Blue's Quests (Day 3)(8/8)

Hwa was ecstatic.

Her face didn’t show it, of course—it would not do to show such weakness—but when Blue had dropped out of the sky once more, the harpy had carried with her three things.

The potion was obviously intended to be returned to the alchemist who crafted it. Perhaps the nightmare witch meant to have her steal and analyze it—and no doubt fall victim to its effects—but Hwa was happy to see the thing gone. She had no need for a potion to arouse when the situation called for seduction, and it was the other prize that had captured her attention instead.

“If you will give me the papers, I will allow you to retain the full purse of coin you retrieved.”

The words rang true, of course, thanks to Lily’s ‘gift’, but the reaction was hardly the one Hwa expected. “Hm, they’re both mine, thought, right? I found them?”

Blue’s expression was hard to read. For all that her transformation had turned the harpy into an incredibly attractive woman—even Hwa could admit that—her delicate features rarely showed much emotion beyond curiosity. The golden eyes which looked back at her met the kumiho’s dark gaze openly without shying away, then blinked a few times at the dark expression they caught.

“While I provided a distraction. There were thirty men chasing me!”

“Closer to fifty, but most of them didn’t ever get close.” Blue’s head canted to the side for a moment, then straightened once more as she nodded.

“You’re right, you helped. We should split the loot. I want to make a deal. You can do that, right?”

Hwa’s eyes narrowed as she regarded the harpy with suspicion. “Yes. What deal?”

“You helped me. When you have to do your quest, I want to help you.”

“Why?”

Blue shrugged. “You helped me. I had fun. I want to have fun again. If I can help you when it’s your day, we split the loot. Deal?”

Hwa considered for a moment, then nodded slowly. “I agree to your terms.”

She felt the weight of the bargain settle on her. While the accursed cuffs and collar the witch had bound her with did not tighten, for a moment Hwa found herself reminded of their inescapable presence.

And then it was gone, and only the sense of the bargain remained. Blue held out the rest of the sheaf of papers.

It was incredible—records of back alley deals, protection rackets, ongoing grifts, **** payouts. As Blue began to lead the pair towards their final quest for the day, Hwa lost herself in reading. This was exactly what she needed to establish herself as a player in the city’s underworld. She would need to put in the work, of course—criminal empires did not build themselves—but with these records to act as a guide–

Hwa became gradually aware of the fact that Blue had stopped. She’d been following the harpy through the streets on instinct, and the crowds had grown more sparse as they left the densely populated alleys of the city’s slums and returned to the streets closer to the castle. The other woman had stopped to talk to a thin man in a yellow robe, and the kumiho saw no reason to interrupt. Instead, she spared a glance towards the spires of the castle that loomed over the city and wondered which one housed their dear ‘Dungeon Master’s’ quarters.

No doubt by now he was rutting with the snake in one of them. The gorgon’s loyalty had obviously been easy for Lily to buy—if any magic which defied the gods could be said to be easy.

Good. He could sate himself on her scaly charms and leave Hwa to find a way to escape. There was power in the city, if she could could but grasp it, she could assuredly find a way to be free.

“What is the sound of one hand clapping?”

The question of the man seemed meaningless and irrelevant to Hwa, who did her best to tune his nattering out.

A moment later, she came to regret that decision. Blue’s movements were swift—far swifter than should have been possible—as she stepped behind Hwa. The many layered skirts which formed the base of the Token of Defiance outfit she wore offered no resistance as the harpy raised them. The undergarments that had come with the change in costume offered scant protection as the harpy raised a single hand and brought it down in a swift strike that echoed up and down the street on which they stood.

Hwa straightened in shock.

“How dare–”

“That is!” Blue dropped Hwa’s skirts as she suddenly grinned at the monk. “Riddle solved. Thanks for the help, Hwa, I’ll see you back at The Long Rest!”

Before the kumiho could even hope to prevent it, the harpy’s powerful new legs flexed and she launched into the sky. A moment later, she was little more than an azure blur streaking towards the castle. “Come back here!”

The words were not the dignified command that Hwa intended, and had little effect on a target who was already well outside of earshot.

And worse, her ass still stung. The blow had been as powerful as it was unexpected. Hwa’s black eyes searched the street, looking for the man who had asked the riddle. If nothing else, she could vent her frustration on him—except, like the harpy, the monk had vanished. There was no sign of his distinctive yellow robes anywhere on the street.

The only evidence that he had been there at all was the wooden bowl which had rested on the ground in front of him. It remained, but if he had intended to use it to beg for coin he had failed in that.

It was empty, save a small scrap of paper. Hwa scowled as she knelt down to retrieve it with a swipe of her hand. On it was written a few short lines in somewhat scratchy ink.

To find your center, know yourself.

To know yourself, understand your desires.

To understand your desires, allow yourself to feel joy.

A moment later the crumpled paper bounced off the stone wall of the closest building as Hwa whirled and began to stalk her way back towards the center of the city.

“I will not eat that bird. But perhaps I can pluck her. That plumage would make fine ornamentation.”

Penny stared up at the two-foot high glowing crystal letters spelling out the name of the company within the sizable building in front of her.

RoundHard

“Did the quest say what kind of performer, exactly, Blue’s quest is looking for?” She turned to glance to the side at Elsie, who was already flushed a faint pink color.

The younger English woman had, like Penny herself, accepted a new outfit from Mik in return for the assistance they had provided in re-stocking the woman’s shelves. In Penny’s case, she’d kept the vaguely pirate-themed Naughtily Nautical outfit, since as much as she had felt that her original outfit suited her, the dress hadn’t exactly been practical.

Her new outfit wasn’t much better, but it was something. Elsie, on the other hand, barely seemed to know what to do with herself. The brownie’s outfit had been chosen based on the benefits that it provided her, but the English girl was struggling with actually wearing it.

Which was too bad, really, because Penny thought she looked great.

Stouthearted Salvager (Outfit)

Get in there and get what you need!

When disassembling magical or mechanical traps and devices, the amount of salvaged materials recovered is increased from 50% to 75%. The effects of magical abilities and traps that you can see can be reduced by 25% when not surprised.

Granted, it covered a lot less skin than what she’d been wearing before. The outfit consisted of a yellow bikini top, a red scarf, an extremely brief skirt, and a yellow belt covered in pouches to hold her crafting components and equipment. The pouches seemed to hold more than they should, because Penny was pretty sure she’d watched Elsie shove a wrench into one that was longer than the pouch itself, but the other woman had been too embarrassed to give much of a coherent explanation at the time.

The hours they’d spent wandering around escorting the escort had gone a long way towards letting Elsie adjust to her new outfit, though, so the fresh set of blushing as they arrived at their final quest’s destination.

The structure itself was impressive, and stood four stories tall in a section of the city that generally capped out at two. With gleaming windows set into dark stonework walls, it looked as though someone had crossed a medieval fortress with a modern office building.

Then they had filled each of the front windows with an image of an extremely scantily clad woman. Most of them were in some sort of action pose—running, fighting, casting a spell—but the expressions and poses of a few of them indicated they were ready for a different kind of action altogether.

“No. No, it did not.”

Penny nodded, then took the lead and strode towards the front door.

Elsie caught up just as Penny arrived at the surprisingly modern reception desk. The short haired blonde elf behind the counter had a crystal that projected a hovering display in place of a computer, but otherwise the experience was disconcertingly familiar as she asked, “Hello, welcome to RoundHard! How can I help you two adventurers today?”

“Hi–” Penny glanced down at the nameplate in front of the woman, “–Mirael, I have a quest to find a replacement performer here, and–”

“Perfect. The director was hoping you’d arrive before the end of the day. He’s still up in the recording studio on the fourth floor, but I can give him a call and ask him to come down immediately. Would you like any coffee or water while you wait?”

Twenty minutes later, Penny was staring at the ‘script’ from the inside of a surprisingly nice recording booth. Sure, the microphone was in the form of a floating light that pulsed faintly every time it picked up sound and the soundproofing was made up of rune-covered metal panels rather than foam, but the overall design and layout was surprisingly familiar. It was even big enough that she could stretch her arms to either side without hitting the walls.

The problem was in the nature of what sounds the RH artistic director for ‘Concluding Campaign X: Bard’s Adventure’ needed to have recorded. Not only was there a list of generic sounds along the lines of ‘soft panting’ ‘urgent moan’ ‘pleading whimper’ and ‘full throated climax’, there were about a hundred lines of dialogue.

“’Fuck me harder, Master, I love to sing for you’? Who wrote this?”

To Penny’s surprise, she actually received an answer to her question. While no one had mentioned anything about her session being monitored live, a voice emerged from the glowing light hovering above the small desk in front of her. “Feel free to improvise if you think it sounds more natural. RH is far more interested in the integrity of the performance than the specific details. If you think you can bring your own spin to the character, feel free!”

“Hah! That’s–” Penny trailed off. Honestly, that was a way better response than she would’ve expected. She’d recorded a number of times for various producers in the hopes of being picked up by a major label, and most of them were overly controlling assholes. She couldn’t remember the last time she was told that she had any degree of artistic freedom in her expression.

Even Vinnie pushed back anytime she tried to deviate from her usual ‘lounge’ routine.

She looked over the paper in front of her again. Most of the dialogue was garbage, but it was hard to figure out how to improve it without seeing what she was meant to be responding to. “Hey, do you guys have a copy of the full script I can read?”

“Hey Hazel?”

“Yes, Tess?”

“Why are we doing this again?”

“To be honest, I’m not really sure myself. I know we agreed to help Blue out, but–”

The pair were presently standing behind a small counter at a stall just at the outskirts of the largest open market in Adventuria. On the other side of the counter was a line about sixty people long, comprised mostly of men from various different species and walks of life.

The pair had arrived at the stall half an hour after Hazel finally found the person who had requested the slimes and delivered the bucket. The process of gathering the slimes themselves had turned out to be surprisingly easy—while they had eagerly gathered around the druid’s legs as she waded in the shallows of the river, they turned out to be quite gentle in their attentions.

Sure, she wasn’t going to need to shave her legs—or anything else below the waist—any time soon. And yes, she’d been leaking like a faucet for the last hour ever since then but the little spherical goo creatures were actually kind of cute, and it wasn’t as though it was actually harmful. Given what Lily had told them about the show, Hazel had half expected the slimes to try to crawl out of the river and replicate her body in the form of some kind of slime monster, but instead she had simply reached down and scooped the grapefruit-sized translucent orbs into the bucket one at a time until it was full.

Easy. Mostly.

They had collected an 80 GP bounty for the work, which Tess had ceded to Hazel since the druid was the one who had done all of the work required to earn it. Then they had set off towards the market stall indicated in the description of the last of the three quests they had accepted for the day.

“There you go, sir, one hot meat stick. Would you like some of our buns wrapped around it?” Hazel was having a far easier time accepting the language that the stall vendor had insisted was ‘store policy’ than Tess.

The selkie was also back in her armor, having removed the uniform shirt that she was offered as soon as she realized that her massively expanded bust stretched the white fabric to the point of translucency. On Hazel, the effect was enhanced by the fact that Ivy had wrapped herself around the shirt and pulled it tight across her breasts. It distorted the logo of a large meat kebab set beside two bread buns beyond recognition, but none of the customers particularly seemed to care.

The owner certainly didn’t. He’d been ecstatic.

“It’s just—I can’t see how this can possibly be a quest.”

“Quest? This is no quest, this is a job! A calling!” The man behind her looked like a stocky lizard in an apron, and had shown surprisingly little interest in leering at the two girls himself. He clearly had a canny understanding of his clientele, however, as business had been booming from the moment Hazel and Tess took over the front of the operation.

“Wait, this isn’t a quest?”

“What? No, what made you think that?” The lizardman—Kryssta—didn’t look away from the rack of meat he had grilling in front of him as he answered, which meant that when Tess whirled around to stare at him she wound up glaring at the back of his scaly head.

“Our friend got a quest to come sell meat sticks here! We’re only here to help because we were worried about what would happen if we didn’t!”

That caught Kryssta’s attention, and he turned enough to glance back at the selkie. “Oh, that? I mean—that’s just how jobs work, right?”

The fact that he immediately looked away, and Tess was certain she caught a flash of guilt on his rough features made her suspicious, but before she could follow up on the matter, Hazel tapped her on the shoulder.

“Grab me some of that special sauce, I need to squirt it all over this customer’s sausage for him.”

“Hazel?”

“Yes, Tess?”

“You and I are going to have a long conversation when we’re done with this shift.”

Kevin and Stheno stood side by side as they stared at the temple of Athena for several long moments. A steady flow of worshippers filed into or out of the temple as they went on about their business of asking for favors, offering thanks, or simply praying for wisdom.

Athena was one of the major deities of Kevin’s campaign setting, after all. Her temple was one of the largest in the city, with gleaming white columns and a massive statue of the goddess herself in the front.

While the pair might have appeared alike in their silent contemplations, however, and while the basis for the thoughts flowing through their heads shared much in common, the emotional tenor of their inner monologues varied wildly.

She’s going to ask me to fuck her in there.

Despite himself, Kevin was torn. He had expected his heart to steer him away from giving Lily what she wanted by having sex with any of the women who had been brought to play in the demoness’ sick game. He thought of himself as a feminist, fully believed that women were the equal of men in capability and intellect, and had turned down sex with his own girlfriend in college when she’d shown up at his dorm room plastered.

Granted, part of that last one was out of practical concerns that turned out twenty minutes later to have been very well founded when he was trying to make sure she only puked into the trash can and not onto the floor, but the desire for consent had always been a major part of his personal moral code.

It had taken under forty-eight hours before he’d wound up ramming his dick down one of their throats like she was some kind of pocket pussy, and the fact that he was actually considering what to do if Stheno asked him to fuck her in the middle of one of the city’s most holy places of worship.

I can tell myself that it’s for her—she’s clearly happy about what Lily has done for her—but is that just me making an excuse?

The memory of the gorgon pressing her lithe body against his own in the temple of Aphrodite was fresh in Kevin’s memory. Stheno had been giddy and eager as she rubbed herself against his chest like she was marking her territory with her scent, and telling him outright that she planned to fuck him certainly checked off the box for ‘affirmative consent’ in his mind, but the circumstances around the whole thing were weird.

It was like she was getting paid off to have sex with him. And—yes, the thing she was getting was clearly worth it to her, but Stheno shouldn’t have to feel like she owed anything to Kevin, least of all sex. He was thrilled that Lily was helping do something about the horrible curse the gods had levied upon the legendary figure—and all the more so after he listened to her rant at the top of her lungs in the temple of Poseidon.

They had left not because Stheno had run out of things to say to the sea god who **** her sister, but because the sun was beginning to dip below the walls of the city, and they were concerned that if they didn’t get on with things, they wouldn’t have time to get to Athena before they were **** to retire to his chamber’s by Lily’s magic.

Kevin hadn’t seen the effects of that in person, but the description of Stheno’s roommate arriving panting and out of breath at her door—while admittedly hot, considering the roommate in question was the lovely Hazel in her vine-based lingerie—had convinced him to take it seriously.

But even before they had departed, he’d been having second thoughts.

Is it right to go along with this? She’s clearly—not well.

The fact that Stheno could spend an hour spouting invectives at Poseidon did not speak to a well balanced individual. While it was hardly surprising after her millennia of isolation, and Kevin felt extremely sympathetic towards the woman, he had to admit she didn’t seem to be possessed of a fully sound mind.

That’s not all, either. There’s that look, in her eye, when she talks about Lily. Or about me, for that matter.

Stheno had the look of a fanatic about her. Kevin had seen it before—not just on the faces of his more religious cousins, but also in the eyes of some of the older gamers he knew when they talked about their opinions on tabletop systems or operating systems. She had found something to devote herself to, and was pouring thousands of years of frustration and determination into it.

Which—frankly, am I willing to tell her no?

It was a somewhat sobering thought. Stheno had been more than eager to throw her body at him in the temple of Aphrodite, and he got the feeling that she only held back from asking him to take her there because she wanted to make a specific point to Athena. The thought of denying her when she had clearly invested so much in this act of defiance both frightened and saddened Kevin.

Is that just another excuse, though? If it’s right, shouldn’t I stand up for it? Even if it makes her sad or angry?

He suddenly felt Stheno’s fingers slide into his own. The gorgon’s skin felt cool to the touch, but incredibly soft—she had kept her armor on since they left the first temple, but she could apparently remove individual pieces of it at will. When he turned his head to look at the gorgon, she was already looking at him. With her wild hair and delicate features, she looked surprisingly innocent and wide eyed as she asked, “Are you ready?”

Kevin swallowed hard. “Stheno, I–”

“Good!” She turned and began to march towards the front doors of the temple, and yanked Kevin off his balance when she refused to relinquish his hand in doing so. He stumbled after her rapidly, then caught himself just in time to have to jog to keep up with her as she charged up the marble steps.

The pair burst through the doors of the temple and caught all eyes as no fewer than a dozen priests of Athena and three times that number worshippers all turned at the sudden disturbance.

“Kevin, do your thing. Make your—your rule, your decree. To these people.”

It took Kevin a few agonizing moments as nearly fifty people turned and stared at him to realize what Stheno was asking for. When he had used House Rule at the temple of Poseidon, he hadn’t gotten that weird natural twenty message, but the priests had still been willing to leave them alone. Even after the gorgon spent an hour in the middle of their temple as she cursed out their god they hadn’t taken any action to stop her.

It wasn’t as if they didn’t notice her, it was more like the priests didn’t think what they were doing was noteworthy. One of Poseidon’s priests had actually walked up and tried to start a casual conversation with Stheno. She had ignored him until he wandered off without interrupting her rant, and no one had so much as bothered her after that.

Kevin swiftly activated House Rule again, and prayed for at least that good of an outcome.

The implications of the natural twenty message were not lost on him. If Lily was actually running this place like one of his tabletop games, then every action they took—or every important one, at least—was partly in the hands of random chance.

He had successfully passed whatever skill check he’d attempted in order to use his ability, but that wasn’t a guarantee that it would happen the same way every time.

Or even at all.

Conversation gradually started in the temple as everyone gradually returned to what they were doing.

Stheno let out a pleased sound and began marching directly down the center of the temple.

There was a massive statue of Athena at the back of the hallway. Kevin had been a huge fan of Clash of the Titans as a kid, and had taken his inspiration for their design from the original film. The thought gave him pause, as he recalled the scenes where the gods reached out and manipulated the fate of mortals as though they were literally toys to be played with. If Stheno was actually here, from his Earth—did that mean that Athena was real back home?

Before Kevin could finish that line of thought, he found himself standing in front of the central altar directly beneath the statue of Athena. There wasn’t any kind of major ceremony going on at the time, so the altar itself was free of priests. While it was constructed of a single massive slab of marble, it had also been covered with an elaborately woven lush cloth rug, featuring a depiction of the goddess herself in portrait.

Stheno stepped forward and spun around so that her hips bumped up against the hanging edge of the rug. Suddenly facing Kevin, she began to glimmer with slivers of green light as her armor again dissolved.

“Dungeon Master Kevin, I am going to ask you to do something for me.”

Kevin paused, all of his objections suddenly dying on his lips as he faced down the naked gorgon. The expression on her face was earnest—almost hopeful—as she eagerly began to explain, “My—curse, my torment, began at the hands of Poseidon, yes. He was an utter pig who deserves to–”

Stheno hissed and cut herself off when she realized she was getting sidetracked. “But the one most at fault, most to blame, is the goddess Athena. It was she who declared that not only could we not come together as a family to comfort my youngest sister when she was brutalized by that asshole, we were to be punished for the temerity of existing. Because of the ‘sin’ against Athena of being fucked atop her altar against her will, not only Medusa, but Euryale and I were to be cursed. Medusa didn’t know it, at the time, but she was the one who got mercy in that deal. She was able to die. I cannot.”

The intensity was back, but there was something so compelling about Stheno as Kevin lost himself in her eyes that he was unable to look away.

She continued, “None of us had married. She was a virgin when Poseidon **** her. As I am, now. I would have you take it from me, atop the altar of Athena.” She paused, and when Kevin attempted to open his mouth to speak, she suddenly interrupted, “I know that you—you know me. You know who and what I am. I am something to you. I would have you become something to me. Be the man who stood beside me as I defied the gods. Let this act serve as my declaration of intent to follow this path as far as I can. If Lily’s power—if your power, the power you wield even now—I will swear myself to it, swear my body to it, if you will but grant more of it to me.”

Kevin’s body reacted instinctively to the naked woman as she shifted and slowly backed her way up onto the altar. The marble beneath them was easily as large as a king sized bed, and the rug which covered it was soft beneath his knees as he crawled up towards Stheno. When she reached the center of the ‘bed’, she suddenly stopped, on all fours, and looked back at him.

With her armor gone, he was treated to a perfect view of her dripping slit. Slick dark lips stood out against a bright pink interior that was on display as it was swollen with lust. The gorgon’s nectar dripped down her slick lips as she suddenly asked, “Will you allow me to experience pleasure, with you, Dungeon Master? As Athena accused my sister of having done? Will you give me the thing I paid for with my thousands of years of life? It is owed to me, is it not?”

Kevin found himself on his knees behind Stheno in half a second or less. He wasn’t exactly sure how his pants had managed to drop down to his knees, either, but the head of his very stiff cock was already nestled between her thighs.

“I—is this what you want, Stheno?”

“Fuck, Kevin, I do not believe I have ever wanted anything as badly as I want this. Give me the pleasure I deserve.”

Stheno’s hips were cool against hands, her skin sinfully smooth beneath his fingertips as he tilted his hips up and guided himself between her lips.

“Please.”

He began to slide himself forward. There was barely a moment of resistance before he slipped into her tunnel as Stheno let out a throaty moan. “Yes!”

If there was any tearing of her hymen, neither of them seemed to notice it—to both of them, the world collapsed into little more than the sensation of Stheno’s tight tunnel as it welcomed home Kevin’s cock.

As hot as the woman’s skin was cool, Stheno’s pussy wrapped Kevin’s cock in a smooth embrace. He found himself holding still for a moment just to concentrate on how incredible it felt to bury himself inside her. A moment later, she spasmed gently around him as though to urge him onwards, and he began to pump his hips in a steady rocking motion against her.

“Fucking hell, you are actually a goddess, aren’t you?”

Stheno’s breathy moans encouraged him, and Kevin suddenly realized something—she was getting off on being praised.

“Fuck, yes, please, Kevin! Tell me more! Tell me how good I am!”

No matter how hard her cunt squeezed down around his length, Stheno was so wet there was never any danger of actual friction.

“You’re more beautiful than her!” Kevin blurted out. “You’re—more beautiful than Aphrodite.”

“Yes, fuck, yes!” Kevin found himself speeding up. His hips slapped against Stheno, her tight bubble butt doing much to absorb the impact as she dropped her face to the rug. Only the fact that the cloth was so obscenely lush kept her from rugburn as she thrust her ass back to meet the **** of his thrusts.

“You are so very much better, and more righteous, than that prick Poseidon!”

“Yes, I am, fuck!” Kevin could feel Stheno’s tunnel begin to spasm around him as she started to cum. His pace never faltered as he continued to slam himself home.

“And if Athena thought that the punishment you got was just, or fair, or anything like that, you’re sure as fuck wiser than her too! Turn around.”

“What?”

Kevin looked down at Stheno. The woman looked half-delirious with pleasure, but managed eventually to focus on his face. “Elsie’s vision. This morning. The thing she saw. It was me cumming on your face. In the temple, here, I realize now.”

“Mmm. I like the way that the prophet thinks.” She let out a moan as she pushed herself off of his length and then spun with surprising agility until she was on her elbows in front of him. She presented her face and breasts as a target, then reached one hand up to pump his shaft the few times it required to bring him over the edge.

Kevin anointed Stheno on the altar of Athena, in front of fifty of her followers. Ropes of his cum painted across her face and breasts as she received his blessing. What missed sprayed across the rug instead and painted the portrait of the goddess with streaks of sticky white as his aim grew sketchy and the orgasm stretched on longer than he thought possible.

When he was done, both the gorgon and the altar were dripping with his seed.

“Um, sir, I’m going to have to ask the two of you to leave. We need to use the altar now.”

Kevin panted slowly, as he turned and started at the priest of Athena beside him. The man looked at most to be mildly agitated. Before he could answer, though, another voice spoke up. “Now, Kevin, I want you to note that I gave you a good opportunity here to bond with Stheno, but in the future, please try to pay a little closer attention to the time. I pushed back the clock a little for you, and I’ll shortcut things a little, but try not to make a habit of it.”

Lily’s voice was soft and sensual as it whispered into Kevin’s ear. When he spun his head to look for her, however, what he found instead was that he and Stheno were in the center of the bed in the master’s chambers.

She giggled. “Mmm. Lily is good to me. I did not want to have to walk all the way back.”

Stheno looked down at her cum-covered tits just in time for a white strand to drip off of her delicate jaw and onto one of her perky nipples. “Do you want to join me as I bathe myself?”