Snakes and Ladders-14

Chapter 14

Evander nods. “She is one I have heard of, fire haired and very angry, a lot of temper in that one.”

“Is she any good?”

“Oh Yes, she has to be. They very much frown on women having too many uses on Skywood.”

“I’ve been hearing it’s something like that. It’s not that way with the Rymora?”

“No, no, we have very little good farming lands and fishing and hunting is needed to survive, we have few trees so we must be careful with the native woods, so there are many mines and much work. There is enough work that the jobs done best are done by those who can do them best and not what in one’s trousers. I’ve yet to see a fish who cares who carves him up ya?”

“That makes perfect sense to me.” I smile at him. I was sort of getting a bit of a picture of the differences in the people and where they come from around here. I know there’s a lot that I don’t know but it’s getting like being on a haul.

Maybe that’s how I should look at all of this. I mean people are people and you’re going to have a mixed bag wherever you go but there’s a big difference between being in say North Carolina and say New Jersey. Culture and attitudes are really different.

But get my head in that place I’ve lived for so long working should help, you actually got to be a pretty good people person doing long haul trucking, adaptable too. I’m actually a pretty good people person really, despite how much of a hell it was not being me I’ll have to admit that “Bear” got along with most people. Not just trucking but being a bouncer too, it’s a lot easier to talk a guy out of things before they got out of hand.

Thankfully I’m actually pretty good at out of hand too.

I lean on the fence and watch Shaya. She’s a dragon rider and before that she was a knight and the enjoyment on her face as she watches those white warhorses go through their routines with their riders is nice.

She’s open more with me than anyone else and she’s actually painfully shy when she’s not hiding behind the military façade of hers. I love her to bits but there’s been a few times where we’ve been a bit too clingy with each other like we’re using each other to hide from things.

Sweeping some of my hair back (it’s turned a sort of caramel brown with sheens of red and just a bit of blonde notes there) I look at Evander. “So, I’m recovering pretty well thanks to the healers what around here needs doing?”

“Doing? Oh, there are many things worth doing if you wish to do some work.”

“I’d like that?” I go over to Shaya and move the hair away from the side of her neck and kiss…nibble…bite…kiss. She squirms in my grip and it’s that good kind of squirm. I end up hugging her and pressing my breasts into her back. You know it feels good doing that, and I know from being married how good it feels to have the breast of your S.O. pressed into your back. It’s kind of fun doing it from this end of things.

“Hey, I’m going to go and help Evander with a few things okay babe?”

“Babe…” she looks over her shoulder at me with that bit of cultural confusion and that raised single eyebrow. I kiss her this long and slow sultry kiss and through the link just try to convey my feelings and the way Babe is when you say it as a term of endearment rather than a word from the English to Neanderthal dictionary.

I love this feeling of just being able to kind of push those thoughts and feelings at her and see and feel it when she sorts through it all and I can really tell that she gets it. It’s something priceless when you literally have that with someone.

Shaya returns the kiss and deepens it before breaking it with a smile. “Okay babe…” she drew that out in that sexy little lilt of hers. She has this voice that even in her own language has this sexy lilt to it. Shaya sounds like one of those Indian actresses that speaks perfect UK English but has been living for years in someplace like France for a long time.

She’s so hot too. I’m walking backwards from her to join Evander and Y’know she’s got this look, I guess the best sort of way to describe her is Kate Beckensale like but from Van Helsing that vampire movie when she had all the hair…only paler, and Shaya’s hair is that sexy shimmery black so black there’s blue in it… with smaller but perfect for her boobs and pointed ears but not that retarded world of warcraft or bad anime antennae ears but the real understated yet elegant and hot version like you see in the lord of the rings movies.

Yeah…She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, those exotic eyes, and the lashes…just like her hair and long and perfect and every time she stares at you and blinks you just can’t help but to feel something.

I’m feeling it now.

It’s a good thing I’m going off with Evander to help out with things here. Otherwise I’d just get caught up in Shaya. There’s still getting turned on to get used to. I’m still not used to getting so…damp. I mean as a guy there’s some prep-liquids but this by just being a girl has to be different. You’d think it’s be that whole eeew, I’m wet thing but it’s not that bad, I like it but probably because I’ve never had this before and it’s part of being the real me.

I like the sexy sort of warmth that start in my lower abdomen, kind of like butterflies but in a good way, kind of like getting a semi-boner but it’s in reverse. No, not kidding as cliché as it is as much as a guy want to push against….now in this pull this sort of want to be opened, and explored.

It’s kind of like that but not really describable either. I love it because it’s this unmistakable feeling of girl to me I guess as much as a boner screams guy to a guy? Then there the slick that makes me glide against myself and the hard nipples and slight swell of my aroused breasts with all those nerves and the way it just wakes me to my own shimmy shake. It just all….

It’s when I’m like that I feel like every cell of me is right, fixed correct and really if I get into it too much I’ll cry because just feeling it moves me so much. There is nothing about feeling like this I think I’ll ever take for granted not after my lifetime of hell.

Oh I so got to get something done…

***

Its hours later and I’m tired in a good way and heading to our rooms. I could feel Shaya in little spots all day where I’d reach out to her or she to me. It’s so like two girls in love texting but only this sort of psychic version of it. She’d been invited to spar and train with the knights and the archers and as shy as she is this is part of that military her.

Me, I did some stuff just to help out. It’s a lot of lugging supplies from the incoming carts. Funny how that hasn’t changed and lugging some stuff up to different places in the citadel. Its hard work but I’ve never shied from that in my life. And I don’t mind the stairs either. Go ahead lose a leg and then get it back after a good while of not having it…you’ll love little things like stairs too.

I do anything that I can do to help out, even if it’s just a helping hand to carry or move something or holding open a door. Evander was right about the people here, they’re very gender equal and everyone does everything they can to help out here.

Even just chopping wood…. There’s something meditative about chopping firewood. I get looks but I get smiles to because in whispers I catch that the lady’s consort (Me) isn’t to big headed to just do everyday work.

That feels really good.

I go down to help unload some hunted game being brought in working with Evander actually learning two of his favorite spells.

I know, that’s so strange to say really, me…me doing majik but it’s not that complicated.

Sounds like I’m nuts but no matter how they explain how majik is the energy of though and feeling and that it’s part of everything, it still basically sounds like I have the force.

Take a rock, it’s a rock, everything that has ever perceived the definition of rock has committed energy into it being a rock.

Confused? So was I. But basically, energy radiates, even in ways so small we’d never get them measured but everything that lives does it, defines it by that energy. Everything that can have a spark of life energy that interacts with the concept of the rock makes it. Creates the why that nature formed rock into rock.

That energy is majik, manipulating that energy is doing majik.

So hope I got that right.

The first spell is making ice cubes. Ya first got to grab a bunch of mana and fill the water you’ve got with it. Then you picture it getting colder, either pushing heat away of pulling it out but you go until you feel because your mana’s there ice crystals and you do stuff to them. Me I kinda stack the crystals like Lego.

Which was weird trying to explain Lego to a Scandinavian elf.

The second spell was really neat; it was making bubbles in liquid, carbonating it. It’s ice making but gathering carbon gas from the air and using mana to pull it through the water. Being a good mage is like knowing recipes so much you just make something, or like dancing you know the exact feeling of what you’re doing so well you just do it. That’s spell casting.

It’s a whole lot more complicated than that by about a thousand times. The thing is most elves can do majik of some kind, Humans? I don’t know why we don’t have it home but the biggest guess we all have is my link to Shaya links me to majik because in her heart and soul and entire experience majik is real.

It’s that rock thing, you can only do majik if you know and really believe in it. Here’s it’s so culturally ingrained it’s almost biology.

Now from what I gather some people are better at it than others like some one dancing and someone being a dancer.

It’s still so fun and amazing….that I can take a mug of lemonade into a kind of sprite with ice in it.

Oh…yeah, anyways the loading docks, well the loading yard.

We were doing that and there was a bunch of noise and commotion down the road to us, yelling. I ran with the others off the dock to where we see wagons coming in looking tore up and there’s people hanging off the wagons…bleeding and burned, slashed and cut up.

I’m still not sure why I’m not more bothered by it. I suppose all the wrecks I’ve seen over the years.

Evander’s asking. “What happened?”

People start talking at once and in faster sylvan than I’m processing but I’m picking out Goblin’s and War…bats?

Then there’s soon the sound of hooves thundering over the ground, that’s something I’ve only felt with cattle. I’ve been to a few stockyards where the ground shakes. This was…this was Shaya on horseback in her armor and her helmet on and eyes just ablaze through the visor of the armor.

She blows by us on the horse she had borrowed and I’m torn between helping these people here and now or trying to take off after Shaya and the knights that rode out to face what had happened.

It turns out I really didn’t have too long to wait for both to be an issue.

We must have been a quarter mile from the gates when we had gotten to the wounded on the wagons. From everything I had gathered they came on Warbats, some kind of big assed bat that goblins are light enough to ride. They hit the homes with fire first and then as the people came out to defend their homes dropped the other goblin fighters they had been carrying. The ones with us are the one’s who were able to get out and that there were people there still fighting under siege in the town square they had barricaded off.

I really wanted to go but Shaya and the knights with her are already on their way there. So like helping out in a bad wreck I’m tying off bandages and putting pressure on wounds while others bind them and start to try and heal them. All while we’re moving and getting close to the fortress and then there’s this sound, these screams coming down on us like really bad feedback, it makes me grit my teeth and turn to see what the heck’s going on. The elves around me are staggered, like they’re in pain, and drunk both. Two fall to the ground throwing up and I turn when this whooshing…lots of the goes past.

Evander pushes me down and there’s a spear right where I was standing. I look around and see them banking for another attack run. There’s about twenty of them I’d guess Warbats with riders come to finish the job.

I’m not happy and I’m a bit freaked out too. Okay this is another one of those this is going to get bad and bloody fights and I know that. I’m certain of it. Then there’s the fact they’re goblins and whoever did the effects for LOTR was really close, like super close to the way these bastards look. And then there’s the Warbat’s…Warg-bats would be more like it. Really big wings, claws like a bat might have on its feet if they were more designed to hunt and kill game, like a cross between a bat and a bird of prey, but the rest might as well be a Warg really, the bat’s head is almost a cross between itself and a canine of some kind. We’re taking about six foot long bodies and each weighing in at between two hundred and three hundred pounds.

Each one has a goblin on it with a thing of spears or javelins or a bow. The bats come in with a scream too using their sonics to seriously mess with the elves. Sometimes all those heightened senses aren’t a good thing.

I dodge a spear and duck a few arrows on this pass and yank another elf villager out of the way of being skewered. We’d be getting back up from the fortress but they’re getting hit too from them as the Warbats loop around it to hit us again from that side.

I feel Bhlaze rousing himself forcing himself out of that healing sleep he’d been in. I’m not as affected from the screams of the bats so I grab some of the spears and start to throw them back. I go for the bats thinking that I can take it down then I can take the goblin too. I’m not that good with a spear it turns out and I left my blaster back at the castle.

We’re fighting back it’s just we’re sucking at it.

And the injured are getting worse.

Then it just comes out of nowhere really. Me doing this spell. I focus on about four of them and then there’s this image in my head of all the times I’ve been in a car accident, been hit by something and the biggest part of majik is really, really knowing something.
I’ve hit things and I’ve been hit by things and like some messed up only could be me thing there’s this ripple like wave of force that explodes from both my hands and into four of the with the force of them hitting my Rig at about sixty five!

There was even this huge sound with the blast like four freightliner horns got leaned on hard.

Each one of the four look like what’d happen to a goblin and a warg got hit by my truck at sixty five but with them doing about fifty as well into the head on.

There’s the sound and this whump-scream combo sound and suddenly there’s four nasty really nasty mid air smears that fall to the ground like I fed the through a wood chipper or something.

I feel this pull on me that would suck me under as the mana/power is being leeched out of me. I can feel it settling into my bones and it hurts, breathing hurts and I feel like I’ve been bruised in my muscles and bones. “Oh….oh…shit this sucks.” The other Warbats bank to come back and I force myself to my feet and stand tall. I go into bouncer mode that whole thing where you stand off some jack ass when he hits you and even if it does hurt you stare him down in that is that all you got punk kind of way.

I stand like this thing I just did didn’t really pull that much energy from me. Feet planted chest pushed out proud and tough like, my feet in a good stance and my hands clenched into fists.

I try and get ready to do that again.

~Erendae! Open yourself to me! ~

Bhlaze…the other part of my bonding, with a breath I pull in and I feel him through my link with Shaya…

I see her clearly now through his link and mine in that form fitting armor and fighting so gracefully she’s dancing a sword in each hand and it’s like a bloody ballet. There’s more than just the dropped off goblins but land troop, goblins on Wargs and such there too. Shaya shoves us from her thought stream neither her nor I can afford to be distracted.

I feel it…the raw power running through me of dragon bond. Of a being that can bend physics, generate lightning and fire off whatever it was the other day that made that big honking hole where the Nagas were.

It’s like getting an electric shock combined with the biggest surge of adrenaline you’ve every had and I hold my hands up in font of me at them shaking not from being tired any more but from the power in me….I can see spider lightning crawling over my skin and dancing between my fingers and I let out a war scream that get’s drowned out by the heavy truck horns and there’s five more smears and chunky rain as they come at me. They loosed a few spears at me at the same time but they shatter in the blast as it came at them.

They pass overhead and go to loop the fortress again and Bhlaze climbs out onto a section of the wall and rears up onto his hind legs and he snaps his wings forward in this arc as he blasts out a bolt of lightning and there that twist of physics thing he does at the same time and in the arc of space between his wings that bolt becomes a cone? Like a focused wave of electricity effectively tasering the dozen or so remaining and they fall, some hitting the walls at about fifty miles per hour from a couple of hundred feet, some about five miss the walls and over shoot the cliff and fall into the Darklands which is like falling into The Grand Canyon back home. The rest hit the ground and are soon taken care of by the recovering archers.

I stagger and everything starts to grey out on me there for a few seconds. Oh tired, really tired and it takes me a few really long drifty moments before I find my strength and my inner footing as it were. Like I said before, I…me…Wren carried Bear’s big butt around for way too long. I know tired, I know hurting and aching and drained and with people hurt and bleeding and them needing me I do what I always do, what’s always just come naturally to me and that’s set my own stuff aside and get up, push on.

It’s the smell of blood and the sounds of the crying that do it. I’m no knight, I’m just me and there’s just some stuff that just you got to do.

I shove up off the ground where I guess Evander’s looking at me and I go to one of the wagons and I pull my sword and cut it free of the dead horse that the goblins took out on one of their passes.

“You should not be doing this Erendae!” He’s shouting so his hearing must still be a bit off…I see some trickles of blood from some of their ears. The bat things hit us with sonics at every pass they made.

“I know, send a runner for another team, but we have to get these people out of here and into cover because there’s a big ground force out there attacking the village and likely anything else.”

“How’d you know this?”

“I’m bonded to Shaya, Bhlaze and I both saw it.”

He nods and him and several other join my pulling the thing and pushing it in for close to a thousand feet before someone came at a fast trot with another team. I’m running to out quarters as soon as they’re inside and I’m pulling on my armor. Normally it takes a lot more time to get into it and fastened but I slip into the body suit. And use majik to fasten it shut because I know what it feels like all sealed up. Another bit of majik and my hair braids itself as I get into the armored boots and gauntlets and I grab my helmet and weapons and run.

Bhlaze is saddled and harnessed already with him apparently snarling demands to the pages and squires so we can get ready. We’re running on adrenaline and before long we’re taking the run off and winging it to back Shaya up as best we can.

There’s dead goblins and wargs everywhere around the hill based village. We’re flying overhead and we can see some movement getting away from the village and heading into the deeper forest.

~Good they are in retreat.~

~How the hell did they get up here all the way?~

~Likely a built stair, or they dug a tunnels, it’s something that they missed between patrols.~

~The men we saved were scouting for this when we saved them.~ I’m all Smiles, it’s so nice hearing Shaya’s soul voice inside of me.

~I love you sweet sexy shining knight.~

~I Love you too, My Phoenix, My Firebird.~

~Oh Scales, would you to please save that for the fortress…after I’m asleep.~ Bhlaze’s irritation is matched with him giving off an audible huff as we’re winging in. I’m doing pretty good with the flying. It was about thirty miles from the fortress to here and I’m way more used to it than my first flight.

I unhook and jump off of him and run to Shaya and sweep her up off her feet a few inches as I pull us into this armor on armor clanking embrace both of us ditching our helmets to kiss.

There was worry that we didn’t let each other or even ourselves feel as we deeply kiss and probe each other with our tongues and my armor’s suddenly way too hot and way too tight and there’s this little dance thing where we kiss and she’s got her armored knee into my groin plating and I’m doing the same for a few minutes before we break it up because of our audience.

Then it’s some three hours of more hard work and flying as we transport the wounded and we get people out of there.

I look at Shaya as we get the last of them out of there. “Why would people live so close to such a dangerous place honey?”

She looks at me. “This village was an ancient settlement and it rests on a fae-well and as such it’s used by many for the working of majiks. Elder-hill is a town known for it’s potions and such with the many potent and rare herbs in the area.”

“So even here it’s about money.”

“Yes but these bat creatures, these are new.”

“New?”

“Yes new, I’ve fought here a long time in my youth and there’s never been such creatures used against us before.”

“Oh well that makes sense.”

“What does?”

“You’re people are vulnerable to their sonar and you didn’t have some kind of majik ready as a defense.”

“No, you’re right and that is not a good thing by any means. It leaves us very vulnerable and they now have means of flight.”

“So what were they after?”

“I’m not sure, but I think that this could be Lyam….it’s a weapons test. If they took the Fae-well then got one of his mages here or witches we’d literally have to fight a long and bloody fight to get it back.”

“And a Fae-well is?”

“It’s an abandoned faerie mound, but there’s enough ambient faerie majik in it that it soaks up free energy around it like a well does with ground water. It’s a powerful battery of mana.”

“Oh that wouldn’t have been good.”

“No, and that’s only a bonus prize as you’d say. He’d be very ready to attack….Oh…”

“Oh? What oh…”

“We got very, very lucky.”

“Huh?”

“The naga’s were summoned creatures. I’ll bet a hundred gold that the mage that summoned them was going to be in the attack here. We took away a very big weapon, he’d have used those to take the citadel.”

“And he’s not going to attack here now that things are weakened?”

“No, I wouldn’t, not that we now know about him and there’s reinforcements coming most likely on their way here. No he was likely even ordered to send the attack in and we’re going to very bust trying to anticipate where the next attack by air is going to happen.”

“Oh so?”

“We might stay here awhile longer just in case love. I want to be sure things are secure and I have to talk to father about this.”

“We should get back to the castle then.”

***

We fly back to the castle and it seems like hours and hours when once there I’m taking care of our boy Bhlaze while Shaya’s off to the command talking to the commander and her father I presume.

Once he’s brushed, fed, oiled and soaking in the hot sands I make my way to our quarters carrying the armor and most of the clothes I stripped out of because of the heated dragon sands.

Shaya’s already there and getting out of her armor.

I just can’t help myself and I walk over just dropping my things on the floor and I take her face again in both of my hands and I kiss her. Long and slowly and as deep as I can get sliding into her and our bond and I’m kissing that girl that was hiding in there like she was always dreaming she’d be kissed.

I kiss with that heat I used to have and that guyish determination but more me even, because I have been there where she hasn’t I’ve been the big guy kissing his girl with everything he’s got. But Me, I’ve got More…It’s that experience with the perfect reality of me being complete and as much as there’s a lot of my old style in it there’s emotionally so much more of me this me, the woman I am in this one.

Yeah…that’s probably a better way to describe it. Before, up until now I’ve been the girl kissing the girl that she loves. But here now after the last while and everything that’s happened…It’s me, the Woman I am Kissing the Woman I love.

Way more serious and way more sexy.

It goes from that to me helping Shaya out of her armor and she’s peeling off the few clothes I have on and there’s this point where she’s making maddening perfect exquisite love to my breasts and I’m running my fingers through her hair, playing with her ears. Sucking on them and I’m straddling her knee and riding and rubbing my slick sex over that fine smooth rounded bit of Shaya until I’m shaking.

I recover and pick her up and carry her into the bathing room and run us a bath with her on the edge of the tub and it’d bubbles and a slow feed of water as I sink to my knees and sink my face into her heaven. It doesn’t take long before I’m sliding fingers in too and she’s riding and rolling her hips and her fingers are all through my hair making a mess out of it but going from massaging my head to gripping handfuls of hair as she screams…cries out my name and says dirty little things to me as her essence runs down my chin and slowly drenches my chest.

There’s something so…hot…maybe kinky as she rubs my ample and sensitive breasts trying to rub her slick juices into my skin like lotion. I might have the odd moment when I might wish I wasn’t as ample but not now, this is one of the times I revel in having my DD’s.

We make love in the tub, a bit of washing and papering each other and from there too our bed. There’s this little heartfelt surge from both of us because these are our sheets, the stuff we brought from her bedroom at Lilac house in the Holy City. It just makes everything better that it’s our stuff, that no matter where we’re at we’re sort of sleeping and making love in our bed.

I know we should be knock down drag out tired but it’s been that overtired as we make love for what seems like forever.

I fall asleep dropping and nodding off spooning front to front, breast to breast staring into those eyes and we drift off finally. It’s part physical, part link but we also drift off as out heart rates go into sync and it’s like we can feel our two hearts kissing each other even when we’re not.

I’m never going to give this up.
I’m not going to lose this.
Shaya I will protect you.
I will make it better.
I Promise….