Now that we had the trick of it, the rest of the bear subsection was a cinch. Which was fantastic… except using that trick made me wish I was dead and buried just for the grave to roll in.

  “Damn it… damn it damn it damn it!”

  This whole thing was Xhinn’s backwards, megalomaniacal way of flirting with me. Honestly, who puts their own vaginal secretions into a crystal egg designed to break open whenever you mutter words of endearment? It was not like any rational person could ever misconstrue them as meant for Her, but that was exactly how she intended me to take it—the point of which was driven explicitly home after we ran across the second bear.

  It had the same message as the first, and after I begrudgingly uttered it aloud, the bear collapsed just as before. But since we had not cut the crystal out first, it leaked through the exterior heart right through the ‘i’ in ‘i luv u.’ And that was when I found out that Xhinn had interpreted the heart symbol in the same way Jax had.

  The ‘i’ was even lower case!

  Freaking pervert! Valentine’s was supposed to be all about grand gestures and vows of commitment. Flowers and chocolates. It was a pure, wholesome holiday for making single people depressed and couples anxious. Setting up a whole Dungeon all about how wet I was making Her was completely inappropriate!

  What was I even supposed to do with that information? Did She honestly think we had a chance as a couple? Touching Her was a sure path to madness! I mean, I could technically do it now if I had the money—and was that not just the worst metaphor ever—but it would be an extremely delicate balancing act to maintain, do absolutely nothing to dissuade Xhinn from Her constant efforts to force us into Dungeon after Dungeon, and piss off Ahnbe to no end.

  I felt like I was in an unwilling relationship with Soviet Russia turned high school girl. All the cutesy love notes might have been sweet if not for the giant H-bomb strapped to her back.

  Sigh…

  Okay, fine. Maybe I was being a tad… dramatic about all this. It was just a couple of words. And in fairness, saying them was preferable to having to fight our way through. There were a few scenarios later on that we would have had no chance of getting past otherwise. Sometimes there were two or even three bears at a time. Sometimes we would step on a cobblestone with a hidden spring mechanism that would release a bear right on top of us—sometimes even during a fight! Those encounters got pretty dicey. Especially because not every message was the same, and cursive font penned in fur is not the easiest to read.

  i luv feeling u up. i’m mad for u. i think u’r way hotter than ur sister…

  Yes. She actually made me say that. And let me tell you, when you know for a fact that the Shepherdess of the Creatures of the Dark is fully capable of popping out of Her creations at any time, it makes you think twice about disparaging Her in their hearing, but when you have a couple of fifteen-foot grizzlies charging you from either side, you just have to cross your fingers and bite the bullet. Fortunately, Ahnbe had not been paying attention, or we would have been cooked—that or constructs, just as a general class of enemies, were not a thing She handled.

  Whatever the case, I was not having a good time. And Jax did not much appreciate it, either… once I explained why I was upset. Being illiterate, she had not even picked up that the hearts had messages on them—as opposed to Mia, who had noticed, but had been unable to translate their broken, commercialized scrawlings. I think discovering the existence of such a thing was the only part of the situation that actually upset her.

  “That is not how you spell love!”

  “I know,” I returned morosely.

  “Foolish nonsense is what it is. And ‘ur’?! Disgusting. What vile cockamamy!”

  On a positive note, the bears dropped an Average Rank II. All free of charge… if you discounted the vial of acid each dumped upon my soul. They probably would have been worth more, or so Mia believed, had the kill-switch not been a thing, but that would have required the bears to be killable without it.

  Maybe with fire? I actually rolled my eyes at myself over the thought. It was almost becoming a meme by that point, but there was just something in my little wizarding heart that raged over its lack of a proper fireball spell. Still… against a giant stuffed bear? Come on! It would have been perfect.

  There’s got to be some way of converting all this Lust garbage into elemental damage. Fire arrows are a thing, right? That was sure to be something we could look into for Arx… once we rescued her. And got her through her Boundary Trial. Yeah, that’s going to take a while. But Lynnria has loads of levels to go before she gets hits that roadblock. Maybe she would be open to expanding her options with that Poison Bolt spell? With her family history, she would reject anything remotely related to fire magic, but I was sure I could figure out some kind of gnarly chemical reaction that would pique her interest. Do I have to have encountered napalm first before I can use it in a spell?

  Regardless, it was nice to finally be getting something of worth from a Dungeon run, and we ended up with a collection of fourteen brand new Gems of Power—enough for me and Jax to both gain a couple of Layers.

  Meanwhile, the hedge maze portion ended up being less of a maze and more of a long, winding path. There were a few blind alleys here and there, but nothing that was likely to trip someone up for long.

  It occurred to me that the Demon Queen might have been going… somewhat easy on us this time. Obviously, figuring out the trick with the bears had been a trial, but once we had surmounted that, the rest was a stroll in the park compared to the last Dungeon. And when it came down to it, I would much rather suffer a little humiliation than days on end at the brink of starvation… or another endless pitch black maze… or experience being dumped into the middle of an open ocean again. Either this was her way of apologizing—backhanded though it might be—or this was closer to what someone of my Layers could expect from the place.

  As for the heart crystal Jax had collected… well, there was a lot of debate on that subject, but we ultimately decided we were better off taking it with us than leaving it behind. And by ‘we decided,’ I mean they decided. Which… fair enough. Maybe there was a use for an oversized, leaking vial of madness whose scent called to me from the darkest corners of my subconscious. Maybe I was being shortsighted. But I would not be carrying that thing around, nor were they to allow me anywhere near it. Thank you very much!

  Inevitably, the path came to its end with a wide garden of a room. The place was some thirty to forty paces to a side, the main of which was taken up by an enormous, apparently dormant fountain. It had been intricately carved along its outside edge in a floral motif, with innocent cherubs dancing throughout. By contrast, the center installation featured a disturbing statuette of people of various kinds who looked to be clawing over each other in their haste to reach a pair of roses hovering just out of reach. Whatever its meaning, the roses looked like they were probably meant to spout water, but the liquid in the basin had become so thick with muck it was practically black. I assumed it was clogged.

  Strange. I don’t hear any running water. Mia had definitely mentioned there being some. Could the fountain have stopped only recently?

  The paving stones we had been following rounded the fountain on either side, with some viewing benches scattered along the path at regular intervals, only to join again at a large wooden door on the far wall. I noted the familiar indent of a locking mechanism there immediately, so there would be no passage beyond this point until we found a Key. With Fekinell’s cage, that brought the number we needed to two, with no hints to where we might find one in sight.

  Meanwhile, each of the corners of the room sported its own miniature garden, with unique arrangements of flowers, shrubs, and other such things—save one. In the corner to the right of the door, there was a lovely accent tree, with a trunk sweeping from the ground as though a dancer frozen mid-step. Its branches spread out over the fountain and its surrounding environs, casting the lot into a shade that would have been welcome even had it not been so rare in the unforgiving lighting. And at its top, notably beyond the boundary of the upper hedge, was Lynnria.

  Just as Mia had reported, our youngest companion had been bound in crucifix and blindfolded. However, she had neglected to mention that Lynnria had also been stripped… and was apparently on the verge of being edged to death.

  Her entire body was shining with the patina of an oil or gel-like substance, giving her the look of a woman about to melt away. Every inch of her jiggled and quaked as she struggled to find some position from which to escape her private hell—or embrace it—but there was none such to be found. All she could do was whimper and beg.

  “Ple-ease,” she moaned, her breath catching. Her voice was only just audible from where we were standing. “Please, let… let me come. Please.”

  I tore my eyes away with some haste—then glared at my midsection. Settle down, you. She’s being tortured!

  Jax eyed me for a moment, then cleared her throat. “So, er… what do ye suppose be making her so hot and bothered-like? Ain’t no one else up there… ‘less they be invisible?”

  I could think of a lot of things that might be responsible, few of which would require something as crude as manual manipulation. Magic, drugs; the tree could be subtly buzzing in just the right spot, or perhaps there was a hidden egg vibrator involved. But I had a feeling the culprit was a little more obvious.

  Eyeing the crystal Jax was carrying suspiciously, I muttered, “I wonder.”

  She gasped. “Ye don’t think—”

  “It wouldn’t shock me.”

  “But… that’d be cruel! Over yer whole body and left tied?” She shivered reflexively—even as a grin of excitement tugged at her lips.

  It was hard to blame her. The idea had me shifting in my robe a bit myself. That stuff was violently erotic, and unsurprisingly so—it was the sign of arousal from a literal god.

  But it was no mystery where it might have come from. We had all passed through that Mouth together, after all. Jax and I had been mysteriously cleansed of its lubricant on appearing in the Dungeon, but Lynnria did not appear to have been so fortunate. I could only speculate on why, but freeing the girl without getting it all over us would be an issue. Damn it. And Arx was carrying our spare cloth, too.

  “…Mercy… let me feel…” Lynnria’s plaintive calls continued unabated, passing in and out of audibility the while. It was a marvel she had not simply passed out from the over-stimulation.

  “Look, my liege.” Mia pointed. “I see no sign of the substance about the girl’s chest. Whatever it might be, she seems capable of absorbing it.”

  I had noticed that as well, for all that I had been trying not to stare. Not the lack of shimmer so much, but her chest? Oh, yeah. Lynnria’s bee stings had swollen to a solid B-cup overnight—literally solid. Those things did not sit in any way natural, so tight they seemed on the verge of bursting. I had to suppose that was what you got when you were forced to absorb so much concentrated Life Energy at once. Hopefully, they would loosen up after a while. I could not imagine them as sitting comfortably. Or that Lynnria would care to remain the owner of this world’s first pair of bolt-ons.

  Still, Mia’s observation had gone a long way to confirm my hypothesis. Lynnria would have needed to absorb a huge amount of Life Energy to have swollen to such a degree and that her chest was the only part of her with clean skin was telling.

  “Well,” Jax commented idly, “now we be knowin why yer paps growed like they did, Faen.”

  The muscles in Mia’s cheeks flexed. “Now, see here…!”

  I ignored the rest of their banter, concentrating instead upon the matter at hand.

  At first blush, this was simplicity itself. All we needed to do was cut Lynnria loose. Once she was down, we could sacrifice one of our outfits to clean her off or perhaps chance the water in the fountain, then do what we could to deal with any lingering side-effects. Hopefully, a little bed rest would sort her out, but if she were suffering under an Ailment, that might be an issue. Lynnria did not yet have a means of dealing with Lust, and under my care, all pegs had a way of fitting through that one very specific hole.

  But we would cross that bridge when we came to it.

  What had me worried was her position above the hedges. That was a domain line, or I was a fool. And an illusory one at that. Lynnria had not reacted to our presence at all, and I felt certain she would have heard us by now… especially with the way she was carrying on. Something was up there, something more than just sky, and we were being tempted to come and look.

  No. Not tempted… baited.

  But there were no obvious enemies about. I had a feeling this area would remain a picture of serenity until we did something to change the status quo. Then all bets were off.

  “Fan out,” I commanded softly, cutting off the verbal sparring. “Look for clues. Patterns, repeated motifs… Anything that strikes you as unusual. But be careful with what you touch.”

  “Ye don’t wanna cut the bairn down first?” Jax asked, surprised.

  “…nnn! …on fire…”

  Ignoring Lynnria, I shook my head once in the negative, then ran them through a shortened version of my reasoning. “But that aside, the bet was that we would not be able to figure this out without backtracking. And doesn’t that just beg the question?”

  Mia nodded along. “You’re thinking there is something we’re meant to find on Arx’s side—something that would tell us how to proceed on this side.”

  “Pretty much.” I ran my tongue over the backs of my teeth in thought. “And if we follow that logic, I’m betting there’s something here that would tell us what to do if we were over there. Except we haven’t been there yet, so we lack the context to understand it. We just have to hope that foreknowledge will give us the edge we need to unravel this thing. Otherwise… well, I get raped. Again.”

  Mia winced, but it was Jax who spoke.

  “I ain’t seeing no ‘prentices, I’ll tell ye that much,” she groaned even as she moved to obey. “Confusing bloody puzzles. I’d have rather had me eyes gouged. Were I in charge, I’d’ve just stuck the girl behind a bigger bear, and be done with! Then I could’ve lopped its head, the master’d be all proud, and I’d have me a nice pump or three as a reward. Now we gotta waste our time pondering!”

  I could see her point. Adventuring parties had idled many an hour away overthinking an otherwise simple puzzle, and Lynnria would not appreciate us dallying. Nor would Arx. Goodness knew what condition we would find her in. We needed to be decisive here.

  So then, what was I looking at?

  Just a lot of—

  “…pussy! Donum?! Oh, where are you? Hah~ Whistling dicks, I could come just from knowing you were looking at me.”

  —flowers! Not listening. I’m not listening.

  I glared at my tenting robe like some disappointed Buddhist monk from on high. There was no way I would allow myself to be aroused by this.

  Inhale… exhale. You are calm. You are dispassionate. We’re just looking at puss—flowers! Ha ha! Who has a wet pussy? Not Lynnria. No, sir. I am definitely not looking at that! Just… flowers. Right.

  Flowers were all over the fountain, too. Not just planted around it, but literally carved into it. Even the waterspout was a pair of roses. I might have been tempted to wave that off as a thematic element from the Dungeon, but we had not seen that many of them on the way here—not through the bear section, anyway. There were plenty near the rabbits, though. And there had been a couple of roses in a vase next to the bed back at the start, now that I thought about it.

  Was I supposed to have taken those with me? I had seen no magical inscriptions upon them, so I had taken them for simple Dungeon furniture. I saw no reason to doubt that conclusion now, but seeing them again had at least labeled them as significant within my mind.

  Mia and I followed the path opposite from Jax, circling the fountain and scanning warily for anything that might leap out at us, but the flowers remained as mundane as they were unhelpful. Perhaps if I had studied floriography or even basic semiotics, I might have made more sense of the patterns I was seeing.

  Stalks of hanging bell-shaped flowers were all over the place. Some were small and white, like miniature chimes. Others grew larger and with flecks of red sprinkled within their down-turned cups. Then there were those that looked like little purple fairies wearing giant hoods. Some, I recognized as similar to Birds of Paradise, one of the few species I knew by sight, while others still were generic pink, five-pedaled shrubs. But there were no roses.

  Now that I was paying attention, the flowers on the fountain were very similar in shape to those that had been planted nearby, so there had to be some significance to them. And those cherubs were not looking quite so innocent anymore, either. They were playful, yes, but with a malevolent edge, like they were laughing at some twisted joke. Or they were about to sprout fangs.

  Cherubs hiding in flowers… like the Vorpal Bunnies?

  It was possible. You had to expect a certain obscureness to subliminal messaging, but then what was I to make of the statue in the middle? If the cherubs were hinting at the bunnies, what was it hinting at? Crazy people fighting over roses… No, not just roses. Two roses.

  Arx had always said even numbers were unlucky. They were a sign to stay away. Leave well enough alone. Bad things.

  And yet… these people seem almost desperate to get to them. Like they’ve gone mad.

  “The softest bloom holds the key to the darkest doom,” I whispered absently.

  That line had to be of significance. But not for here. Over there. On Arx’s side. And this statue was telling me how. I knew it.

  Madness… and flowers. Madness and flowers. I sighed. There was something there, right on the tip of my tongue, but I could not bring it forward. Damn it!

  A single step past that other door had been all I needed to understand the significance of those cherubs. If I had made it to Arx, I was certain all of this would make perfect sense, but I lacked that context… just as the Faen had predicted. This was classic Metroidvania level design.

  I blinked at myself. Now that’s an unusual thought…

  But before I could run it down, Jax had appeared from the other side of the fountain. “Bah! Can’t make heads nor tails of none of this. I says we try cutting the girl down. Might not work, but least-ways we’d learn summat.”

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  “…my tits… suck my… please…”

  I chewed on my lip, distracted. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Jax.”

  “Or it be a great idea, and we’s being shitebags fer not trying the obvious thing!” She put her hands on her hips and glowered at me defiantly.

  A smile tugged at my lips, yanking me unwillingly from my reverie. Watcher’s eye but she was hot, especially when she got like this. All that ‘master’ business was nice sometimes, but it really only worked for me when it was coming from a place of submission. You had to have somewhere to submit from or it meant nothing. So when she bared her fangs at me, it made me want to hold her down and tickle her until she remembered she was a conquered woman!

  Jax’s glare faltered, and she tilted her head curiously.

  “What do you see up there, my lord?” Mia prompted, steering my attention back to the matter at hand. “If it is a domain, as you say, there should be Words defining it.”

  “There are. Can’t you see them?”

  With a shiver, she pressed herself to my arm. “Sadly,” she breathed, pouting, “this body cannot discern the concealed. Not like your firm… manly…” She gave herself a quick shake and straightened. “That is, I would need to see through your mind’s eye to read them.”

  “Well… can’t you do that real quick?” I asked—admittedly showing no mercy whatsoever.

  What are you doing, Donum? You know what happens if you keep this up. Maybe all this thinking was making me hungry? It had been a couple of hours since breakfast. Ugh… man. I used to be able to hold off for days at a time. This is not a good sign.

  Mia’s brow was already bunching with helpless pleasure, but before she could reply, whispers shot out from all around.

  “Oh, yes! Please, leave that nice, healthy body all exposed and vulnera—”

  “I call dibs!”

  “Excuse me? Back off, cunt! I was here first.”

  “Then you should have called dibs.”

  “I shouldn’t have needed to!”

  Mia whirled. “How dare you! This is my body. My lord made it especially for me.”

  The voices tittered. If I did not know any better, I would have said the flowers themselves were laughing at us.

  “Oh, she thinks free bodies left lying around aren’t fair game?”

  “She hasn’t been around here very long.”

  “Shut up, you idiots! Ahem. Sorry! Terribly sorry. You’re right, of course. We definitely won’t steal your body once you abandon it.”

  “Not a chance.”

  “We’d never do that!”

  “Well… you won’t, because I called dibs.”

  “I said I was here first!”

  Mia’s bunny tail was practically quivering with outrage. “This isn’t funny! I designed the spell specifically so I could travel from mind to mind. How am I to perform my function if I cannot… You’re bullying me! I’ll tell Xyn you’re bullying me!”

  “Oh, no! Not Xyn!”

  “Whatever shall we do?”

  “It’s not like she’s ever coming back.”

  “I wouldn’t either. Lucky bitch.”

  “Wait… are these the guys that got Xyn out?”

  “Yeah? What rock have you been hiding under?”

  “More like rocks plural. Have you seen the mess in sector forty-seven? The whole place collapsed! I’ve only just gotten off clean-up duty.”

  “Uh huh. And on the way over, you didn’t think to wonder why—”

  The last one was hushed by an overwhelming chorus of shh’s and the lot of them went abruptly quiet.

  “Manky Faen,” Jax grumbled into the silence. “Tricksome blighters, every one. They’s just trying to confuse us.”

  It was possible. But they had almost let something slip. Intentional… or not?

  “Well…” I glanced at Mia. “At least we know not to leave bodies unattended now.”

  It also made me worry over what might happen were I to use that spell without someone on hand to fill it. I would need to be cautious.

  “Not outside of safe rooms, anyway,” Mia agreed. She crossed her arms sourly. “This is blatant disrespect. They wouldn’t dare if it was your mind. Not after last time.”

  “Last time?”

  She shivered, then stamped her foot. “Stop that! I’m not in the mood.”

  That was a lie. I could smell the waft of arousal each question had wrought upon her, like an apple pie topped with salted caramel left to cool on the windowsill. It sat heavily upon the air, endlessly prodding me toward mischief.

  Gah! What is wrong with me? Maybe it was a mistake to let Jax carry that stupid crystal around after all. I could smell that, too, for all that I could not begin to describe it.

  “Donum… please.” Lynnria’s voice came to my ears again. “Hnn~ Touch me. Anywhere. I’ll do anything!”

  Or maybe that was it.

  I rolled my shoulders uncomfortably. I really should have taken the cue from that Mouth. After being confronted with something like that, was it any wonder the Dungeon beyond would be designed to test me? Yes, I had more-or-less recovered from the taste of Her, but at what cost? My sex drive felt like an exposed nerve, ready to spring into action at the slightest provocation. I could almost hear the Demon Queen’s taunting whisper, calling to me through her works, ‘Are you sure you can handle me, big boy?’

  “Let’s get back to business. Jax, I still don’t think it’s wise to cut Lynnria down. Although… I can’t think of anything better to do. And I can’t claim I’m not curious.”

  “Right now, I be more curious about what’s got yer mood up. Ye’ve got a tickle in yer giblets,” she pronounced, eyeing me. “Ye been riding at half mast since we walked in the room!”

  “Have not,” I denied a little too quickly. A bead of sweat trickled down my spine.

  “Have so and don’t think ye can hide it! Yer Jax’d know from twenty paces and buried to yer neck in sand, she would. Now, out with it! A girl’s gotta take notes when such as this happens.”

  “Like hell! You practically lead me around by the nose hairs as it is. The last thing you need is more ammo in your—”

  “Arx! Jax! Anyone?! By the Five, where are you? Touch me! Uhn~ What I wouldn’t give… …tongues…”

  Jax’s head rotated toward Lynnria’s voice like a heat-seeking missile following a lit match. “Hello, love. Were that an invitation I just heard?”

  “It certainly sounded like one to me,” Mia agreed. “Shame Arx wasn’t here to—fuck her senseless!”

  Jax nodded along, taking the tic in stride. “Powerful shame. She’d be chuffed to bits! Calling us by name? Cor… just wait’ll I—” She stopped, then whipped around to stare at me again. Her tongue ran over one of her fangs knowingly. “Oh, ho? So that be it. But… ye hate begging. Unless…”

  I stiffened, panicking. “Can you please stop psychoanalyzing my libido?! Lynnria is in pain!”

  A cruel smile stretched Jax’s lips.

  “That she be, and the best kind, too. Her walls be down, stripped bare, willing to do anything to satisfy that… little itch.” Her nose crinkled to punctuate her words. “Ah… ye love it, don’t ye?”

  “No!”

  She tutted once, then swayed closer until she was right beneath my chin. “Deny it all ye like, Master. I can already feel yer desire taking root in me. Ye love it when she begs, ah… but not like a pup whining fer its milk, nay. Ye ain’t one for pestering, but this? When she be at the end of her? When she can do naught but beg? Mmm~ yes. Then.”

  I worked my jaw with irritation, but there was no use getting upset over being called out. I might have been a tad stressed at the moment, but this was where Jax lived all the time. And she liked it.

  Of course, she was dead on, too. I was definitely getting off on this. And that she getting off on me getting off on it was putting quite the double whammy on the situation. But that did not mean I had to like it! This was like having your collection of bodice rippers spill out of your backpack in the school hallway. Yes, they were a bit rape-y and featured far too many shirtless men on the cover for your average hetero-normative high school male, but that was no one’s business but mine.

  “Fine,” I admitted through my clenched teeth. “I’m into it. But I won’t have you telling her that. This is not the kind of thing we’re allowed to act on. It wouldn’t be right.”

  Her fingers began tracing along my jaw, drawing me closer to her waiting lips. “Yer calling yer Jax a fool now? This be no different from when ye was lost to the Lust. The girl has to know she’s being respected be all. She ain’t being taken advantage of—ain’t gonna be used and tossed aside. And when she comes to, she be in the arms she would’ve wanted to begin with. All smiling, warm and welcome.”

  I—I suppose that’s fair. I doubted Lynnria would mind so much if I were to… help her out a little. We were already lovers. It was practically my responsibility in situations like this! Though she might get upset if anyone else were to.

  Before I could muster a reply, Jax kissed me. Passionately. Hungrily. Feeding upon the desire I was so helpless but to feel.

  And how I needed it. The constant assault upon my nose, calling to my burgeoning instincts, surrounded by nothing but the most gorgeous of women, Lynnria begging for release… And now, here was Jax, ready to accept all of that without the slightest hint of judgment. What else could I do but surrender to her loving embrace?

  My hands ran down the luscious skin of her back, over the sweep of her hips, and dug into the meat of her backside, pulling her firmly against my waiting manhood. An involuntary whine escaped her lips. Wanton. Ready.

  “Ahm…” Mia made a sound like she had just remembered a random bit of trivia that had been bothering her. “You know, exposure to the cervical mucus from any of the Five would have the same sort of, er… overwhelming effect. On mortals. Uh… since you seem to be, uh… well, with the begging. Not to say that you should pursue, er… But the Fifth is hardly unique in this. In case you were curious.”

  Jax and I broke off our kiss to stare at her.

  “H-However, exploring that eventuality draws us no nearer to the girl’s freedom,” Mia added with blushing haste. “And I have observed nothing here that might trigger her release—buh! Referring to her, uh… Well, I didn’t mean… Oh, you know what I meant! The flowers carved upon the fountain’s outer rim are all readily available nearby. I had thought introducing them to the water might accomplish something, but many of them are quite poisonous. The water is already black with silt and decay, and I cannot see how poisoning it further might help.”

  Unwelcome as it was, the rambling helped to clear my head. Jax had been seconds from fishing my manhood out from my robe, and I would have let her—Lynnria’s suffering be damned! Hell, Lynnria’s suffering would have been the cherry on top! Clearly, a 17 in Wisdom was not enough protection to deal with this crap.

  “Right… of course.” I took a deep breath and deliberately stepped away from Jax.

  I was surprised she let me. Jax was never one to let the opportunity for some hanky-panky slip from her fingers, but she only stood there, her arousal on open display, hands caressing her skin in remembrance of my touch, waiting for me to return to her if I so chose. Yet she did not force the issue. Perhaps she was following her own advice. Or she had already gotten what she wanted.

  “Jax, why don’t you climb up there and see what’s going on?” I suggested, more to create some distance from the temptation she represented than for the sagacity of the plan.

  “Aye. Master,” she purred.

  She favored me with the open-mouthed smile of a woman who had her man by the balls. She could have done whatever she wanted to me right then, and we both knew it. Even as she turned to obey, my eyes followed her swaying hips like a man starved, forcing me to wrench them away lest I again become lost.

  That had been a little too close. Of course, I was already in a sexual relationship with all of these people, so no one would have judged me. But I would have known.

  “…please…”

  Mia had said something during her rambling that was tickling my brain, but in my distraction, I was unable to appreciate it. I was the deadbeat detective, getting my dick wet while the serial killer passed me unrecognized. Meanwhile, his victim, the girl I was meant to save, screamed for help in the basement not a dozen paces away. I needed some air, some distance from all of this constant… arousal. Desperate, I slumped into one of the nearby benches and ran my hands over my face.

  What did Xhinn do to me?

  I could not think about that. I had to save Lynnria. That was all there was to it. Just save Lynnria. Then… then I could…

  “Donum! Ah~! I’m losing my mind. Where are you?!”

  Gritting my teeth, I gave my cheeks a solid couple of slaps. No, no, no! I’m better than this. I refuse to succumb. I refuse!

  Poison. That was what Mia had said. Poison flowers. Black water. Rot and decay.

  On its own, it meant nothing, but taken together with my earlier observations? A statue with people madly seeking a pair of roses. Bears with hearts made of… liquid madness? Ha. More like liquid desire—for me, anyway. But for the uninitiated? For the unprepared? That stuff might as well be a vial of death. And our quarry was literally covered in it.

  “But…” I began haltingly, “Poison is Lynnria’s thing. Why would Lynnria be surrounded by clues… all pointing to back to her? Unless… no! They don’t point to her.”

  Of course! The Metroidvania style of level design! The puzzles here required you to explore before you could understand them. This was all intended as a clue to help us release Arx!

  “Poison releases Arx!” I exclaimed, surging to my feet.

  Mia gasped. “Yes! Yes, it must be. But then… what do we do to help Lynnria?”

  I faltered. “Um…”

  It had to be the reverse… somehow. That was the only thing I could think of.

  But before I could hazard a guess, I noticed Jax already halfway up the tree, happily obeying my thoughtless command.

  I extended an arm in panic. “Jax, wait!”

  But it was too late. The moment I yelled, her hand was already crossing the threshold of the domain line. Suddenly, the sky was not a uniform dome of blue, but clouds sitting dark and heavy with moisture. Even through the shelter of the tree, we were all of us soaked to the bone in an instant by torrents of rain, so intense as to be deafening.

  Yet I did not seek cover. I could not. I was a man, transfixed.

  Xhinn was standing there, beneath the clouds yet far above us. In the flesh. In all Her glory.

  And totally nude.

  Apparently… she was taking a shower?

  Her star-filled eyes rounded on me immediately. I could not tell you why. Perhaps she sensed me. Perhaps I had called out. Or screamed. It would not have surprised me. Seeing Her like that, I felt as though my soul were about to rip its way from my body. No amount of money could have prepared me for the vision that was divinity laid bare—and wet. The rivers flowing through her hair. The droplets beading upon her titanic breasts. Words could not describe Her beauty.

  I would do anything for Her. Sex? Murder? Suicide? Anything. All she had to do was ask, and I would do it. I could no more have hesitated than breathe liquid nitrogen through my eyeballs.

  “Donum!” Her voice seemed to echo her surprise through the cosmos—mock surprise. My brains might have melted into goo, but even I could tell that much. Her gigantic arms went to cover herself just quickly enough to give the impression of modesty, yet just slowly enough to burn Herself permanently into my retinas. “Naughty boy. Peeking on a lady in the bath? Where are your manners?”

  The fingers over her crotch snapped, and with that, She was gone. The sky was again blue, and the rain vanished like it had never been.

  It was some time before I came back to myself. Longer still to realize I had been weeping. We all had. Jax and I, anyway. As a former goddess, Mia was… more prepared for things like this, and had taken it upon herself to cast minor spells of forgetfulness upon us, blunting the edge of what we had seen until we could again function.

  Though I had needed most of her attention. Apparently, having a low Wisdom had provided Jax with a certain protection. She had barely gotten an eyeful before she had fainted dead away and tumbled from the tree. I had not even noticed.

  I envied her… in a way. Mia’s current body did not have the power to erase the experience completely. I would have to live with that vision of perfection for the rest of my life. It would forever taint my eyes, clouding them with Her version of what a true woman should be—an impossible standard for any mortal to live up to. And yet… before that moment, I had no idea what perfection even meant.

  How I hated Her. How I loved Her. I was helpless but to do otherwise. First a Servant, then Her taste, and now this? I had thought this whole thing was just her megalomaniacal way of flirting with me? Ha. More like She was incrementally branding Herself upon my psyche. And all with the casual flair of an off-color joke.

  Still, I had enough presence of mind left to wonder: had this been what it was like after Ahnbe had coupled with me? Had it been worse? An involuntary shudder rolled up my spine.

  “Donum? Anyone… please…”

  My eyes closed wearily as yet another call drifted down to us.

  Well, now I know where the water was coming from.