Three for the Man Who Can Stand His Ground

John Kezinski stopped in the cave mouth, standing behind Dana and Liz. It was easy to see over their strawberry-blonde and flaxen heads. Not that there was much to see: a grassy flat punctuated by occasional bushes, rolling out to a range of hills half-hidden by haze. The flat had obvious boggy places, but he knew better than to trust the apparent solid ground between. Well, except right here, immediately in front of the cave, where the grass had been tamped down into muddy dirt by the passage of clawed feet onto two foot-tracks, leading left and right.

He leaned out to look up and around. The cave was cut into a steep rock hillside, possibly a large outcrop. From out across the marsh, he was betting, it would look like an island in green water. If it was rocky throughout, they should climb it, rather than leave their own distinctive tracks in the mud. John wasn’t confident he could, though. Not fast enough, if Kolchoi caught up with them. And what about the girls?

Ricky reappeared as if out of thin air. John had almost gotten used to him doing that. Ricky looked up, around, let out a breath. “Up, of course, but how?”

Liz cackled and rubbed her hands. “By leaving it to me.”

Huh?

Dana glanced at her. “Can you bring us up?”

Liz turned to Ricky. “You still have the rope, right? We need to work fast.”

“Uh, yeah.” Ricky took off his backpack and dug into it. At first, when they dropped through the gate into this world, John had taken what little had survived the shredding of Liz’s pack, while Ricky carried what remained from Dana’s duffle bag. Somehow, though, the last time they’d used Liz’s rope, to cross that ravine, it had ended up with Ricky. John tried not to let the inconsistency bother him. Ditto how long it took Ricky to find it.

As Ricky rooted around, Liz stepped out to the edge of the grasses, scanning the rock face. John looked a question at Dana—she knew Liz the best.

“Liz is a rock-climber, ” Dana told him.

“It’s my thing, ” Liz said absently.

Huh. John had no idea. But then, you don’t know much about someone who shared one class with you and no social circles. Climbing would explain why Liz’s shoulders and arms were so muscular. John had assumed she swam a lot.

When Ricky handed her the coil of rope, she threaded her arm and head through the loop, wearing it as a bandolier. Without a pause, she started scaling the rock face to the left of the cave using hand- and toe-holds John couldn’t even see till she touched them. As she swarmed up, she asked, “Ricky, how are you at climbing the rope in gym?”

“Eh, ” he said with complete lack of enthusiasm. “Not great.”

John held back his smile. That, he could do. He looked merely husky, but he did enough work at his uncle’s warehouse, his muscles were strong enough for most purposes—including ropes. “I’m pretty good, ” he said.

“Great, ” Liz called down. She was already five meters above their heads. “When I toss down the end, wall-walk up. Like you see movie spies do on skyscrapers. Hold it near your waist, not your shoulders, for balance.”

Um, okay. Not the same kind of rope climbing, but John supposed if you had the arm strength for one, you’d have enough for the other.

Thirty seconds later, the rope snaked down. It’d taken her a bare minute to reach the top and anchor it. It took John at least two to join her. He was puffing by then. That hadn’t been fun, between the pull of his heavy pack and his own substantial weight. His arms still felt good, at least. He hoped they still had time to get under cover.

“Dana, tie the rope around your waist, ” Liz called down. “We’ll pull you up.”

‘We’ meaning him, John guessed. While Ricky helped Dana get ready, John asked Liz, “Why here, where it’s steeper?” A dozen meters over, the slope angled back enough that scrub could grow in cracks here and there—and beyond it looked like an achievable scramble.

“We’ll leave fewer traces on the bare rock.”

Ah—good point. Just like Ricky had led them over the rocks in the snow.

Liz pulled up the slack and looped it around the tree it was tied to, to give John something of a pulley to haul against. He looped it behind his waist, so he could pull with his legs too. Liz stood at the edge, coaching Dana up, and in less than a minute the smaller girl embraced him, arms around his waist—such a change after two weeks of avoiding his touch as much as possible. He could get used to the feeling.

“Thank you, ” she said, then stepped back to let Liz untie her.

Then it was Ricky’s turn. That took more work.

While Ricky repacked the rope, John looked around. The island outcrop was a light-colored granitic rock with obvious grains, possibly granodiorite. No obvious inclusions. It formed a flat-topped ridge, about twice as long as it was wide, John thought. The top was mostly covered by shallow soil, growing short trees and brush, with frequent boulders and bedrock breaking through.

He hopped onto a clear boulder, then stepped to another.

Behind him, Ricky said, “There’s a grove for shelter that way, to your left.”

“Gotcha, ” John called without looking back. They could loop around.

After a moment, he heard the others scuffling as they followed his lead. He used his makeshift spear to vault across a patch of open ground.

Liz giggled. “The ground is lava!”

John grinned and tossed the spear to her. She vaulted across, and he caught her. He didn’t want to let go, but did. It was hard to believe that fifteen minutes ago he’d been having sex with her—that he’d been fucking Liz Thorbjornsson. That the four of them had used fucking each other to power a long-distance teleport.

John wasn’t sure how far they’d teleported, but he thought the sun had moved backwards in the sky. Which made it a noticeable arc around this world’s curvature. He glanced up at the planetary rings arching across the sky—as beautiful as ever, but still no help with positioning, not until they worked up a sextant or astrolabe. And survival came first. They’d almost died too many times already.

After a couple rock-hopping minutes, they reached Ricky’s grove. Its white-barked beech-ish trees were interspersed with something that looked exactly like scrub-oak but with elm leaves—enough shelter John felt they could stop running. Safe enough to catch their breath, at least. Assuming they hadn’t left a trail.

“I erased our traces, ” Ricky announced.

After a moment, Liz asked, “Another new aspect of your magic?”

Ricky nodded.

John kept his expression stony. He was the only one who hadn’t developed magic. Or not yet. Dana claimed he clearly would, but honestly, the way the universe laughed, he gave it less than even odds. To cover his disappointment, he knelt (ripping the right knee of his cargo pants even further) beside a shallow hollow in the middle of the grove and started forming a fire pit.

Dana saw this, and began collecting stones for him.

“You could have mentioned that before John started playing children’s games, ” Liz teased Ricky.

“Hey, ” John protested mildly. “Lava is serious stuff.”

Ricky snorted, and Liz shook her head.

“Who’s on lookout?” Dana asked. She had a point—someone should watch the cave, and the paths across the bogs.

Ricky let out a sigh. “I’ll do it. I can scout out a good spot.”

Liz looked around. “Where are we, anyway? In hills, like across the flats?”

“Nope, we’re on an island in the marsh, ” John said, settling another stone into his circle. “It’s about twenty meters this way, ” he waved towards the portal cave side, “thirty meters thataway, ” in the other direction, “fifty there, ” one long way, “and eighty yonder. The slope’s easiest yonder—the ridge slumps down rather than drops off.”

After a few moments of silence, he looked up. The other three were staring at him.

“John, ” Liz said carefully. “How do you know that?”

He shrugged. He just knew it.

No, wait. He knew it. He could feel, like he was touching it with his hands, the size and scope and material of the entire outcrop, including the portal cave below them, and the boggy marsh around—out to maybe a hundred meters, hard to tell. This—

Whoa. “Earthsense, ” he breathed. He smiled in wonder at his friends. “I’ve got earthsense.”

Dana grinned. “What about earthbending?”

Okay, if she could pull out an Avatar reference, she was definitely someone John wanted to know better. He stared down at his ring of stones. “Um.” He held a hand over a stone, sensing its presence. He lowered his hand until, there, a handspan away, he could grip it. A tingling feeling grew in his palm and ran up his arm to his shoulder. He tugged, and the stone shifted, hopped into mid-air. He held it in his magic, unsteadily, for a couple seconds, then lost control. It thumped to the ground and lay still.

“Yeah, ” he said. “I do.” He dropped back to sit on his heels. “Woofs.” He was suddenly very, very tired.

Softly, Liz said, “Your next assignment is to figure out how to not use brute force.”

He blinked at her. Like she had, deflecting the wind yesterday. “Okay then, ” he said faintly. He looked at Ricky. “Lookout?”

“Lookout, ” Ricky agreed. “Feed our boyfriend something, ’k?” Then somehow the scenery around him seemed to fold over, hiding him away.

(That word, boyfriend, was something to think about later. When John had more blood sugar.)

Liz sighed, looking at where Ricky had disappeared. “That’s both really cool and kinda creepy.”

Dana opened Ricky’s pack. “Nah, just plain cool, ” she said. Accepting the magic. She pulled out a ziplock baggie of mostly cooked strips of meat and passed it to John. The scent made his mouth water. He managed not to rip open the plastic, but it was a near thing. The taste was ambrosial. And more, his stomach approved.

Man, brute-force magic knocked the stuffing outta ya.

Dana went on, “All three of you are.”

Liz gave her a Look. “Says the one who gives us hurricane-force orgasms. And don’t you say it’s really us—your magic amplifies it, at the very least.”

Dana nodded reluctantly. “It does. We’re creating the energy ourselves, but the way the portal uses it, it does get amplified. I wish we could have sex right here, just to show us what we’re like without the magic.” Once they were out of danger. Then she added, “Well not just that—I want to make love to you all, desperately.”

John looked at the baggie in his hand. It was empty. There was no more meat. Why was there no more meat?

Dana wordlessly handed him another baggie. Meat! At that moment John knew he was head over heels in love with this girl. Even more in love than he had been before. (Another later thing for more blood sugar.) He tore into her gift.

Finally, Liz said, “I do too.” Her voice was full of desperate longing.

John desperately wanted to console her, but moving didn’t seem wise. He swallowed his current mouthful. “We will, ” he told her. Then to Dana, “Give our girlfriend a hug.”

He managed to say that unfamiliar word, girlfriend, without a hitch. He must be feeling stronger. Especially since he’d used it for one of the school’s acknowledged hotties. He didn’t like to think of dating pools in terms of leagues, as in being out of his, but it was safe to say she didn’t date in the pools he swam in.

Dana smiled and did just as he said. Liz clutched her for comfort. John nodded, feeling better himself. He sealed the half-eaten baggie, though he could easily inhale the rest, and started gathering dried moss and fallen twigs to start a fire.

Dana didn’t date in the same pools, either, and he didn’t really know her—she was two years and two grades younger, with no common classes. Plus shy, almost painfully cautious around boys—he thought of her as Liz’s Shadow, their first few days in this world. As he got to know Dana, though, John got more confused: she’d never been camping before but had signed up for the Outdoors Club’s end-of-the-school-year wilderness survival camp, and was as good a hiker as any of them. Not as beautiful as Liz, with less delicate features—not to mention less busty. Quiet and thoughtful. Until yesterday, anyway. Now, she was openly chatty and at ease with everyone. The change was unnerving.

The girls loosened their embrace. Dana glanced at John. “I’ll gather wood.” But instead of heading out, she stepped up behind him and wrapped her arms around his chest, leaning her chin on his shoulder. “Thank you, ” she whispered. Then with a quick kiss on his neck, she was gone.

His skin tingled where her soft lips had touched. And where her body, including two small, soft breasts, had rested against his back.

Was this really the same timid girl he’d helped protect the last two weeks? He had no idea what to make of her transformation, other than putting it down to her magic—but Ricky’s and Liz’s magics hadn’t changed them.

Liz shifted down to the two backpacks, and opened John’s. John watched her a moment, then started setting his tinder.

“How do you know her?” he asked. Hardly the most important thing to talk about, but sometimes his mouth engaged before his brain.

“Originally? Girl Scouts. She dropped it in middle school, but we stayed in touch, and this year we had a couple classes together.”

“Huh. I thought she was in ninth grade?” Liz had, like Ricky, just finished tenth. John was a year ahead of them, but younger than Ricky—something to do with Ricky’s immigration.

“She was, ” Liz said. “She’s advanced track in math, though, and in my class, and we were lab partners in Bio as well.”

“Ah.” John set one more twig on his tinder, then stopped. He needed firewood before continuing. Softly, he asked, “You trust her?”

Just as softly, she said, “Her, yes. Her magic... ” Liz bit her lower lip, and looked into the trees where Dana had disappeared. “She’s shy—she takes a while to open up to people, especially boys. I’ve never seen her open so wide so suddenly. It can only be because she trusts that sex magic of hers. That or she’s driven to survive.”

Oh. He—he could relate to that last.

Dana came around a tree in another direction than where Liz had looked, carrying a small bundle of sticks and branches before her chest. John had no idea how much she’d heard.

The wood was old and surprisingly dry, given the marsh. It should be close to smokeless if he was careful.

An hour later, as the last of their goat-meat finished cooking, Ricky walked into the grove holding a dead animal that looked like a cross between a rabbit and a groundhog. “Found a hidden spot that both overlooks the cave and is next to a colony of these. Stay still long enough, and they just come out.”

“We can set snares, ” John said. Sitting still was not John’s strong suit.

Ricky grinned, knowing exactly what John was getting at. The boys had known each other for a few years, but only became good friends the last couple weeks, after John convinced Ricky to sign up for the wilderness camp—and, especially, since falling into this world. Having each other’s back through danger will do that.

“First things first, ” Liz said, pointing at the animal.

“I can take lookout till sunset, ” Dana said.

Two hours later, as the last light passed nearly horizontally through the trees, John crept towards Dana’s lookout. He’d set up one snare at the edge of the colony, but the tension in her body made him wary of making another.

She signalled for silence as he approached. Good call on the snare, he decided.

From beside her, he could see Kolchoi at the cave—two standing, clearly on watch, and two seated. The edge of the outcrop obscured what the latter were doing, and he didn’t dare raise his head to see more clearly. It was unsettling how close the reptilians were. They were not acting like the hunters who’d been chasing them, though—more settled, maybe. Not as on edge. John settled in prone beside the smaller girl to observe.

Staying still was harder than usual: memories of her naked body kept prodding him. He silently tapped a stone with his finger to channel his fidgets.

As the last copper sunlight fled the grassy flats and gathering mist, Dana slowly turned her head to look up at him. He could feel her study him for several heartbeats. The kind of thoughtful consideration that he was used to from her, though never before from so physically close. He finally glanced down.

With a small gesture, out of sight of the Kolchoi below, she indicated heading back. He barely nodded agreement. He crept backwards first, then waited for her a few meters away from the edge. She led the way back to their camp through the shadowy trees. He had to force himself to watch his footing instead of her butt.

The fire was almost out—they didn’t want any light at night, no way no how. At Ricky’s inquiring look, John said softly, “Four Kolchoi, standing guard at the cave. Not hunting.”

“These four came through first, ” Dana added, “followed ten minutes later by another quad, one of them a commander. After a brief discussion, the second group hiked off. I had the impression of, ” she paused, “they weren’t particularly on guard. Like this is a routine patrol.”

John nodded. “The ones I saw aren’t on high alert.”

“Huh, ” Ricky said.

“Does that mean they don’t yet know we can use the portals?” Liz asked.

“That’s my guess, ” Dana said.

“Either way, we need to lay low tonight, ” John said. “Extra careful with sounds and which way the smoke blows.” Especially that last, if they started a fire again tomorrow.

Liz nodded. “I can keep our smoke away from them.”

Oh. Duh.

Ricky’s teeth flashed white in a brief smile. “We should scout them, carefully, while they sleep.” The Kolchoi were less active at night—one reason, possibly the biggest, they’d survived as long as they had. Well, until they found the portals yesterday.

Wow ... it had been only yesterday. Two very busy days.

Two very quiet nights later, John woke to find Dana snuggling into his arms. She must have just gotten off watch. He glanced up at the rings through a gap in the branches, and found the world’s shadow lay low in the west—it was a few hours till dawn.

Her butt wiggled delightfully against him—very distracting. As was her heady scent. After two weeks without bathing, not to mention two rounds of big-bang sex, they all stank, but he didn’t mind. Well, he minded the distraction.

By unspoken consent, the four kids hadn’t had sex since using the portal, both saving their stamina and for stealth. Kisses, cuddles, a little light petting, that was it. John was starting to regret this. Having a girl fold herself into him, so his cock nestled between her buttocks, was, well, distracting. Especially a girl like Dana. How had he ever thought of her as less attractive than Liz?

(Or Kira. John allowed himself one last, faint regret. He hoped she understood, when they met up again at the end of summer.)

Suddenly Liz was shaking him—her face bleary in the early dawn. Despite his erection and distraction, he must have drifted off.

“Guys, we have a problem, ” she whispered urgently.

The words jolted through him. Okay, now he was awake.

“What?” whispered Ricky.

“I fucked up, ” Liz said. “I fell asleep, and when I jerked awake I made a noise. I, uh, shit, I bumped a stone and it tumbled down. The guards noticed, and now they’re investigating.”

Damn. John sat up, followed by Dana. It wasn’t the first time someone fell asleep on watch. Nor the first time they were almost caught because of it. Last time it’d been him. And besides, no blame-game in the crisis—survival first.