his arm drawn back, about to loose the small axe.

“Dûldin!” screamed the golem seeing the dwarf freeze in place. Kal covered his ears at the horrendous screeching noise as the gorgon winced and her hair hissed loudly at the rock girl in unison. Seconds later, Ria made two earpieces appear in the mage’s hand.

“What about her?” asked the gorgon as Kal fitted the pebble into her ear. After Felli, Silma, Dax and the dog girls, he was honestly surprised to find she had human ears beneath the snakes.

“She’s a friend and carrying one of my children, don’t hurt her.”

“Oh, he’s still alive,” said Sandy. She looked up at the woman with Kal. “How did you do that?”

“Better question: how do you know he’s still alive?” asked the mage.

The golem tapped her head next to her eye. “I can’t see through him. Also, he’s not really stopped as I thought at first. He’s just moving extraordinarily slow.”

“From experience, I can tell you his mind is working at full speed. I was stuck like that for just over six days. Since you can see him move, can you tell how much time will pass for his body while ‘frozen’?”

Sandy watched the dwarf for a few moments, “I’d guess thirteen seconds.”

“That seems oddly specific.”

The golem shrugged, “It’s not like watching rock move in places where the earth is cracked. With those, it’s hard to tell if it will break loose a hundred or a thousand years from now. He’s moving a lot faster than that.”

“I assure you it doesn’t feel like it to him.”

“We were just coming down to check on you. He said that if you were still alive, you should be making your way up through this tunnel.” She smiled at the gorgon, “I’d say that you were successful.”

“Since I was going to continue on to Lantaris after this, I thought you were going to head home?”

“I was, until the dwarves summoned me back here.”

“Why?”

“You have a visitor and I can get to you quicker than anyone else. I saw Dûldin walking in the tunnel a few minutes ago and stopped to talk to him. He wanted to check on a group of engineers surveying for a new ventilation shaft, then we were to come looking for you.”

“Considering Gerda was the only other one who knew I was coming here, it’s not hard to figure out who my visitor is.”

“But...” Sandy prompted.

“But ... if it was Gerda, she would have come with you. Okay, I’m curious now, who is it?”

“Not telling,” she said with a coy smile, “and if we had more time I’d make you work for it. Sadly, it’s urgent so we need to get going.”

Kal’s companion looked confused, “Dax? Gerda? This one...”

“Sandy,” he offered.

“Sandy. How many women do you have?”

“More than I can handle, to be honest,” he replied, smiling. “Sandy here isn’t mine, and technically neither is Dax. If you don’t want to be one of my lovers because of this, I’ll be sad but I’ll understand. Sharing a man isn’t for every woman.”

“You’re carrying his child but aren’t his woman?” she asked the golem.

“Nope, I’ve been working with this kingdom off and on for years now,” she looked down at the frozen dwarf next to her. “Now that I have a little one on the way, I might broaden my horizons a little bit. As long as someone here,” Sandy tapped the dwarf on the forehead, “can get through his thick dwarven skull that Kal will be the father to any daughters I have in the future. Because of that, he gets first dibs on my body whenever he’s around. Assuming I don’t go finding him first,” she said, grinning.

“Why would you only let Kal give you a child?”

The golem gave her a puzzled look then turned her gaze on the mage, “You haven’t told her?”

“Told me what?” asked the gorgon while also turning toward Kal.

“Remember how you said that you didn’t feel any desire for the dwarves? The same is true for all monster girls. Also, you can’t have children with dwarves, only with humans.”

The snake-haired woman frowned at the frozen dwarf within their midst. “Doesn’t seem like a problem at the moment,” she deadpanned.

Sandy sighed. She couldn’t really blame the woman, with all of the people the dwarves had sent to remove her. “Your friend is waiting, we should go.”

“What about him?” asked Kal, pointing at the dwarf.

“These tunnels have been cleared for more than a decade. He’ll be fine for as long as it will take me to drop you off at the front gate and come back for him. Anything I need to know about his condition before we go?”

“No sex.”

Sandy’s eyes narrowed, “Now you’re just being jealous.”

“No, he’s not,” the gorgon piped in, “Kal gave me a taste of what I put him through. No sex.”