Chapter 2: Alone

Our lives started to change over the next month. Beth found Samuel’s notes about my training and put me back on a regimen. Physical training to build stamina, strength, agility and combat skills became the daily events of my life. We found time between it all to enhance our love for one another. I knew she was beautiful before but pregnant she radiated like the sun in the sky.

We discussed the three new Caretakers at length. I wanted someone as smart as she was but Beth wanted someone who complemented her shortcomings. I didn’t think she had any, but she let me know that she did. We settled on a candidate who I would call out for the next time I was at Crossroads. I didn’t know if I would have a mission to accomplish, or spend my time just getting to know her.

Beth helped me review when we were not training or loving. Usually that was when the biology had decided to stop cooperating. I was eating a better diet along with everything else. Beth would take the time to stroke my ego and various body parts as they improved with the training.

We had made slow deep fulfilling love one morning. I was lying in the bed when Beth came back to join me. “You need to go and meet her today.”

“You’re tired of me already?”

“You will be back in fifteen minutes.”

“I don’t know how long I will be gone.”

“It’s always only fifteen minutes.”

“But last time...” She kissed me to end any disagreement.

“She needs to meet you and there are Damsels that need your help.”

Dressed with my ring firmly in place I kissed Beth goodbye, and she pushed me through the portal. It was an eerie feeling entering into Crossroads and not having anyone there to greet me. I walked around and saw that everything was clean and orderly, but it was still very quiet. There was no reason to wait so I said. “Jasmine Bushfighter, I take you as my Caretaker.”

From the bedroom walked out a woman three inches taller than I and dark skinned. Her eyes dark with a body that beckoned as all women of Cassandra did.

“Hello, Hero John.”

“Hello Caretaker Jasmine.”

“Can I make love to you?” she asked.

“I would like nothing more than that. But it will honestly be more lust than love at this point.”

“Either way I will more than enjoy all of it.” Her voice seemed the equivalent of satin.

She was strong and passionate, but she wanted a Hero and all that was entailed about that. It was after the fifth restorative that the lustful sexual needs passed, and we slowed down to enjoy the small passions of lovers.

We were exhausted in the bed then. She declined a restorative simply wanting to sleep in the afterglow of what we shared. I laid her head on my shoulder, holding her close to me.

When we woke the passion was there, a restorative appeared, and we celebrated it. Food was now the necessity along with the need of facilities. Over our meal she finally began the questions I knew were coming.

“Why did you choose me, Hero John?”

“I chose you to complement my other Caretaker.”

“Beth. I have heard she is on Earth now pregnant with your child.” That voice was so soft, smooth and sultry.

“She is trapped there.”

“Is she or does she desire to be?”

“Both, and we like it that way.”

“So, why did you choose me?”

“She and I chose you because of your abilities.”

“My abilities?” She looked at me quizzically.

“You’re a natural fighter. We learned where you lived on Cassandra. ‘The last wild place there is,’ is how Beth referred to it.”

“Yes, that is a good description of my home.”

“Beth has many and various strengths and has the opportunity to teach me.”

“I see.”

“I want to learn from you those areas where Beth is not as skilled.”

“You want a fighter to help you develop those skills.”

“Actually I wanted a shimmering caramel-skinned lover to drive Beth mad with desire for me. But since she already is, I’ll settle for a fighter and all that comes with that.” She was on me in an instant. Everything that women of Cassandra had learned out in the wilds she knew, according to her folder. Beth and I had hoped that she would respond to the challenge I represented. Beth would not have been disappointed.

We didn’t fight fair, but since we didn’t have weapons I hoped the restoratives would be enough to help us recover. I freely admit that wrestling with a naked woman in the prime of her life who I desired made it damn difficult to concentrate. I figured that my manliness in comparison to the delicate men of Cassandra worked to my advantage also. I used the knowledge I had acquired and put it to the test.

After twenty minutes we had worked up quite a sheen, and so I cheated and got her in position and took her quickly. There was no more fight then, it became more of an animalistic mating. We kept that form of foreplay going for the next two days. I would not always win the battle, but I ended up always enjoying the spoils of it.

Jasmine was a contradiction to what a woman of Cassandra was to be. Yes, she could and would love firstly or softly. But she would battle you to the point of exhaustion before either conquering or surrendering. The wilds of Cassandra were quite the proving ground for a fighter, it seemed.

We started with close-in fighting moves that next morning. She enjoyed the challenge and we had epic battles. We would agree to keep to a half real time speed and power threshold, but it would eventually be full speed and contact no quarter given or taken before it was over. Of course a restorative and we were all over each other.

She would ask me about impregnating all of the other caretakers. Tell me about how I was rumored to be more than just a Hero to some of those women. The big question was would I impregnate her when my days of being a Hero were over. That of course would lead to some fairly athletic workouts again.

We progressed to a fighting form that was the specialty of the women who lived in the wilds. While we didn’t have any weapon we used our bodies and arms, as though we did. I would call it a combination of visualization and movement. It was practice I could not have anywhere else.

As long as we didn’t target the neck we could fight right on the edge. We used that chamber for one or the other of us the next three weeks. I lost more in the beginning than I won. What I learned from those fights would hopefully protect me better. Hesitation was forgotten, killing strokes the answer if a weapon was drawn.

Finally, we spent two days between having sex and making love. I had doubted Beth when she had insisted on Jasmine, but she did have the strengths that Beth didn’t. I would be a better Hero from our times together. One morning over breakfast Jasmine said, “There are missions you could go on.”

“I didn’t know if that was the plan from the Powers that Be.”

“It’s up to you this time. They didn’t want to have you take a mission if you only wanted to establish our bond first.”

“Have I established our bond?”

“We are very well bonded on all levels.” I got that lick of the lips and look. So we worked on the bond through four restoratives, and she slept on my shoulder.

We woke and showered together and had our meal. “Do you think I should go on the mission?”

“Yes, the Damsels are waiting for you, my Hero.”

We spent the next hour looking over the missions she had been given. We ended up selecting Cassie Citydweller. She had been on Chaos for three months and was the property of one Jon Tumble, a gambler of some renown in his region.

His specialty was cards and dice, cheating at them without getting caught seemed to be a way of life for him. That is how Cassie had come to be his. Jasmine and I reviewed the games and the likely ways to cheat at them. She called for some of the cards and dice. We played the games and then she started to show me how to cheat at them. It took a while before I could see how she would bottom deal, peak at hole cards or palm them.

With the dice she showed me the loaded ones and how they worked. We made a game out of me being able to tell her when she had put them in or taken them out. I wondered where she had learned all of this but decided that living in the wilds of Cassandra meant more than just being away from the city.

We had three more times of wild sex and then one slow loving. Showered and dressed, she took me to the portal and on to Chaos. “Go and rescue the Damsel Cassie, my Hero.”

I was in the vault then. I put my finger in the receptacle, and it glowed green. My vault appeared and I took out my things. I wondered how much time had passed since I was last here. I walked out of the vault and didn’t recognize the bank.

The bank manager just looked at me and went back to his work. I walked to the door to look out. I didn’t recognize anything. When I walked outside, the stench hit me.

It was mind numbing for a few seconds. I had read about this in some of the books but in Samuel’s area it did not seem to exist. I guessed that once you were in Chaos as you moved through it the smell just gradually grew. Logic dictated that I was in a part of Chaos not located in Samuel’s Citadel sphere of control.

It quickly came to me that I would be on my own this time also. I went about my business of getting supplies and arranging for a horse. I would miss Blue but he was likely gone by now anyway. I left the horse at the stable for now and went to get a room at the inn. I would need to ask about Jon Tumble and then begin to hunt him for him. My best source of leads would be in town for now.

It was early afternoon, so I decided that a little work with my weapons in my room before a nap would be best. There was a difference of actually having a weapon in my hand and the way I had been practicing with Jasmine. I worked up a sweat before I stopped. There were some slight differences, but I worked through them.