Hilde and Meera search the village

Hilde and Meera approached the town, wary, but with purpose. They could risk no delay after finding Venus missing from their camp. At first there had been no fear, for all her supplies were still in the camp and she had taken last watch, but when she had failed to materialize, both huntresses at once realized something was very wrong, and both knew its source lay in but one direction.

They broke camp swiftly. Meera retrieved her bow, Hilde her amulet and robes, and set off for the village. They had waited long in what both now realized was a futile hope, and taking a more circuitous path through the woods had lost them more of the day. The noon day sun had risen by the time they arrived and cast a baleful glare down on the village below. The lack of shadows made the community seem even more forbidding, empty and soulless with its decaying huts and dusty streets. The hunters stopped beneath the shade of the tree line and looked into the village anxiously, disturbed by the silence hanging over it.

“I’ll scout it out first,” Meera said.

“We’ll go together,” Hilde said firmly. The archer gave the priestess a glance then nodded. She nocked an arrow to her bow and approached the town.

They walked in silence past the first homes and deeper inside. Her bow at the ready, though string slack, Meera glanced at every doorway and shattered window. They had neared the center of town when a low moan reached them. Meera swung about, bowstring creaking taut; arrow aimed at the doorway the sound had come from. The half elf’s ears twitched, her acute hearing catching a faint squishing sound, gasping and half subdued moans. The two huntresses exchanged a glance and approached the open door.

They burst inside and stopped in shock. On a soiled mattress in the corner was a plump woman completely naked. She reclined on the mattress, black matted hair spilling about her head, her legs splayed invitingly, frantically frigging herself as she moaned and cried in pleasure.

“Gods,” Hilde gasped, quickly kissing her amulet.

Meera at once approached the woman. “Hey?” she called, letting the bow go slack. The woman fixed a glazed look on the huntress, stupid and drunken. “Hey.” Meera knelt next to her and grabbed her by the shoulder. “What happened here?”

“Haaah,” the woman groaned, continuing to stroke her clit. “Mmm. Please…Please. Fuck me,” she moaned. She caught the amazed look of Hilde and, interpreting it as desire, smiled sultrily and began to tweak the bright pink nipple atop a well-endowed breast. “Ohhhh!” she groaned. “Please. Fuck me. Fuck my pussy.”

“What happened? Who did this to you?” Meera demanded. She gave the woman a violent shake. She drew back in disgust when the woman began to stroke her arm and give her heated looks. “Shit.” She turned to Hilde. “We’re not getting anything. Hilde!”

The priestess started. She looked away. “Ah! Sorry.”

“Dammit Hilde. We need to focus now. Venus might be anywhere in here. And who the hell knows what did this.”

“Right. Right…” Hilde nodded, her eyes flickering to the woman as she resumed pleasuring herself. “What’s the plan?”

“We’ll keep looking,” Meera said. “We still don’t know what happened here. Or where the men are. It was supposed to have been destroyed, but now…” She too looked at the woman in the corner, who seemed oblivious or uncaring she had an audience. She let out a keening cry as she came, fluids soaking her and the bedding, no doubt but the latest of many indignities suffered the once white cloth. Meera grimaced. “Now I have no idea.”

Hilde bit her lower lip. “Meera,” she began hesitantly. She glanced at the woman in the corner. “We can’t just leave her. We have to help her.”

“Hilde, the best way we can help her is by figuring out what happened here. Come on.”

Hilde looked back at the woman. The priestess winced, finding that the peasant had begun stroking herself again. She nodded and followed Meera out of the home.

The next few hours consisted of much the same. In every home they looked they found a woman, young or old, tall or short, naked and either resting or in the throes of self-satisfaction. “It’s like every woman in town is just jerking off,” Meera at one point snapped. Hilde, her face flush from seeing so much, could only nod silently. All that changed when they came to the final hut and found inside the corpse of the bugbear. Priest and hunter had stared in awe at the creature’s awesome bulk lying still on the ground. When Meera examined it she found no wounds.

“Venus,” Hilde said at last, startling Meera. The young priestess was clutching her amulet, blond locks falling haphazardly about her face as she stared at the corpse. “Venus killed it. I don’t know how or…I know she did.”

“Well she’s not here. And he didn’t eat her.” Meera sighed, cleaning off her bloody knife. “Well, he’s dead, anyhow. Let’s split up. See if we can find her. Looks like the real threat is done with anyway.”

They spent the rest of the afternoon searching the village individually. Hilde searched long but found nothing but the women of the village in what had once been their homes. No men, no bodies, nothing. A sense of failure and resignation bore down on her when she approached the center of town and the well. There she found Meera once more, bow slung across her shoulder, face somewhat red, streaked with sweat. On the rim of the well’s round stone mouth was a pair of cups, no doubt looted from some home. Meera pulled at the well’s rope. “Anything?” she asked heavily over the creak of the gears. Hilde shook her head with a sigh. “Nothing. Couldn’t find a trace.”

“She probably left tracks somewhere,” Meera said. She locked the well’s crank and took the bucket from its hook. “We’ll find her. Don’t worry. Here.” She poured some of the liquid into both cups. “It’s hot as hells. We’ll start up again right after.” Hilde smiled and accepted the cup. She looked inside the cup and frowned. Did the water look somewhat…red?