Stand your ground and fight!

You clench your fists as the decision to fight cements itself in your mind. Over the span of your last couple of lives, however short they may have been, you have managed to gain a very rudimentary insight into the combat tactics and techniques preferred by mages. They rely heavily on line of sight and a strong party to protect them while they're casting. You don't think there are any other players nearby, which already makes the fight a whole lot easier. At the prospect of another fight, a small flicker of fear rears its head, only to be brutally suppressed by your bestial instincts, urging you to defend yourself and your territory against these intruders.

The two mages seem content to bicker about one thing or another, the taller one seemingly berating the smaller one, while still keeping a cautious eye on you. You feel your expression shifting into an hopefully intimidating leer as you make eye contact. Trying to further work on your battle plan, you let your eyes wander over the cloaked figures, hoping for any and all small cues or hints to their fighting styles. The cloaks these players wear make it difficult to take a guess at their gender, so you allow your forked tongue to dart out of your mouth, tasting the air and expanding an intricate picture of the landscape before your mind's eye.

You can taste on the wind that the shorter one of the figures is unmistakenly male and could probably use a bath, while the slightly taller one of them tastes distinctly feminine. You resolve to attack the female first, as it was the male who missed an easy one-hit-kill with his earlier fireball, letting you speculate to him being rather inexperienced, maybe even completely untrained. This could, after all, be one of those "Student Mentor" groups, a game mechanic added by the same patch as you.

Finally having formulated a basic plan of attack, you crouch down low, making the female, that up to this point has held your stare with one of her own, widen her eyes and start fumbling with an item stuck in one of her robes expansive pockets, while energetically shouting her companion, who just tilts his head in the uniform gesture of cluelessness. Not wanting to give her enough time to finish whatever she's trying to start, you explode into motion, your tail intentionally kicking up a virtual storm of dust and sand as you rapidly make your way up the dune.

The dust cloud breaks their treasured line of sight, you hope it will be enough to discourage them from tossing further fireballs at you. Once again you taste the air, easily detecting an unmistakenly female scent laying over the all-encompassing taste if the desert. Rapidly closing in on the females assumed location, you cock back a fist, the cloud of dust still masking your approach, but also preventing you from actually seeing what you're aiming for.

Finally breaking through your impromptu sandstorm, you find yourself directly next to the female mage, which is still digging in her pocket and seemingly trying to get the male to do the same. You send off a half second prayer to whatever god may be listening, before savagely smashing your fist into the side of the mages head. A floating number enters your field of vision, informing you that you have managed to deal a good portion of damage, enough to inflict the "k.o" status effect, since the damage you dealt crossed a class specific threshold, which luckily for you is pitifully low for mages.

As the female ungracefully falls to the ground, you raise the tip of your magic resistant tail, preparing for the last magicians attack. The other thing you raise is an eyebrow, when, instead of attacking, the male also starts digging in his pockets. Confident in your ability to deal with him and whatever he's trying to do, you shift your weight and tense your muscles, being ready to either rush toward or away from him. Once again you taste the air, the overwhelming aroma of fear thick in the air. You twitch and nearly rush him, as the mage finishes his increasingly awkward fumbling and pulls a shiny, roughly fist-sized blue stone out of his pocket, before mumbling a series of strange words and promptly vanishing in a soft flash of blue light. Truly the hero this world needs.

Suddenly you find yourself alone on the dune, not counting the passed out mage still lying at your "feet", or tail should you want to be exact. Curious you slither around her in a wide circle, never before having had the opportunity to look at a human, a female one at that, this close. As you once again come to rest in front of her head, you reach down and grab her by the neck of her rope, effortlessly hoisting the lightweight mage into the air and finally getting a good look at her face.

Her facial structure confirms your earlier guess, this player is indeed female, or at least distinctly feminine. With the robe covering her entire body, you, of course, cannot be completely sure and briefly entertain the thought of undressing her. Blood rushes to your head, making you dizzy with both lust and embarrassment almost causing you to drop her right back into the sand before you shake your head in a fruitless effort to pull it out of the gutter.

While desperately trying to think of something else than what may, or may not be hiding under the Players robe, you notice a blue stone, very similar to the one the escaped mage used, clutched in one of her hands. Curious you pry her fingers open and snatch the rock from her. You weight it in your hand before you holding it in front of the sun, which has not shifted in the slightest during your encounter, and you find the stone to be slightly see-through, as well as covered in what must be hundreds of runes. Whether you want to keep such a useful tool or not, is not a question that is easily answered, so you proceed to slide the pretty stone into one of your leather armors pockets.

Now, having managed to regain some control over your mind, you tilt your head at the robed woman that is still limply hanging in your grasp, her deep regular breathing being the only obvious sign of her being still alive. You wonder about the possibility this leaves you with. Obviously, you could just leave her here in the sand, the worst that could happen to her is ****, which while being entirely unpleasant, does not mean the end.

On the other hand, you could take her back to the cave you have claimed as your own and milk her for information. You do have some rather pressing questions, after all. You wouldn't hope for too much, though. Someone who gets knocked out so easily by a roaming, level 5 monster is either dumb, brand new to the game or just incredibly unlucky. Should either of the first two options be the case, you should try to keep your hopes as low as possible.

Humming you coil your flexible tail under yourself and settle down on it, not unlike a human would on a chair. You lay the **** woman next to you and once again allow your eyes to wander over her form, you can feel the heat rush to your face, as your mind fills with other, much more... naughty ways of dealing with your would-be murderer. She really did try to kill you after all, so it would only be fair to expect some sort of compensation, right? You idly play with one of your fangs, careful not to prick yourself, while mindlessly poking and prodding at the body next to you, images before images flashing before your minds eye, each one more depraved than the last.