Chapter Two - A Walk in the Woods
 
 
Bastet was not named after the ancient cat goddess for nothing.

Her father had been a stranger, one of the few accepted among the free people.
Coming from somewhere in the northeast his eyes had been weird and his skin very dark. Anora ´s father had seen the ability of this weird hunter while visiting one of the nearby cities (yes, he was trying the diplomacy path) and invited him to live with their people. He even paid his “liege lord” for the release of this servant.

Bastet had the dark skin of her father, but was small like the women of the wolf tribe tended to be. She was very nimble though and amazingly strong for her size.

Her father told her that he was the last of the cat people, forced to flee his land and take refuge in the cities. When she complained about the treatment received from other children of the Free People he told her that at least she had Anora and that in the cities it would have been worse.
Actually, despite some bullying and constant fights with other kids (Urk still had a crooked nose to remember her by) her life had been good before her father died together with half the tribe in that one single damn battle.

Her mother had gone right after.

Some said that the spirit of her father had called her mother from the dead, but it probably was just grief.
And Bastet would have followed, with a little help from Urk and his thugs if not for Anora.
She owned all that she had, all that she was to Anora.
Except for her night vision.
This was her father`s.

Despite what people in the Tribe thought, she couldn ´t see in the dark. But the little light given by Anora`s magic globe or by the little moonlight that penetrated the darkness in a few spots was more than enough for her to navigate the jungle as if it was daylight. She couldn ´t see colors in the dark and was a bit daltonic even in broad daylight, but she had the best night vision known. Even better than her father`s.

So, she went ahead, twisting her body to pass trough places where the others would be transfixed by thorns, than coming back and finding the best paths.
She had stolen Urks machete (he thought that he lost it in a battle) and was using it to great effect chopping a path for the others. Sometimes Erynia would tell her to stop, not chop that branch, avoid that night flower. She knew that she had to try to cut only the dead plants and Erynia helped to avoid any excess that would anger Curupira too much.

An angry spirit meant death, they did not doubt for a second.

So, their marching order was: Bastet in the front, looking for paths and opening the way, followed by Erynia using her ability to see the aura of the place and distinguish how to appease the woods, Anora a bit behind so that her light would not destroy Bastet`s night vision and last, Eric, the pack mule as he was thinking about himself.

They had discussed at length this arrangement in the last two months, while the Tribe diminished in number and it was becoming clearer that Anora was, in all but name, Urk`s captive, perhaps to be used as bargain chip with the cities when things got desperate.

They could try to imitate Bastet and go faster, avoiding thorns instead of cutting branches. But their fist moments in the woods proved that this was not possible. As they had discussed, trying to do this only left scratches on their skins and even Eric`s leather vest was starting to show marks.
Besides, the tribe still had good hunters. Even Bastet couldn`t walk through woods so dense and not leave some trail behind.
So, they opened a path, they went slowly, avoided injury and prayed that eventual pursuers (if there were any) would anger the spirit of the woods. If the spirit was angry, no pursuit would last long.

As if to prove a point, Bastet soon saw something white stuck in a group of bushes ahead. Since white was not a common sight in the woods she stopped and asked Erynia if they should investigate.

Looking at the spot pointed by Bastet, Erynia saw a yellowish thing, a kind whitish yellow reminiscent of … weathered bones. Her other senses showed no life in whatever it was, but it had a rounded surface ..

- Wait Bastet.
- Anora, can you please move the light closer?
[please oh mighty spirit, be a bit more patient, we are just crossing to the mountains. Please do not show your anger to us]
- Bastet, there are skulls on those thorns. You see that plant full of thorns ahead?
- Yes, I can see it.
- Do you see any leaves on it?
- Nope.
- I think that something was testing us leading us here. Stop for a while and wait for another path to open. Let`s avoid that thing ahead.
And the “plant” ahead started to move spasmodically, as if it was laughing. She could feel the mirth all around. Someone was very pleased with his dark joke.
- Girls, this is no Curupira. The spirit of these woods is different somehow, darker. Anora, we need to find water soon.
- But the river will be full of predators.
- Yes, but this spirit is what I imagine, He is weaker closer to the water that comes from the mountains.
- Alright.
[spirit, we are following all the rules, you does not have reason to harm us. Let us pass or I swear, I will free my soul from your embrace and complain about you with the real Curupira. You know that he/she will listen to my last request]
And Bastet saw a small path to her side, it was narrower and weird, unnatural, bushes grew at its sides. Unnatural darkness came from that path and she could see that even her would be pierced by thorns walking through it.
The mirth all around had turned to anger.

But SHE could find their presence.
Her followers were sent to the woods.

In the last camp of the Free People, in the nearby camp of the Knights, even in the closest city, people woke from a nightmare were evil battled with evil and formless things were born into the night.

Chapter 3 — Hammocks and Mysteries

The Free People were nomads. Their main food source, besides hunting the many gigantic animals from the grasslands, was cattle. And this showed in their clothes.

The men wore pants and coats of leather, some left the skin bare under an open coat, some used a shirt of light cotton “obtained”, in one way or another, from the cities.

The leather usually came from ox or dranacks, but an exceptional hunter, like Eric`s father, could make it from all kinds of weird animals. Eric was wearing pants made of ox leather, but his, now buttoned, coat was triceratops skin

The women wore rough grey robes of cheap fabric that concealed their bodies and reduced the probability of rape, but under it they often used leather bodices that were cheap, good protection and had also avoided both rapes and, unfortunately, escapades from the bonds of marriage, due to the difficulty to take them off.

There was an easy way to open the crotch area for peeing, but the breasts were fully protected.

Anyway, the leather used by the females covered only the torso and the upper part of the legs.
 
 
As soon as they left camp Bastet had gotten rid of her robes and donned men`s pants, probably looted from a dead body. Anora and Erynia were both using the robes, already torn in many places due to the thorns. So, despite their leather clothes, the two were not ready to travel a narrow path full of thorns. And they had only Bastet`s machete as a means to open space. Eric, like most men in their tribe used bow and arrow plus a lance and the two other girls had only small knifes made of stone.

But Anora had lived by one rule her whole life. If the rules were against you it was time to break the rules.

She started by asking Erynia what she thought that the spirit could do if they stood right where they were. Erynia thought that it could guide every single animal in the woods against them, and a bit of the foliage was quite mobile by itself. Well, the spirit seemed to be asking only for a little payment in blood in exchange of safe passage, but this couldn`t be trusted.

The protection of a god would be useful now, Anora thought, a shame that none of her people`s god`s would approve what they were doing.
- Erynia, please, delay.

And Erynia started a chant in her mind, remembering times past in better woods, near the village were she had grown. Then started to remember parks in the city of Manora, where her father would take her sometimes. Information obtained in books about plants, vines and insects started to come to her mind and this seemed to please the spirit. After all, it was not fully rational, more like a child moved by impulses.

The darkness receded, the thorns in the path became more concealed in the foliage, but Anora was not satisfied.
- Bastet, can you see any other path? The spirit may not be all powefull.

From the ground she couldn ´t but there was a large tree close to the group.

Bastet had some difficulties due to the lack of lower branches, but at the third try, with Eric`s help, she was able to silently launch a rope circulating the lowest branch. And, with Eric holding one side of the rope, she used the other to silently climb while Erynia kept the spirit distracted.
Once, in this lowest branch, she used the rope to climb higher, until she could see some moonlight and look around.

It was difficult to see anything below the foliage of the other trees, but she could see that the ground lowered in the southern direction, the direction of the mountains, leading to a break in the foliage that could only be a river. The path given by the spirit could also be glimpsed because of the extra darkness under the trees. It would lead them close to the river, but not close enough and there was a sense of wrongness coming from it.
But, she also saw something that gave hope.

She climbed down and, silently motioned their companions to follow her trough the dark path opened by the spirit. Erynia, tired from her mental games and with nothing else to show the spirit, was the first to follow. Eric went next, as soon as he finished packing the extensive piece of rope that Bastet had used.

Anora came last, ready for a lot of pain.

And a lot of pain they got.
 
 
As expected, while they walked thorns would appear from nowhere and scratch their skin. Never too deep, but often deep enough to take a few drops of blood and yes, it was painful, many small cuts, each throbbing and hurting and the despair of knowing that more would come and that nothing that they could do would save them.

The spirit was quiet, feeding on their anguish, happy to lead them to its little trap.

But after about one hundred painful steps in the trail, when they were getting close to its end, Bastet took the machete and attacked one of the bushes full of thorns with all the desperation of an entrapped cat.

Erynia helped by remembering all the bad moments of her life and condensing it in a ball of despair that she turned in a curse and launched at that single plant. While Erynia was still fainting due to her spell, Eric got her and, using his leather coat as a shield, went through the now withering plant followed by Bastet and Anora. And they were in a clear area under a huge tree.

Before any of the creatures of the forest could get to them, Bastet took the rope from Eric`s shoulder. While she was trying to get the lowest branch Eric got the machete and started chopping anything that got too close.

The thorn bushes were slowly shuffling in their direction. Eric started a complex dance of stepping close, cutting a branch and stepping back. Anora could only increase the light and use happy memories to create a circle of protection, a spell that helped Eric to ignore his many cuts and Erynia to regain her senses.

While Erynia was still drowsy and terrible sounds could be heard coming from the other side of the huge trunk Bastet finally got the rope trough the branch. She secured one end of the rope to one of the large visible roots of the Embauba tree. A natural powerful tree rumored to be blessed by the goddess of the woods herself.

And she climbed quite fast to the relative safety of the upper branches.

From there she gave directions and soon she was using an improvised pulley system made with the rope and a branch to pull Erynia up. Next came Anora and, while the trap was yet closing, the three worked on pulling Eric up the tree. Right after Eric got in the branch, a huge black panther could be glimpsed on the floor of the forest looking up. The creature disappeared soon, moving back into the shadows. Suddenly the forest grew quiet.

They were expecting pursuit, things climbing the tree or other trees moving to get them but nothing happened. The shuffling noises stopped. Everything got silent.

They used this opportunity to climb higher, expecting to see a panther (or two, or three) climbing the tree at any moment.

Despite their fears they made a net of ropes in the upper branches and started to place their hammocks (not that they expected to sleep, but more comfortable than waiting for death in a branch) with Anora using memories of climbing cliffs with her father a long time ago, when the tribe`s wanderings led them close to the northern mountains to make a spell and reduce their fear of heights (Bastet didn`t need the spell). Bastet, did most of the work, being small and nimble. She also helped the others to climb into their hammocks and there they stood, in darkness, waiting for the panthers to come after them.

But instead, sometime later, they saw a tree falling at the south and heard a huge noise that engulfed the land. This noise was mostly felt in their minds rather than in their ears, it was like two big boulders colliding. Anora latter would compare it with triceratrops fighting for a female, but only if these triceratrops were huge and not completely of this world.

The interesting part is that they got so frightened by the noise that they froze in their places or else one of them certainly would have fallen to their death.

After the horrible noise the sounds of the forest started, the sounds of a normal forest in a moon night.

SHE had claimed her prize.

The Tribe of the Mountains — Chapter 4 — Daylight?

From the Seventh Sermon to the Dead — Written by Young (real life)

Man is a portal that allow us to go, from the external world of gods demons and souls into the interior world; from the bigger world to the smallest one. Small and insignificant is man; soon we leave him behind and so we enter again in the infinite space in the microcosm, in the interior reality.

In a tree close to a stream, five hours of walk from the northern border of a malignant forest four figures sleep strapped to hammocks tied to the highest branches.
Their dreams must be quite turbulent, since the toss and turn and, if not for the security ropes, they would have fallen to their deaths already.
But, the night is over, the forest is full of the normal noises of birds and monkeys and it is the strident noises of a group of Saguis (small monkeys, very high pitch scream) bellow them that woke Bastet.
Silent like a cat, a bit shaken by undefined nightmares that she couldn`t remember she stretched in the “bed” and looked at the scenery bellow.
Their tree was not the tallest in the forest, but it was tall enough to allow to see glimpses of the border between forest and grasslands to the north. Straining her eyes she could see men in horses galloping here and there in the distant fields, but the camp of the tribe was hidden, too close to the trees to be seen.
The sun was already a bit high in the sky, its bottom already “a hand” above the horizon their people didn`t count time with accuracy, but this would be the hour in which the women would be sent to get water for the morning meal (an old saying - extend a hand in front of your face and see your thumb “touching” the horizon, your little finger will be touching the sun, this is the time to wake up).
With some difficulty she disentangled herself from the security rope sit carefully in the hammock and looked for their destination in the north.
The forest was not so big, at least not in this spot. She knew that the mountains were deceptively close, the eye plays tricks when a distant object is so big, but the first hills were still only a day from their “camp” and she could see glimpses of water here and there amid the foliage indicating that a small stream would take them where they wanted.
By now Anora was also awakening, looking around more than a little startled, with vague memories of dark shapes fighting in her dreams.
- Bastet, do you see any indication of pursuit?
- Nope. As we imagined, the Tribe has more things to worry them. I want to look down to see what the spirit made during the night, but I will not look down from here, too unstable.
- Ok, let`s move to the main branches.
And they did move slowly, always tied to security lines, to the large branches closer to the tree. From there Anora took courage and looked down (OH, the vertigo!) but couldn`t see any predator or thorn bushes.
- Weird, it is as if this was a normal forest.
- Well, do not look at a gift horse too closely. Said a bleary eyed Erynia from her hammock.
Erynia joined them closer to the trunk and also looked down, but she also couldn`t see any danger and her other senses were still recovering from the strain put on them in the last night.
Anora stopped a little to check around with her mind, she was not so tired as Erynia (although another magical light was out of question) and could sense clearly that the spirit of that forest was not active. Except for a faint benign aura coming from the trees and soil and that could form a typical forest spirit if given time.
Well, Bastet said, we need to wake up the male.
They all knew why Eric had not awoken yet. Men only woke latter, when breakfast was already ready.
So, it was with a sense of revenge that Bastet started to rock a certain Hammock until the man inside woke startled.
Weirdly, Eric had slept soundly, no nightmares except for the vision of two behemoths made of mists fighting in the forest`s sky.
The girls also had this one, but after that they were sure that they had darker dreams that they could not remember.
Well, comparing dreams was useful in this situation since all agreed that something really had attacked the spirit of the woods and this was why they were still alive. But breakfast would only be possible in the safety of the ground, preferably close to the stream where a sudden recovery of their enemy would not get them completely unprotected.
So, after a bit of planning and a lot of rope and hammocks recovery, when the sun was already three hands (two and a half of Eric`s hands) above the horizon Bastet went to the ground followed by Eric with the machete close to hand and the others right behind.
What they met was quite surprising.
The thorn bushes had disappeared.
There were marks of things slithering over the ground all around, indication of the shuffling of many of the creatures, there were panther paw prints here and there, from more than one panther and claw marks very high in the bark of the tree, marks similar to those left by a bear, but it would have to be a very tall bear.
And yet, no creature could be seen. It was as if a large army of dangerous creatures had assembled and, suddenly dissipated back into the woods.
Well, they would not wait to see if any was coming back.
Anora`s protection spell had healed many of their small cuts, but walking was still annoying with the odd movement causing an inconvenient itch or stab of pain.
And yet they made good time, Bastet going ahead and showing to Eric where to cut with the machete. Now, in most of the forest, there was enough light to see although some pitch black patches remained.
The forest is always dark.
But they reached the stream pretty fast. They were very close to it after all.
They found a reasonably clear place to sit, in a group of rocks close to the water and opened the backpacks to see what had survived.
They had packed ceramic jugs full of thick meat soup inside of impermeable skins (leather bottles) the idea being that the ceramic would keep the soup fresh (as it does with water, keeping water cold even in hot summer days in the tropics) and, if the ceramic broke, the skins would protect the ropes and hammocks from being drenched.
And this was the content of their back packs, ropes, small stone knifes, jugs of soup and some dried meat. Nope, no extra pair of clothes.
Of course, after the events of last night only one bottle of soup (Anora`s) was not broken. But the skins had avoided any spill and the ceramic had done its cooling magic, the soup was cold, and tasting a bit like clay, but edible.
They decided not to ration food. From the beginning they knew that they would have rations for one day, at most two. If they got to the mountains Eric still had bow and arrows (remember, this is folk used to carry loads not the softies that we became in our cities) and they could hunt.
But another night in these woods would kill them.
So, they started to follow the margins of the stream, going in the direction contrary to the current.
And it was a silent march that took the hole day, with Anora placing the extra effort of a healing spell whenever she could to heal their worst scratches and improve everybody`s mood.
It may seem weird, but the girls were feeling very happy. They might die from starvation and walking close to water was almost the same as saying: “Hey Jaguar see, I am here” but, for the first time in their lives they were feeling free.
Eirc`s mood was not so good at first, after all, besides being the pack mule with the heavier load of rope and most of the remaining food his feelings of not being the dominant partner in the future relationship with his “wives” were growing.
But at the middle of the day Erynia and Anora decided to take out their stained and torn robes and Eric didn`t mid even a little the extra weight that the robes put in his backpack.
To his sore eyes, the brown skinned Anora with her dark her, Erynia, the light skinned blonde and the dark beauty of the small Bastet were a blessing giving him am immediate hard on and lascivious thoughts fed by the curves an variety of these very fit female companions.
So, Eric was half thinking with his other head as he followed the three out of the woods.
Well, not exactly out of the woods, there were still trees and dense foliage in the hills at both sides of the stream but the “feeling” of the place changed.
As higher and higher slopes started to surround the water flow that they were following they felt welcome and something gave them extra energy to continue.
Until the end of a valley, where there was a beautiful waterfall coming from inside a cave a little above where they were. This waterfall originated the stream that they were following.
By now the sun was already one or two hands from the horizon at the west (an estimative, since they couldn`t really see the horizon), so, they had to camp.
Eric preferred to find a rock somewhere (there were a few big ones here and there appearing in the middle of the vegetation) and camp over it but the girls decided that the cave was a better idea. It had water, protection from the elements and was completely out of the domain of the spirit of the woods.
And, against his better judgment, Eric followed them into the darkness.
Darkness from which none of them would come out unchanged.

SHE was waiting.

The Tribe of the Mountains — Chapter 5 — The Goddess

God or devil, spirit or creature, male or female, usually the distinction is easy to make and it is utilitarian.
If it is powerful and helps me it is a God.
If it is powerful and hinders me it is a Devil.
If it does not have flesh but was never a human being, it is a spirit.
If it has flesh, is a creature.
If has a penis and can`t bear children is a male.
If has a vagina and can get pregnant is female.

But what happens when all definitions get mixed up? When male does not have a penis but still can`t get pregnant, when a god has flesh and has its own objectives, sometimes helping, sometimes hindering my work?
Can our minds survive the chaos? Can it become Kaos, the creative force of mythology?

From the teachings of the blessed ones as originally kept in the Library of the Mountains.

Getting to the cave was easy, despite the waterfall most of the slope was not very inclined. The cave itself had an opening tall and wide enough for a person to enter walking besides the small stream leaving it.
Used as they were with the flash floods of the grasslands they would usually have avoided such a place, but the girls were tired and something in the opening made them think that they were welcome and that there would be a cozy place inside.
Actually, there was.
The first chamber was not much bigger than the interior of a hut; it had a shallow natural pool at the center fed from a nascent in the rock. The stream that they had been following came from a little fissure in the side of the pool, but the water in the pool itself was quiet and Anora`s magical light could illuminate its bottom.
Actually, Anora`s light could illuminate the hole chamber. It was a beautiful place with translucent stalagtites hanging here and there from the ceiling but a very small number of stalagmites hampering movement on the ground.
The ceiling was not so high as to be imposing but high enough that Eric couldn`t touch it, except where a few stalagtites grew to the level of his head.
There were two exits from the cave, one tunnel leading up with a small slope and another that was more a hole in the side of the chamber than anything else. A little bit of the water of the pool went there from time to time.
And the girls couldn`t resist a bath.
Knowing that it couldn`t be avoided anyway, they asked Eric to make a torch (I forgot to mention two fire stones in their packs and, of course, Eric had brought a branch into the cave to make a torch in case it was needed) and to hold it high, so that they could take a bath.
Well, Eric was already accepting his mixed blessings. Living with three beautiful girls but not, by any stretch of the imagination, being the one in charge. Besides, it was an opportunity to see them naked.
And they did not disappoint. The three were not exceptional beauties by our standards, but were average lean well proportioned teenage girls, with firm buts and medium sized perk breasts.
As they scrubbed themselves and each other using pieces of ceramic (a technique used even in modern times when there is no soap) they were quite conscious of the male looking at them and also of the nakedness of each other.
Perhaps, with the flickering light of the torch and their other concerns they might be excused for not noticing the small, thin dark tendrils coming from the fountain and entering their vaginas.
Of course they felt nothing. They took their bath, the first of what they thought would be many in their new home.
After their bath Anora and Erynia left, still naked (leather takes a while to dry) but wearing their leather boots (something between a boot and a moccasin), to explore the tunnel leading to higher ground while Bastet took the torch and held it while Eric took his bath.
Now it was Eric`s turn to feel uncomfortable, but Bastet believed that turn about was fair play.
Besides, in her mind they would live a part of their lives in this cave, just the three of them. So, they had to get used to each other`s bodies.
Anora and Erynia didn`t walk far in the tunnel. It soon led to a place both beautiful and frightening. A large cave with uneven floor and places where the stalagmites touched the stalagtites forming pillars and curtains, creating recesses and smaller chambers within the larger space.
Part of the uneven floor sloped down to an underground lake that disappeared in the darkness.
Erynia soon noticed that there was a presence in that place and they retreated back to the first chamber.
Now smelling much better they tied the hammocks in some stronger stalagmites, used rope to both set an alarm system at the entrances and as a clothesline (yep, everybody naked or close to it) and went to sleep.
As happened in the previous night they decided not to post a sentry. They considered that they would all need their strength to hunt in the next day.

Years latter Erynia would write a description of what happened that night.

Erynia talking.

I went to bed a bit sore from the walk and feeling the many bruises and scratches of the last night. I was also very worried of the situation with Eric. He was reasonably handsome, but not exactly my taste and yet, he was the only male around and a girl has needs. Specially if you were a young girl that had almost died recently.
People keep asking me if I noticed anything in the water, if my body felt weird and I am writing this to say for the thousand time that no. My vagina felt normal, only a bit weird when I thought about sharing a male with my best friends and this, the problems involved in our future life was the only thing really worrying me.
Anora said to me that she was worried about our ability to hunt and catch food in the next day. I didn`t have this worry, between our magic, Eric`s ability and Bastet`s amazing agility I was sure that we would find food and soon we would be sleeping in furs and eating as much as we wanted.
And, thinking in Eric, our main hunter and comparing him to my cousin Edwin that had been the one to give me my first kiss, comparing their musculature (Eric won), their tight buttocks and Eric`s penis with a fast glimpse that I had of that of my cousin I fell asleep.
And this was all it took, wasn`t it?
I woke up smelling my pack mates around me while we were digging a tunnel in the rock. I was tall and strong and yet, knew that I was female as were all around.
Did I notice something wrong, find it weird that my body was now twice the size of that of a normal man, covered in scales and that I could “see” perfectly well in the darkness? No, this was my body, had always been and it felt normal.
For the first time in my life I felt a stirring in my loins when looking at a female, the other female pack mate that was trying to dig that damned rock besides me. And, some small part of my mind told me that this companion was Anora.
This realization brought the part of me that was Erynia to the front and allowed me to look around. The body still felt normal as did the bodies of the twenty or so other creatures besides me. They were family, friends, pack.
But the pack was failing in digging that rock, it was too strong. Our claws were getting damaged for almost nothing. The small part of me that was Erynia came with a solution.
I gestured to Anora and, communicating by smells and sound beyond human hearing we planned. We went to a nearby cave, got a stalagmite and brought it back.
We used the stalagmite to pry loose a large piece of that damned hard rock. A piece that was almost loose due to days of digging.
The stone in the wall was not uniform, there were veins of this harder material (iron ore, it seems) mixed with weaker stone, with intelligence we started to use pieces of the stronger stone to excavate and started to choose better the places were to dig.
After a while we opened a hole in that strong wall, leading to another cave. Than we started to work on the floor, making a channel to guide water into the new cave. We knew that water had to get to that cave, but not why and it didn`t matter. Digging a channel allowed the water to get there faster than waiting for it to overflow from the nearby pool and we felt that it was needed a good amount of water, bigger than what we could carry.
Than we stopped to rest, play with our pack (all female) and …
The world was seen through smells. I was on all fours exploring the ground of the hills looking for prey.
My pack mates were not around, this was a time for small game and I preferred to hunt alone.
Again the body felt normal. Now I can look back and know that I was a female wolf bigger than most horses, but the words would not make sense to me at that time.
And I was facing a dilemma.
I could smell prey at the other side of a river at the bottom of a valley, but there was no lace to cross nearby.
As before, the part of my mind that was Erynia took over, only now I could remember being a girl. But at this moment I was a wolf and wolves do not conjecture or keep thinking over the past.
At least not when there was prey nearby.
And I was strong enough to fell a tree, so, I choose the right spot, away enough not to scare the prey, made my bridge and stalked the game.
At the end of the day I brought pieces of meat to the caves, dropping them into the dark water were they disappeared quite fast.
And now I was a girl again. But I felt stronger, with no bruises or scratches and this time I knew that I was not in my body.
I was in not in a body.
Together with Bastet and Anora I was in a cave, the highest, biggest cave that I`ve seen in my life. But this was the spiritual world and we knew this.
The three of us were forming a half circle, talking mind to mind while we waited for a goddess to materialize in front of us. And we knew this because we were also the goddess whose physical body was made of millions of little dark things, so small as to be near invisible.
And we knew that we had been … infected, contaminated, blessed? Possessed? All these names have been used since that time, but I prefer simply taken. We were a part of HER, a part that she had wanted for a long time.
Prior to us she didn`t have thoughts, couldn`t plan well ahead, had only the cunning and abilities of the many animals that she controlled and used to feed her, expand her territory, and fight her enemies.
Before us she did all this, but like an anthill or a hunting wolf. She could plan, but not create and build new things. She was smart, but she didn`t have creativity.
Now she was whole.
But she also understood the concept, the need of choice.
And, so, she formed her body from our deepest desires. A tall, exotic woman with white hair and blue eyes. Skin as black as the caves where she lived and voluptuous curves.
This is when we all realized that now we were attracted to women. We desired our goddess.
But she had to give us a choice.
Because the difference between rape and consent IS choice.
So, she talked to our minds, even knowing the answer.
She gave us the option to leave and she had to be sincere because we were in HER mind.
And, of course, we decided to stay.
In that fast mind to mind communication we decided to rule the dark caves as HER assistants (some call slaves, but we had the choice) and she would improve our bodies.
But she had one limitation.
Her parts, her dark matter reproduced by dividing themselves in two new beings when there was enough food to provide for the resulting growth. She was a mother to herself.
She simply could not understand males, could not get into their heads, could not control or influence their actions, could not talk to them.
So, She changed the wolves, made the females bigger, altered the males so that they thought like females, they looked like females and smelled like females.
She had instinctively done the same for every animal that she controlled.
SHE wanted Eric.
But we had to get him for her.
And he must have a choice.

How do you convince a heterosexual male to become a woman?
Well, a heterosexual male will do almost anything for a woman.

From the teachings of the blessed ones as originally kept in the Library of the Mountains.

When she awoke Anora`s body was still connected to the dark tendrils that had been feeding her for the past days.
She was hungry and thirsty, but did not feel weak. Quite the opposite, she never had felt so strong.
She saw the tendrils retreating towards the pool, a pool that was filled with a shapeless darkness that would have terrified her before she went to sleep.
But now, she was part of that black body as much as it was part of her.
Erynia and Bastet were also awaking and looking around.
Eric was in his hammock, covered in dark tendrils, his emaciated body a proof that intravenous feeding is not that effective.
The goddess could not talk to him, but she could drug him. The tendrils had pumped tranquilizers into his system, starting by a slow action one while he was taking his bath.
The goddess knew of their needs, her servants had brought food, meat and fruits from the area around.
And, suddenly, Anora realized that she could see all of this despite the fact that there was no light source. This chamber would be illuminated a little by the sun when it was up, but it was early morning yet, the sun was less than a hand above the horizon and there was no light coming into the cave.
But she could see everything better than in the brightest day.
“Interesting, isn`t it?” Erynia`s voice said into her mind.
“We can mind talk !!!”
“Of course, we are linked trough the goddess”
“You two are babbling so much that you are giving me a headache” Bastet sent with a smiling tone in the thoughts.
And Anora sent an image of a rock lizard showing its long tong as an answer.
Even while “talking”, the habit of a lifetime (and a lot of hunger) made they move to the food. While Bastet chopped vegetables Erynia tried to create a reasonable pan with the bits and pieces of ceramics that they had and Anora went outside to gather wood.
For a moment, near the mouth of the cave she was afraid. Would the sun burn her skin as it did with the little dark parts of the goddess?
But she remembered that other creatures taken by HER could go outside.
So, she took a risk and walked into the light of the rising sun.
No, not a burn, but her eyes took a while to adjust.
It was not painful, just a shifting sensation, as she felt her eyes changing and becoming capable of seeing light again.
And seeing very well. The world never had been so clear to her, with so many details and interesting things, not only her vision was perfectly clear, her other senses had improved also.
She went to the nearest tree and broke easily a branch that would be impossible to even bend before the transformation, she went down to the stream and noticed that she could feel the fish in it.
She could feel the presence of every living being around.
And the wind … this is when she noticed that she was naked.
“Bastet, Erynia, can you hear me?”
“Yes” both sent.
“We need to get into our clothes before Eric wake up”
“Why?”
“We do not want to scare him too much.”
“I could seduce him and, in the middle of an orgasm make him swear fealty to our goddess” Bastet sent with more than a bit of desire and many images behind the thought.
“Not much of a choice if we do it this way, he may resent it when he becomes a she and realize what you did”.
And, while Anora easily got dead branches (even a piece of a dead tree trunk) to make a fire they kept chatting, planning what to do.
They built the fire right outside the cave in a place where they could dig a pit. They broke pieces of wood into thin stakes (or small lances as some called it). They left the meat to marinate in spices and salt (a gift from the goddess) then, after a while, pierced the meat with the wood, put it over the fire pit and left it to cook.
While they were doing this they left bats to watch over Eric, so, they knew when he began to stir.
And they had a plan.

Eric woke up with the smell of cooked venison. As most starving people will do in this situation, he first got out of his hammock and went to the food, then, after eating a bit he realized that the three girls were looking at him.
- Thanks for the food, did I oversleep again?
- Yeah, you may say so. Anora said, giggling. Both Erynia and Bastet smiled a bit also.
- OK, this is not normal from the three of you, I was expecting to be scolded fiercely for sleeping and not working. So, what happened?
- Eric, please finish your food, we have something important to tell you. Anora stated while Erynia and Bastet looked with serious faces.
For an instant Eric could swear that Bastet`s eyes had gotten all black, with no whites, but the moment passed and he attributed it to a mix between the flickering light of the torch and the little sunlight coming from the entrance.
Anyway, he finished his meal a little bit afraid of these three girls that had been so friendly only last night (by his memory).
When he finished, Bastet dropped the torch in the pool, for a moment he got blind, but sunlight was enough to see reasonably well in the cave.
Although, now the three girls sat in front of him were silhouettes in the dark.
- Eric, Bastet said, there is a goddess living in these caves.
- Can she help us, is she who gave the meat? There was even salt on it.
- Yes, she can help. This time it was Erynia talking.
- But, there is a price. Bastet said.
Now Eric was feeling really uncomfortable, the girls were weird. He had noticed some changes in their appearance and those dark eyes … and now they were finishing each other`s sentences.
- What is the price girls, our souls?
At this statement the three started to laugh.
- Nope, said Bastet, she is not interested in our souls.
- Eric, please don`t be afraid, OK?
- I am trying.
- She is a goddess that lived without human followers since the beginning, without humans she could only think like an animal. Do you follow me?
- Yes, feed, reproduce, sleep, I can imagine.
- OK, continued Bastet, she felt our presence in the woods and we had something that she needed.
- So, she was the one that attacked the spirit of the woods.
- Yes. When we took that bath she became capable of contacting our minds, she learned to think, to plan and also learned that human beings need choice. So, she asked us if we would be her followers.
- If this is all it takes just teach me to pray for her and I will do it gladly for salt and venison.
At this, the three giggled and Eric felt a little less afraid.
- Nope, said Bastet, she wanted us to control her creatures, to help administer these caves.
- And, Eric, please don`t run, she is in our minds right now.
In a second Eric was on his feet. This was the decisive moment the girls knew, if he ran they must let him go.
Actually he got to the mouth of the cave before he noticed that he had no more bruises and scratches. Now that he was fed he was in perfect shape, while last night he had an ugly cut in one of his hands that was threatening to get infected.
This made him pause.
Slowly, he got inside of the chamber again.
The girls had not moved from their position around the food.
- What do you mean, in your minds? She messed with my body, didn`t she? Why she didn`t take me.
Again it was Bastet who answered:
- Eric, she didn`t take us, she gave us a choice.
- Why she didn`t give me the same choice?
- She is doing it right now.
- So, if I say yes she will get into my mind and I will be her slave?
- We are not slaves, she is part of us, we are part of her, but we kept our individuality. She has a lot of creatures that she controls already. Now that she can think clearly, from each creature she wants to use what this creature has best.
- Eric, compared to a gigantic lizard are we strong?
- No, Eric had to admit.
- Can we hunt better than a wolf?
- Sometimes.
- And if this wolf is guided by a human mind?
- This would be a nightmarish creature. Eric started to understand.
- Exactly, if she crushes our minds, our individuality, she will destroy what makes us valuable, our creativity. Imagine what she can accomplish with the strength of lizard women and wolves, with gigantic lizards and us to create and to plan.
Eric was not stupid, after all, he had been one of the few men in the whole tribe to understand that they had to treat the women better and, latter, the only one to realize that fleeing the tribe would be stupid, and staying even worse. Unless it was to a place where the cities had no power.
He also was one of the few to realize the power and the abilities of these three girls.
So, he understood.
- Well, what is the offer?
- She can`t take you as you are now. She wants you to live here with us, to allow us to change you until you become capable of accepting her in your mind and in exchange you will get the control of a part of her animals, will be protected, fed and will help us to plan and to create a tribe in these mountains. A tribe of humans devoted to her, but also a tribe with rules that we will create, our tribe guided by our values.
- Now I believe that you accepted the offer and were not forced, let me guess: a tribe were men and women live together in harmony. This last he said with a bit of a derisive tone.
- Something like this, said Bastet seriously.
- You know that this is impossible unless you really destroy people`s minds, don`t you?
This time Anora answered, exasperated: - Eric, we can let the philosophy for another time.
- Look, we are offering you a place here with us and in the service of our goddess, if you accept you WILL be changed to fit her needs. I could lie and say that you could stay here and not be changed. It would be a lie. Staying in this cave drinking our water, making love to us will change you until you can have the pleasure of listening to HER in your head.
- Why you didn`t need to be changed?
- Because we are girls, she is a female, a goddess, not a god.
And Eric understood the changes.
- Just to be sure, if I stay I will change?
Bastet answered with sadness: - Yes, I always found you cute and would not have any problem with you staying a male, even if you couldn`t help us in our work, but this water has products that will make you more feminine. The goddess was already doing it since a long time, in an instinctive way to fight the spirit of the woods. But now she learned from our bodies and she knows how to alter the water better. Drinking from this water in the next month or so will not help any male.
- Also, she changed us. Our bodies will change you and you will want it. Once we start you will love the changes. We are keeping our distance because the smell of our skin, the movement of our bodies, all that we have will seduce and change you.
- This is why you are keeping to the dark and avoid moving? Very considerate. And, despite the ironic tone, he meant it.
- Are all the rivers in the area poisoned, can you guide me to someplace where the water is drinkable for a male?
- Yes. Bastet said with sadness. - But, think in how your life will be.
- Can you guide me to a city? I`ve heard that there are cities south of the forest.
- Yes, Erynia said, we had not thought of it, but I`ve read about a city founded by boat captains in an island to the south east, they trade with Devon (the southernmost of the free cities) bringing pearls, fur and new pigments in exchange of iron, boats and some other stuff that can be produced only in a big city. We could guide you there and even give you some gems that you could use to start a new life.
- But, said Bastet, -You will be a stranger in a foreign land. We don`t know how good they are to strangers.
- And in one of the free cities I would be recognized as a member of our tribe, hanged or taken as a slave.
- Yes, the three girls said in unison.
- Well, without you girls I see that my manhood will not see much use anyway … just a question, how do you plan to create a tribe here if we will be all girls?
- You will see, said Bastet. -Do you accept?
- Yes, I accept to loose my manhood in exchange for lots of sex, a long life and a place in this utopia that you think you can create.

And Bastet practically pounced on him. When he noticed, she was already over him taking off his clothes and also, her clothes, as fast as she could.
He barely could help her and didn`t have time to get up, she even cut his leather pants, tearing them as if they were made of leaves.
She lowered him to the rough stone floor and placed her pussy right over his mouth.
He was going to complain about the position when a kind of dark tendril left her pussy moving very fast and touched his nose, leaving an incredible smell on it. Then all rational thought was lost, he could only lick her pussy and drink from the liquids that she was giving to him.
After a while he started to feel a stirring in his loins. Something was working on his penis, sucking, caressing. It was the most wonderful feeling of his life and it kept getting better and better.
Soon, liquid stopped pouring in his mouth from her vagina, but he instinctively found her clitoris and started to lick there. And, for each lick that he gave her clitoris he received a corresponding wave of pleasure down there.
It took a long time for them both to get to a simultaneous orgasm and it was a different kind of orgasm, he was feeling her feelings, feeling her orgasm and it was wonderful.
Feeling complete for the first time in his life Eric looked at his lover, now laying on top of him. But the discomfort of the rough floor made him move.
Gently he asked Bastet to allow him to get up and he did, noticing that a dark shape was now encroaching his genital area, covering his penis and gonads. As he moved to touch it he saw Bastet touching her pussy and felt an instantaneous jolt of pleasure.
- This will keep us linked lover, don`t you want to be like me?
And, in that moment, full of her pleasure in life and looking at her amazing agility as she moved to kiss him he wanted it.
Desire was the first step, desire to become.
Bastet guided him to the pool where he found a place in which he could get on his knees and worship her pussy, giving them both a second orgasm.
After this both were feeling a bit raw. Bastet suggested that they should help the girls in the “housework”.
And there was work to do, a group of lizard women had just appeared from the darkness of the upper corridor (the one that led to the huge chamber) carrying many scaled skins. Anora explained that both lizard women and gigantic lizards had to change their skins a few times during life and that these strong materials were everywhere in the lower caves.
The lizard women also brought salt from a mine deep bellow the mountains and to the north (under the grasslands, actually). Stones of salt that had been dug days before while they were still unconscious.
Latter, wolves brought a dead deer.
They worked the whole day, salting the meat, skinning the deer, tanning the skin, making rugs to cover parts of the floor.
During that day both Eric and the girls remained naked.
At the end Eric didn`t notice their nakedness anymore, except when he felt an odd stirring in his genital area. Often when this happened he would look at Bastet and notice that she was looking at him or at one of the girls and either touching herself or clearly thinking something lascivious.
He felt loved and a part of this group. He and Bastet were one and they were living with their sisters and lovers.

The second step is: familiarity.

After the job was done, when it was already night outside, they lit a fire right outside the cave and sat around feeling safe in the knowledge that nothing around them would attack.
And they talked about their feelings and desires, about the gifts that the girls received from the goddess and what they planned to do with it, finally the subject of what it meant to be a girl came up and, after a few vague answers on the part of the girls (you just are, after all).
Anora said:
- There is no exact definition. It is the plumbing of course, but it is also in our minds, it is a way of thinking, but if you ask what way of thinking each one will give a different answer.
- In part it is to be a mother, but despite what our tribe believes women that can`t be mothers are still women.
- In part it is being “feminine”, a care with your body and appearance, a desire to help and not to do harm, but I saw some women be more violent and uncaring than most men and they were still women.
- So, I can`t define it. Perhaps it is a combination of factors, perhaps it is just a definition created by man to something that can`t be defined. If you define a girl you could say: this one is less a girl than the other and, within your definition you will be right.
- Of course, we all know the standart definition though. An ideal girl is soft, delicate, care about people and animals, takes care of her clothes and her appearance, is demure, perhaps a bit shy … REALLY, who would want to live with someone like this? In our tribe, for instance, people kept telling that I was not girl enough because I liked to walk in the sun, tried to hunt, loved to discuss and was never shy. But my father told me once that he married my mother because of exactly these same qualities, that anyone with half a brain would understand that a wallflower makes a bad wife, especially in the harsh environment where we lived.
- Imagine, that a woman has to be beautiful, delicate and perfumed, but has to wake up early, get water and make breakfast for her husband. A bit impossible, no?
Then, asked Eric, if the definition is fake, why the goddess wants me to change?
- Because of the physical part. She can`t explain it well, but it seems that there is something in our heads, a part of our bodies that is different, besides the obvious. She tells us that there are also “fibers” covering our bodies, from head to toe. They bring our will to our arms and legs and they are a bit different for men and women. She needs to change this to connect to your mind through these fibers.
- But, girls, let`s show him an advantage of being women.
They got fast on their feet and started to move sensuously around him, caressing his body. He tried to get up, but they motioned him to keep seated, then they positioned themselves in front of him in the light of the fire and started to play with their bodies.
And he started to feel everything, if one of the girls touched her breast he felt as if he had a breast and it was being caressed, same for their pussies, their arms.
Anora and Erynia started to play with each other, kissing, caressing, while Bastet played with her pussy.
Then Bastet took him by the hand and led him with a torch inside the cave. The other two girls came behind right after caressing each other in the darkness and he, despite being almost unable to walk due to their pleasure still had enough rationality to notice that the light had reduced a bit, someone had dosed the fire.
Inside the cave, illuminated only by the torch, Bastet moved him to the pool, positioned him in that special spot where he could kneel and lick her pussy.
And, while he started his job, feeling each lick in his pussy, he felt the other two girls playing with their (his, Bastet`s?, he could not know anymore) pussies.
And the sensation kept increasing and increasing. Suddenly he/she felt a new change in his/her crotch, something was getting inside and this something was also radiating pleasure. An intense pleasure from her crotch, together with the pleasure from her three lovers and it kept building, she was feeling changed, more and more feminine, and she wanted it, wanted it so bad, to be one of them, to be loved this way, forever …
It was literally a mind blowing orgasm, her male mind simply decided that being female was better, it blew away in pleasure leaving a very satisfied girl behind.
Of course, after this, she could barely crawl to the skins on the floor where she and her sisters curled against each other to sleep.

The third step is: overwhelming any remaining resistance.

Erica had no dreams that night, but a curious Bastet woke her up before morning, poking and playing with her new vagina.
This soon escalated into a 69 position, both girls licking the vagina of the other.
Their pleasure woke the two other girls trough their common link. But Erynia and Anora knew that another orgasm like the one from last night would be too much. They started to make breakfast, each one sending an amused thought to the two lovers from time to time to break their concentration in what they were doing and postpone orgasm.
But orgasm came nonetheless and, in the moment of orgasm something weir happened.
A tube appeared from the inside of Erica`s pussy.
Still amazed by this they heard the voice of the goddess in their heads (Erica for the first time):
“Erica has a tube hidden in the lower wall of her pussy, when she orgasms, if she wants, she can use this tube to bring the sperm that will come from inside her pussy to one of your vagina`s. This will help to have children. She can also learn to keep the tube contained; vagina to vagina touch should be enough to give babies to you. She can learn use the tube from the start of sex, but it is a tube, no sensitivity, it will not help her lovemaking. She will feel nothing on it, it is just a piece of her body like any other, her sex organ is her clitoris now.”
Erica was amazed by the feeling of greatness of her new goddess, but she had a question:
“This means that I will not have babies”.
“Sorry, but no, in this I will not make you a woman or else there will be no babies for any of you. And yet, to give babies to your sisters you will have to bleed like they do (and she sent the knowledge of menstruation to the former boy) so that you can renovate the blood vessels that keep you sperm in the right temperature”.
“So, I am not a woman”
At this both the goddess and the girls giggled.
“Consider that you are a woman since I can talk to you. You will think like a woman or whatever this means. In a sense, none of you are completely women now, you are stronger, faster, see better, think better and have this link to me and to each other that certainly make you different. But, who cares? I do not.”
And so, the four blessed ones came to be and their tribe just started.
But there is much to tell yet, after all, four do not really make a tribe. The four girls wanted more mates and they wanted adventure, they wanted to explore the world.
And the goddess wanted more minds to play and to grow.
The cities were not ready for what was arising in those mountains.
Nope, this is not the end. Not at all.

 

---

 
Chapter 7
 
 
There is always that moment, when you made an important decision in your life, in which everything seems to be new. You wake up in the morning and think: who would imagine that I would be here today? And, where will I be tomorrow?

After the change Erica slept soundly in her lover`s arms. When she woke it was dark, but she could see perfectly and her whole body felt different.
She felt renewed, light, as if a great burden had been lifted from her shoulder. Of course, among other things, waking up in the arms of a beautiful girl like Bastet was a nice beginning for a new life.

Erica disentangled herself from her lover and went to the pool to pee. As she was releasing the liquid she could feel the dark tendrils of the goddess caressing her legs, taking her liquid gift to the underground to make poisons and medicines.

Submerging herself in the darkest part of the pool she felt the freedom of movement given by the water and thought about how it reflected the freedom that she felt within herself.
It was weird, she had to lose something that, as Eric, she used to consider so valuable to gain this feeling of belonging. Even more strange that by belonging she felt so free.

Her breasts were growing; she could feel the two little buds shaping themselves into beautifully little domes. This was amazing and wonderful, she felt complete.

Down there her pussy was improving, looking more and more like those of the other girls. Bastet loved to play with it, reveling in each new feature, each new intricate fold.

Erica looked at her sleeping sisters, so beautiful. All still young, and she knew that they would become beautiful women.

Feeling that it was day outside Erica left the cave. As Anora before her, Erica felt the world outside refreshed, each thing full of many details that only now she could appreciate. The life of every little thing in front of her could be felt in her mind.

The desire to hunt was almost overwhelming. Eric had been a hunter above all, stoic, calm, waiting for the prey to slip. Always waiting and cautious.

In a sense this was how he had courted Bastet, waiting, bidding his time. And it had been more than worth it.
<Someone said that the best things in life have to be conquered, we never value what we get for free> Anora`s voice said in Erica`s mind.

<A little privacy, please?> Erica sent with a little annoyance.

< Don’t be a bother lover, I know that you love our little intrusions> purred Bastet, entering their mental conversation And, she playfully sent images of what they had been doing in the last day.

<Sisters, if the pleasantries are over, we have work to do> Sent Erynia in her usual a bit demanding, cold tones.

And work they did.
 
 
First they worked in their house, the pool cave as they were starting to call it. They placed rugs made of pelts on the floor, built torch sconces into the walls (that stone was like butter for the lizard women), a better fire pit outside, worked together on leather tanning and hide making along with weapon crafting: making wooden arrows, bows, and stone knifes. Finally Anora and Erynia went to the stream and obtained good clay which they started making pots from. These pots would be dried and baked in fire making the first utensils of their new home.

The goddess complained more than once that there were better caves within the mountain. A huge complex that would take days to cross and that was all theirs.

SHE kept saying that the Pool Cave was a place to catch animals, both for feeding and for taking. The best such place that SHE had since it was close to the forest.

But they were not ready to leave the sun behind and the Pool Cave was a place of good memories for all.

The goddess reluctantly decided to not press the issue, not force obedience. For now.

During that day Anora proved to be a natural born leader, keeping Erica`s and Bastet lovemaking in check, dealing with Erynia`s caustic remarks and organizing their jobs.

Anora loved this. Her father had trained her to lead and she always felt robbed of this opportunity by the sexist views of her tribe.

In future days she would write fondly about their new beginning:
 
 
Anora speaking - and then continues from her perspective:

In the tribe, even during my father`s days I was an oddity. The crazy girl that was neither demure, nor obedient and that would defy even the most seasoned warriors.

I admit that I got frustrated because I couldn`t do anything that I really wanted. Oh they would let me put the kitchens in order, keep an eye in the stock of fruits and meat, even organize and distribute the weapons, but when it came to deciding where to camp, where to hunt and who should do what task I was “just a little girl”.

My father listened to me, trained me in leadership and encouraged me. But, it was only in the confines of our wagon. Never in front of the “Good and Important” warriors of the tribe.

You may say that from a young age I learned to be subtle, to lead from the shadows. But it was SO frustrating !!!

Well, now I had power. I could feel creatures moving and crawling all around. Could control these creatures, make them hunt or feed or mate. I loved it and really, really wanted even more.

Me and my goddess, we would take the world as our playfield.

Of course, being respected and loved by my sisters also helped.
 
 
You know, at the end of the first day we were pretty tired, and yet, when we went to our beds made of furs we didn`t sleep. Not really.

We went to the spiritual world while our bodies rested. I remember that once there I felt well, I was not tired anymore.

The goddess brought us to her place. I found myself standing beside my sisters in the margin of an underground lake that stretched to a cavernous horizon. Looking up I could see a ceiling full of stalactites, but it was so far away that details escaped even my enhanced spiritual eyes. Around us there were big stalagmites, some so thick two women would not be able to hug one even if they stretched their arms with only the tips of their fingers touching.

There was a weird phosphorescent white moss in some places, an ancient life form that had projected itself in that spiritual place only the goddess knows for how many eons.

And the presence of the goddess was strong in the lake. This was perhaps the first time that I felt how big she was both in the physical and in the spiritual plane. She had tempted us with the promise of a dark kingdom stretching for long distances of tunnels and she was telling the truth.

Astonished I felt that there were so many tunnels and chambers that a normal human being could spend her whole life to explore them all.

What I had not realized before was that all these tunnels and chambers, this vast labyrinth of caves was filled by HER.

While we stood there astonished HER presence demanded our attention and SHE spoke with all HER power into our minds.

“ANORA, YOU SHALL TAKE CARE OF THE GRAINS AND THE BREEDING ABOVE GROUND, FROM YOU I WILL DEMAND FRUITS AND VEGETABLES, MEAT, MILK AND WOOL. YOU SHALL FEED US ALL.FOR THIS I GIVE YOU CONTROL OF ALL MY CREATURES ABOVE GROUND, THE WOLVES AND THE APES, THE SMALL LIZARDS AND THE BIG TYRANNOSAURUS. ALL SHALL BE YOURS TO COMMAND”

Amazed by her grandiosity and power I could only bow and accept my job. But I was overjoyed, this time I WOULD control the food and the kitchen but I knew that my goddess would listen to me to make the fundamental decisions.
We would take the world together with my sisters.

Next SHE spoke to Erynia:

“ERYNIA, I CHARGE THEE WITH THE CONTROL OF THE UNDERGROUND, YOU WILL BE THE MINER, THE ONE THAT WILL KNOW BOTH THE SECRETS OF THE EARTH AND OF MY MEMORY AS IT IS ENCODED IN THE ROCKS THEMSELVES. YOU WILL MAKE NEW WEAPONS AND TERRORIZE OUR ENEMIES WITH THE CREATURES OF DARKNESS AND SHADOW”

For the first time in years I saw a completely sincere smile on the face of my sister, I knew that she hated men even more than I did and now I was afraid of what she would cook with that cold intelligent mind of hers, in the dark bowels of the earth.

“BASTET, YOU AND ERICA ARE ONE. YOU BOTH WILL BE THE HUNTERS OF GAME OUTSIDE OUR REALM, THE ONES THAT WILL BRING NEW CREATURES, NEW IDEAS AND NEW PEOPLE. YOU SHALL GO TO THE CITIES AND LEARN FROM MEN, FACE OUR ENEMIES WITH SUBTLETY AND WISDON. TO YOU I BEQUET THE TASK OF EXPANDING MY REALM”

The two accepted their jobs, but I could see worry mixed with joy in their faces. It was a dangerous task and trough our link I could feel that while Bastet considered the task fun, a way to indulge in her infinite curiosity, Erica was more cautious, she would approach the task as the hunter that she was. Perhaps, ironic as it may seem, she would be our hunter of men.

“NOW CHILDREN, MAKE A PLACE FOR YOUR SPIRITS HERE IN MY HOUSE, A PLACE OF REFUGE BUT ALSO A PLACE FOR WORK. BECAUSE YOU, ARE MY CHOSEN ONES, AND WILL BE ALWAYS WELCOME HERE, IN MY REALM.”

Erynia had taught me that everything in the spiritual world was just a representation, an icon of its meaning or purpose. So, I imagined a new purpose for the wall of a stalagmite, it would have a gate on it.

This gate that I created led to a big room full of windows, each window showed one view, from the eyes of one creature that I controlled. For the creatures that “saw” mostly using other senses the window showed a representation that I would understand of what this creature perceived.
In the middle of the room I placed tables containing representations of the terrain or icons representing things that I found interesting like the amount of goods that we had in stock.

It would take time and a lot of work together with the goddess but one day I would be able to come to this room when my body was sleeping and, undisturbed by the thoughts of my sisters, work in my domain.

I sent to my sisters the knowledge of what I was doing and they started to work on their rooms.

Erica`s was a hunting cabin, but with windows that would, in the future, show what her creatures were doing.

Erynia`s was a large room containing many shelves full of rolls of parchment, each roll containing information about something in the underground. She called her room a library, something that I had never seen in my life before.

Bastet`s room was not really a room, it was simply a representation of a forest, one that probably she was the only person that could navigate. I didn`t understand its utility, but respected my sister`s wish.

If we were going to spend some time away from the distraction of our sister`s memories we would need a way to “catch up”, to share information so that a person leaving her room could know what the others had been doing.
I meditated a little in this problem and then I remembered going to a seer with my father many years ago. I sent the image of what I wanted to the goddess, she agreed, and Suddenly I was with my sisters, forming a circle, seated around a raised basin of water. Dark water, full of the goddess essence.

“Sisters, we need a place to put the memories that we want to share” I said. “This will be the place. Let me show you the way.”

I touched my head with my fingers, slowly extracted a glowing filament of light from within and let it caress its way into the darkness of the basin water. The light diffused within the water, slowly extinguishing itself.
Then silence.

“Please dear sisters, touch the water.” One by one, they did.

By submerging themselves in my memory they all became me, we would follow my memory together. We were all a girl called Anora in a very important day.
That day I woke from a confused, perhaps prophetic, dream. The fur over which I had been sleeping was all tangled and my hair was a mess. Sitting up I noticed that my parents were still sleeping at the other side of the wagon. A little ray of sunshine was shining onto me through the hole that mother had made at the wall. It had awoken me up, as it was meant to do.

Stretching my arms, I noticed that my chest was already showing two small mounds that one day would be beautiful breasts. Biting my lower lip, I secretly hoped to get as big as mom.

Dressing in the semi darkness was already routine; after all, it was mostly just putting on a long robe over top my leather clothing. Having pulled my hair together and tying it back with a small piece of twine (I would cut it short as an act of defiance only one year latter), I climbed out of the wagon. The water hole, being a bit off to the left of the camp, wasn't too far away. It was time to fetch water as was tradition for daughters to do.

As I passed by the corral, I greeted a brutish man that was one of the sentinels of the camp and went forth to fetch the water for my family`s breakfast.
Since I was still considered a child it was normal for me to go alone to get water in the morning. But nearing the river, I always used the trick that Erynia had recently taught me. It was a way of finding predators, crocodiles in the water or worse things hidden in the grass.

Concentrate. Feel the life all around me. Inspire. Breathe in. Exhale...

!!!

Wait! There was someone nearby... yes, somewhere behind me!

Dropping to the ground, barely daring to breath and slowly crawled over into the high grass, careful about making any sounds, I hid off of the path made by the tribe and waited there cautiously.

I could feel the sentinel nearby, looking around, searching for me! And he had a knife in his hand.

Now, spying from a little opening in the grass I recognized that towering figure. His name was forgotten but all called him Urk. He was a sort of leader to the most brutish elements in the tribe.

My analytical mind, trained very well by my father, was already thinking in the political implications. Rape was almost always considered to be the fault of the woman or of the father or husband for not guarding their women well. Of course, rape of a child was something different, but these two small breasts that had made me so proud only moments ago might be my downfall. If Urk could convince the tribe that I was a woman he could argue that it all was my father`s fault since he had not kept me under guard. Urk would argue that he simply did what any red blooded man would do in his place.

It would not work. I would not denounce the rape and if he showed that he was proud of it by telling everyone, my father would call him a liar and end his life. Actually, I was pretty sure that if he raped me Urk would be dead tomorrow. But it would be little consolation.

So, when he started to get close in his search, after all, he was a hunter and I had left a trail I decided to try another spell.

Quiet, quiet, nobody can see me. Imagine a dome around me, this dome does not allow anyone to look. I am not interesting, I am not here.
 
 
Urk was never known for his bright intellect, it was no surprise that a simple dome of protection cast by an inexperienced child and a little altered to make it difficult to see me befuddled his mind. His face went blank for a while and he started his search all over again.

After what seemed an eternity, a group of older girls from the tribe began to come into view. Coming, as I had done, to the water hole to fetch some water for their families.

Urk crudely showed his crotch to them, making a rude gesture. The girls, taken aback and upset, stopped in their tracks since he was blocking their way to the water.

Finally realizing that someone would get upset with him for blocking them, not with the girls for not bringing water, Urk slipped his knife back down in its belt sheath, smirking to himself. His eyes gazed about one last time for the prey that had somehow eluded him as he secured his blade. Reluctantly, he soon wandered off.

And I could feel this all from my hiding place using the detecting life spell that Erynia taught me. I, Anora, powerful goddess servant, the present me, ended the flow of the memory.

And we were back in our spiritual bodies, in the spiritual realm.

“That day Erynia, your knowledge saved me. Thanks sister.” I told her with a grateful smile.

“You are welcome little one” She said in her cold tones, but there was a tear in one of her eyes.

“Why your father didn`t kill him?” Asked Erica, in a subdued voice.

“He was looking for an opportunity, but the war was coming and it was difficult to justify killing one of the best warriors. Urk was stupid and brutish but also fearless in combat and good at cracking skulls.”

“Except in that day”, said Erica, “In the day of that last charge he stood a bit behind allowing your father to be cut off from us and slaughtered”.

“This is a memory that I want to see other day, but not yet Erica. Not yet” I answered with sadness.

“Hey, but I want to see Erica`s memories. I want know how it is to be a man, to show my muscles, and … yirck, how is it that you survive with that thing between your legs? It must hurt.” I could see that Bastet in her typical way had already forgotten the sadness brought by the memory that I showed and was almost bouncing with the excitement of having her curiosity about the other sex satisfied. I, of course was also very curious.

But the surprising part was Erynia adding.

“Yes, I would like to know how men think. Perhaps this will help me to understand my own past. So, I ask to you my dear sister, show us a memory that help us to study the mind of men.”

I was astonished by her vehemence. Now I understood that all the coldness in her spirit must have a male reason behind it. I hoped that my father was not involved somehow; after all, she had been taken in a raid and given to my father as a gift.

Erica smiled, concentrated for a while and brought her own little light to become part of the information kept in the dark waters of the spiritual basin.
And, eager to learn, we touched the water.
 
Author`s Note: Thank you very much Sephrena Miller for your big help with everything. But, of course people, the mistakes that remain here are mine and mine alone.
 

---

 
To Be Continued...
 

 
 
For centuries the Free People were the only ones able to survive in the space between the northern and southern mountain ranges. The poor yellowish grassland was full of weirdly shaped small hills, deformed beasts and poisonous plants. Not that the land was completely devoid of it's blessings though, it had a huge diversity of animals living both above and below ground and a kind twisted ironwood tree so strong that nowadays a few of the wagons made using it remain, as if untouched by time.In this land they not only survived but thrived. They killed the worst of the monsters, learned to shape the hard wood and learned the hard way what to eat and what to avoid.

For a while things seemed to be getting better, the land was less poisonous, the monsters were defeated and feared man. The numbers of the people started to increase. Their neighbors, the soft people of the cities, were considered weak and easy to plunder.

Pride really comes before the fall.

Merinda Anorier
Notes from Classes at the Mountains Academy

---

 
 
Erica speaking:

At that day, in the beginning, my sisters wanted me to show a memory that defined what it is to be a man.

There is no such a memory.

This needed a lifetime.

You know, there was time though. I didn`t have to show all to them that instant.

I had two memories that would help to begin.

I was also puzzled, one thing that Anora`s memory had left clear was that, through the basin in the spiritual plane, the goddess gave perfect recollection to us.

It would be nice to review that day from my new perspective.

I started with a memory meant to shock my sisters.

We were Eric, holding our penis to pee into a bush close to a trail that led up a hill, passing between the farms.
The girls, now immersed within my memory, felt the sensations of my old body and the pride of knowing that I was “reasonably well rung” down there. Of course, I was not and will never be a “lady” like those of the cities, but neither were my sisters. After all, life in a wagon leaves little to privacy. And yet, I could feel their initial shock to notice that the penis between my legs was not a bother, but a reason for pride.

Then they were me. We were all there sending a little jet of liquid into the vegetation while feeling the sun in our backs.

We, … I, it gets confusing with shared memories and I find myself speaking like Anora sometimes. But, in that day, a little time before the fall of our tribe in that damned battle, I was just me. A boy that had just passed his initiation into male hood and now my father was leading me to the second usual ritual of passage.

I finished my business, put my penis in its place inside my leather pants, adjusted it to be a bit more comfortable and went to the horses that were being watched by Thomas, my elder brother.

“You took your time, I was almost peeing in my pants”.

“Didn`t you tell us that you could hold it for days if needed?” I answered.

Thomas didn`t answer, he just walked away, almost running to pee in the bushes, leaving me with a small smile on my face.

Shortly after, Elrond, Anora`s father and a great friend of my family appeared from inside of the vegetation, followed, little by little by the other members of our expedition, all with that satisfied air of people that had taken care of urgent business.
Thomas took a while to come back which, of course, made him the subject of the fun and good humored teasing of our group for the rest of the small trip.

Soon we were mounted, following the trail. It is a bit sad to remember how we were all happy, teasing my poor elder brother and ignoring the hostile stares of the few farmers crazy, or desperate enough, to try to make a living in the grasslands.

We were, of course, in a reasonably large band. As Elrond said at the time, large enough to avoid trouble and small enough not to cause trouble. Among the twenty men and boys in our group were my father Alaric, my two older brothers, Thomas and Olgir and Bastet`s father, Ramon - all of the elite warriors of our tribe. We were going to the easternmost free city. A town named Resistance because, like its people loved to say, it was still there despite the Free People`s best efforts. Elrond, had needed almost a decade to build a truce with the beleaguered city. But one thing was tradition in the wolf tribe even before the truce.

“You must choose Serina, little brother, those humongous tits can do things that do not seem natural” Thomas, said in a playful tone.

“Do not listen to him, big tits are for cows, choose Herprina, she has legs that go on and on …” Olgir added.

These were some of the tamest things discussed in our group, amid the teasing of my brother with names ranging from “water bag bladder” and going down in the polite scale. They also took turns teasing and scaring us, young folk with tales of horrid diseases transmitted by sex ad how to deal with them. The worst thing is that now I know that some of the tales were true, both about the diseases and the cure.

“Do not worry son, Silvia keeps a good house, she takes care of her girls.” Reassured Grunjir, Eric`s father.

This playful, rude mood was in part to disguise our fear. We, the youngsters, were going to a mix between temple and bordello, we would say that it was to prove our manhood once more, but it had a more political reason behind it, it was to show the city folk that we could bring money to them. And only the densest of the boys had not realized this.

While we went to the bordello, the “big guys”; my father, Anora`s and Bastet`s father would be talking to the village council. Trying to solve the problems that Erynia`s kidnapping had brought to us three years ago. Of course, I mused, the young, unmarried girl that had been sent to Resistance as a punishment anyway was just a pretext to start something that was going to happen anyway. Our fathers had to try to avoid the bloodshed, though. It was their duty.

Was I, a young boy going to a bordello for his “initiation” really doing all this analysis or I added this to the memories latter, when life and contact with Anora`s mind taught me to be more “political”?

A bit of both, now that I think back on it. I was a boy, but not completely stupid and my father also had trained me to see beyond the obvious. After all, in my first initiation, I had killed the velociraptor not with lance and bravado, but with arrow, smartness and dexterity.

Of this I am sure, while we rode and I endured silently the tease of the older boys, more than half of my mind was wandering back to the grasslands and the ambush of that old dinosaur. One of the few things in the grasslands that could run faster than our horses, but, for its despair, my horse had better endurance than it.

Yes, I am still proud of that fight.

I was mixing memories, using one memory inside the other to show to my sisters both my first and second initiations at the same time.

Following the trail we went up one farmed hill, then down the other side to the Kodor river, crossed trough an strong wood drawbridge and went up again, passing by the docks to climb in the direction of the main part of the city, placed as it was around the top of a second, higher hill.

The bordello was outside of the wooden palisade that surrounded the main town. It was a big sturdy one storey stone house with a few narrow windows, perfect for use as arrow slits. There was a place in the back to tie and feed the horses, but only a strong wooden door at the front led to the interior of the building.

Over the door there was a painting of a big engorged penis, as was usual in this kind of establishment and, weird as it may seen, was considered a sign associated with Afrodite, the goddess of beauty.

While we young folks tended the horses, my older brothers went inside to bargain a price for the group. Our elders went into the palisade to negotiate the peace.

The front room of the bordello was a mix between tavern and temple. There were two big tankards of ale to the side and a set of tables surrounded by stools filled most of the floor, leaving little space to walk (or to fight). At the back wall, in one side of the room, there was an altar to Afrodite. Near it there was the entrance of a large corridor leading inside.

When I entered, an old woman dressed in a fine blue dress was close to the ale tankards, discussing prices with my brothers, a process that could take the whole afternoon. But, she interrupted the bargaining for enough time to call trough the back corridor. “Girls, please entertain these gentleman while I discuss business with their elders.”

From the doors lining the corridor came a group of scantily clad women, ranging in age from about the age of our mothers to young girls. Us, boys, used as we were with girls dressed in robes from head to toe could barely restrain our hard dicks. Slowly, the women came from inside the corridor in what was probably a rehearsed choreography, showing their assets to their customers.

And we were back at the basin, in the goddess cave, while the spiritual bodies of my sisters rolled on the floor laughing.

“This must be the most fake show that I saw in my life” Stated Anora. I had never seen her laugh so much.

“No, did you see that girl? The little one with big breasts?” said Bastet. “She was walking like this” And she mimicked the girl in a comic way, exaggerating her busts by lifting them with her hands and asking: “Do you want milk?”.

This time even Erynia couldn`t resist a remark.“And the one with the big legs? She was walking or kicking someone?”

The fits of laughter took a while to calm down, but when she could control herself again Anora asked,“More sister, we need more, which one did you choose? Was she good?”
And at this remark a new fit of giggles ensured.

Eventually we touched the water again and I brought the vision of being led to her room by the girl with big legs. Yeah, the one that walked as if kicking someone in the shin. But in doing so showed a little of her pussy behind the very, very little skirt she was wearing. My sisters never stopped teasing me because of this memory.

Once we returned to her room, the whore slowly took of my clothes, laid me down in the furs that worked as her bed and started a slow sensuous dance that almost ended the flow of the memory again. My sisters were really, really having a good time watching this.

“What do you want of me, oh young sir” The hooker asked after I was very hard on her bed.

It was impossible to keep completely immersed in this memory. The Eric from the past couldn`t see the boredom in the eyes of the whore, he was thinking too much with the lower part of his body. I, Erica, could see clearly what was happening. Apparently I will really never think like a boy again, thanks the goddess. But we could feel and understand why my old self was already moving, taking the woman into his arms and bringing her to the bed, under him.

People say that the first time is magical and a lot of this crap, but there was nothing magical in it. I penetrated the woman, thrust my dick a few times and had what looked like a very, very strong orgasm. She, of course, was not even close. And had the decency not to pretend.

I was a bit ashamed for my “quick shot” and thinking “What do I do now?”

There was a strong knock on the door.

“Eric, I am sorry, but we must leave now.”

And the memory ended, we found ourselves back in the spiritual world looking at the basin of dark water.

Anora asked in a serious tone. “What happened Erica, why you had to leave in a hurry?”

“The meeting did not go well, they tried to bribe your father to fight against the other tribes” I answered with sadness.

“That was fun, men can be such dolts !!!” Bastet said with a smile ignoring the political part for the fun part as she always did.

“Now you are satisfied sisters?” I asked.

“No, not at all lover, that orgasm that you considered strong as a male was not satisfying, not at all.” Bastet said approaching me with mischief in her eyes.

“Lets go to my forest lover” and she led me to her place in the spiritual world where we would learn that “spiritual sex” was not the same as “real sex”.

When we touched each other and started to play, we also started to exchange sexual dreams, sensations and memories. It was actually nice, but we had to stop after a while or else there would not be Erica and Bastet anymore, only a unified being living in two bodies.

Anora talking:

While the two lovebirds run smiling to the forest, Erynia and I decided to start our jobs. I went to my place in the spiritual world and worked on finding seeds, sowing, forcing animals into the water of the caves so that we could dominate them...
It was fun work and I could accomplish a lot, almost doubling the number of creatures under our control before I felt that my body in the physical world needed to wake up.

Before going to my “real” body I put in the basin knowledge of all that I had done that night. My sisters did the same, leaving their places and going to the water to give a gift of knowledge to our collective mind. We had decided that knowledge dropped in the basin would be assessable always, even if we did not touch it. So, if I decided to shoot an arrow I would not have Erica`s ability, but I would have her knowledge.

We formed a circle and, slowly, started to fade from the goddess cave.

I woke up refreshed and happy. Erynia`s body had dropped an arm protectively over me while we were sleeping and this unconscious movement left a smile in my face.

She woke up and smiled back, but soon her usual cold expression reasserted itself and she said “We have work to do”.

Erica and Bastet were doing it like two rabbits again, but I had learned to isolate this in the back of my mind. Erynia and I went outside to see what the new day would bring.
Later that day we made love.

Our group set in a routine, broken only by the occasional bout of lovemaking. We would work for the goddess at night, sometimes stopping by the basin to share in details of a more personal memory.

During the day we improved the cave and did things that our creatures didn`t have the dexterity to do, like weaving baskets from grass or improving clay vases. We would also discuss our night work, sharing memories directly from mind to mind to give emphasis to this or that point. Memories shared this way were not as clear as those shared trough the basin, but were good enough to make mindspeak our preferred way of communication.

With time I and Erynia started to explore some of the caves by ourselves, finding beautiful places and exits leading to many openings in the surface of the mountains.

Bastet and Erica would explore the outside, going up mountains and down valleys, toning their bodies and preparing for the tasks ahead. Erica taught Bastet how to shoot arrows.

In those times when sunset found us far away and we couldn`t return to the pool cave, our creatures would bring food and pelts and we would sleep in the best nearest cave. In time we set up many such refuges up to a day travel around our home. Time didn`t have much meaning to us, except for our menstrual cycles.

After a moon cycle or two, Bastet came up with a plan to defeat the spirit of the woods and take over the forest to the north.
The plan had to do with … fish.

Thanks to Sephrena Miller again

Tribe of the Mountains Chapter 9 — Expanding and Converting.

Kids, you have a choice.
Not much of a choice some of you say, but you have it.
Forget the pressure from our society.
You know that your mothers will keep contact one way or the other.
Go to your rooms today.
Think.
Do I want to be a man, a woman or one of the tribe?
You had all your life up to this moment to decide, but think a little more.
You have one week.
Use it.

Linda Basteter
Discourse to the children of the Tribe at their thirteenth birthday.

---

From the tribe`s history books:
 
 
In the beginning, Bastet and Erica were the ones tasked with expanding our domains.
Their first enemy was a spirit perverted by the land where it grew. The spirit of the forests that separated the mountains from the grasslands.
Some scholars say that the confrontation could be avoided, there were many ways to get to the cities. They could take the swamps west of the forest, they could take the underground and excavate tunnels bellow the forest, they could find where the cursed forest ended to the east.
But you do not leave an enemy alive at your doorstep.

Bastet Talking:
My sisters keep asking me to tell this tale. A tale of magic and wonders they say, a tale of how to subvert and not confront. A lesson to future generations and blah, blah, blah

Damn, I prefer to be out there, fishing, hunting, making sex and doing whatever I feel like. Not in this damned damp cave writing in a history book so that a poor sob will be forced to read it in the future.
But the big black goo that we call a goddess agrees with them. Something about future generations and all those big plans of HERS.
---
OK!!!OK!!! Stop pestering me. Correction, people. SHE is an ocean of dark mean, smart goo. Happy now, OH goddess of us, the perverted whores?
Because oh reader, this is how they call us in the cities. The dark ones, the perverted ones, the ones that steal girls from their fathers, the sucubi, the ones that drain male hood.

And I am proud to say that I started this.

It was simple, actually.
I love fishing. But there was no fish in the caves. The goddess ate it all “in the time of famine when the big rock fell from the sky.”

Or some other bullshit like this.

There was plenty of fish in the mountain rivers tough, including one that was neither male nor female. Or better, they were all big females until a certain time of the year, than one female in a hundred would turn male, losing some skin in the process.

It happened in Erica`s first period ever. We were hunting naked, of course, so the blood didn`t faze me much. I simply went to where our backpacks were to get some herbs and clothes to keep the herbs in place, but poor Erica got all: “Oh, this is so gross” and run to the first stream that she found.

I found her there, in the water. She had our memories, we had prepared her for it, but feeling it running down your legs was still absolutely terrifying.

She calmed down fast though. I sent my memories of the past menses and she understood. Only them we noticed the fish nibbling at her blood.

And there must be something of the goddess into the blood, because the fish were being taken.
This is when I realized it.

We could alter these fish, they were already quite big, but we could make them bigger.

The animals of the woods were used to eating the skin of these fish in their mating season, every hunter knew it.

The spirit of the woods was a manifestation of the animals and plants. If we could take the animals and trough them get some of the plants, we would get the spirit.

We could turn the spirit itself into a servant of the goddess.

There was a problem tough, as Erynia reminded me when I sent the thought. The spirit was also fed by the magic coming from the big rock buried deep bellow the grasslands.

This is what had corrupted the spirit. That thing that, as my sisters loved to say: fell from the sky breaking the mountains and damaging the GODDESS, making her more bestial until we came, …
Blah, blah, blah.

I really don`t care. We lived our whole lives in the grasslands, my mother used to tell tales from the weird mutated children of old and how most had to be killed right after being born. In the past. But not in the last, I don`t know, ten, eleven generations?
Our people were immune. Even a half blood like me was immune.

Erynia was not of the people, but even she had not turned into a monster.

I told the Goddess to look into us, see why we were immune and use it. Make the whole damned forest immune if needed.

The girls and the Goddess got all excited after looking; they started to talk about some new thing that they called “hormones”, magic making mutations and some such.

I didn`t care. I just got me some fish and started to work on them.

A wonderful thing happened. These fish could still be eaten.

Usually when the goddess takes an animal eating it is like eating a part of yourself. May be nutritive, but is very painful.

But these fish, better yet, the skin that they could liberate under the goddess will, this could be eaten. The fish would become male, and have to eat a lot to become female again, but this was the fish`s problem, not mine.

It was like raising sheep or llamas. But instead of wool, you got meat!

And they loved our menstrual blood. Soon they were changed by that hormone stuff or whatever or by mutation magic from the goddess. Shit, guys, if you are studying this to learn about this stuff go read a book written by Erynia. See if you can get to the end before falling asleep you have my deepest admiration. I can`t look into her damned memories in the spiritual world without feeling bored.

What really matters is that after a few menses and lots of work shepherding fish we got a very, very special breed.

You know, what was holding the goddess is that since the “big bad rock” she could not slither, roll, walk or whatever in the sun. Creatures taken by her can, but after lifetimes of war the spirit was ready for the big creatures. The small creatures could not contain much of the goddess, or so SHE thought at the time.
The goddess would advance at night, perhaps take a few creatures and the spirit would take them back during the day when the goddess was not there to strengthen the bond.

Heh, but It never saw our blow. We didn`t take a few creatures. We took the whole damned forest for us.
Erica is a hunter, she taught us to be cautious and sneaky. We sent our fish and waited for the skin to be eaten, but we did not take the animals right away. We let them loose, roaming the forest, mating, feeding and being fed upon. Spreading HER seeds slowly through the forest, growing unnoticed.

When we acted it was all at once. It was day, but SHE placed us at the borders and also some of her biggest animals.

Through us she could reinforce the bond during the day. There was too much of her out there anyway, the forest was already hers.

The spirit didn`t feel a thing. One moment it was an angry raging thing, the next she was a part of a vast creature, she was part of our goddess.

Now we had free access to the grasslands.

OK Anora, Can I go now? The sun is calling and there is much fun to be had today.

Anora speaking:

With the grasslands open we had a lot of opportunities, but first we had to be prepared.

We all know that the second most important thing in warfare is information, almost tied up with the first, logistics.

This is one of the first things I learned from my father.

We make love, not war, but information was still essential to avoid a war.

We had to look into the memories that had belonged to the spirit of the woods, the memories of the animals and the forest itself. Since the spirit was not very rational, its memories were a tangled mess filed with confusion and negative feelings, but some of the beasts that were part of the forest had reasonable memories.
Some monkeys that now were our creatures remembered what happened with the remains of our tribe.

They had been betrayed.

Tribe of the Mountains Chapter 10 — Love and War.

What leads someone to treason, rape, murder.
How deep can a man or woman fall into the trappings of self servitude and greed?
Why?

Of course these questions are important, essential even to an organized society.
But there are times when you must send it all to the depths and judge a person only by the consequences of his/her actions.
These times are always the darkest ones.

Anora the first.
Philosophical musings.

Anora Speaking:

Urk was my nemesis, the one guy responsible for most of the trouble in my last two years of life as a normal girl.
But I thought that he would have the decency of dying in a heroic charge as he had always preached to be the right way to die.
Nope, he proved to be completely indecent.

According to Erynia, a philosopher once said something like:
The poor have:
No food.
No health.
No home.

But it is the lack of clothes in young women that is considered society`s shame and the reason for the decadence of civilization.

Hypocrisy, together with pride and greed form a deadly combination.

Pride and greed I attributed to my enemy, not hypocrisy.
I was sadly mistaken.

As the reader of this account may remember, we drugged the people of our tribe so that we could escape.

Monkeys are by nature curious, when a camp full of humans stopped moving and the spirit of the woods that controlled them was too distracted or weakened to hold them back, they followed their nature and went into camp.

You must imagine the kind of mess that the people of the tribe found when they woke from their drugged sleep.

In short order they chased the monkeys away, but the curious beasts remained in the outskirts of the forest looking at the camp to see if anything interesting would happen again.

Looking at the monkey`s memories we could see Urk getting up and screaming with everybody. He soon put his little army of twenty or so tugs in order and started to check the camp.

When it was found that we were missing he yelled a bit more, then started to herd most women into a wagon and all young boys, even some that looked at him as an example into the other.

After this, with the people looking from the barred windows, he showed his true face. He lined the few old people that had not fled yet and killed one after the other, slowly, with his mace. Allowing the next victim a clear view of what he was doing.

He and his tugs then proceeded to dismount camp, they took the wagons from the circular pattern in which they were and lined them. Then Urk, the guy that always preached against magic and mages, took a magical device from his belt and talked into it.

Soon a group of men came riding in the direction of the camp, about ten knights and what appeared to be a mage. The lead knight clasped hands with Urk while still inside of the camp of view of the monkeys and they rode out together, with the heavily escorted wagons full of would be slaves right behind them.

When I saw the memories of the monkeys and pieced together what happened, my first question was: “Why did he run? Why not deliver us to our enemies while we were still close to the site of that last dreadful charge that he had praised so much?”

I do not know if it was my mind or Erynia that answered it to me, we were working so close together in this that our minds were probably working in tandem, perhaps what people in latter times called parallel processing.
The fact is that we understood it. He needed to wait until anyone with a scrap of intelligence left the main group, also, when he saw the forest he must have loved the idea of cornering the remains of the tribe between his forces and its darkness.

We could imagine other reasons also, after all, the leading knight was clearly his friend, perhaps even a certain member of our tribe that I knew was living in the cities.

How long had they planed this?

Well, it was our time to plan.
Where were these slaves been kept? How many would accept our goddess?

Erynia Speaking

In the sixtieth month of the year five hundred and thirty two from the foundation of Tebes, first year of the goddess by our tribe`s accounts I called my sisters, the only ones that had proved worthy of my love in many years, to give to them a piece of my past.

I showed the boy, older than me by just a little, in his wheel chair, a chair that he had designed to be able to move despite his ugly, deformed legs. A boy that was a blond barbarian from the north, sold by his own father due to his deformity.

This boy, named Stephen was very capable with his hands as I knew very well. This slave, powerful artisan, mage and scholar was also the first lover of my younger life.

Anora once said that, at that time, I was not capable of “fireball magic”. This is true, but I always had the potential.

And I know exceedingly well that I also have what others might call deformity caused by magic. People call it coldness; I call it seeing the world trough reason. But I know that there is something that I lack, a kind of connection with other people.

My sisters and Stephen are the only exceptions, but both proved reasonable partners to my rational mind before I accepted them as anything else.

Stephen was instructed to teach me the basics of reading and logical debate so that I could be a reasonable wife to the son of one of my father`s commercial partners. He taught much more, including a lot of things that his deformity allowed him to demonstrate with his tong and lips only. But I wanted him, inside me, and for this we needed a bed.

Of course, as the reader may deduce, being caught making love in one of the bedrooms of the Gynaeceum, the women`s quarters of my father`s house, was not a good experience.

Now I understand why I was not killed by stoning like it is said in the law. Or, since my father didn`t want publicity, simply drowned and registered as dead by accident, I know that my father never loved me I, of course, also never felt anything for him or my mother except for a vague gratitude. Gratitude tempered by the knowledge that both saw me only as a tool to be used and latter forgotten.

They should have considered that the tool was broken and discarded it, but working in tandem with my sisters minds I could now see why not. The reason was there, in the little details of father`s face when he pronounced his sentence, in the faces of the guards detailed to escort me to the city of Resistance where I would be kept away from my beloved books while waiting my fate. The five guards that had fled without offering resistance when twenty tribesmen approached. The easiness that the tribesmen had to find me in the middle of nowhere between cities.

All made sense now.

I was a tool to start a war.

But I doubt that Stephen was in it, after all, he was castrated in front of me and chained into father`s library. There he was when I last saw him doomed to study as ordered and use his ability to sense magic to help father escape deception by mages.

He was also bound to enchant devices, devices like the talking stone that Urk, the mage hatter, used in his final betrayal.

My sisters still fret about the “treatment” that Urk gave me before making me a gift for Anora`s father. No, I do not. I was a political weapon to them, they had to be sure that I would be so soiled, so desecrated that Anora`s father would never be able to return me to my people.

But, of course, even after a beating, the first man that put his dick in me got the worse plague that I could cast. I used all the destructive, corrupting power of magic at once. His dick literally rot and fell, followed by the rest of his body. It took two days for him to die.

Oh, they beat me after this, I think that Urk didn`t kill me only because a wiser member of his group reminded him that I was to be a “gift”. And yes, they broke my hymen, the one that I had not time to break with my lover. They broke it using a piece of wood. It was very, very painfull.

But I will always remember that their dicks, their manhoods never touched me.

Now as a servant of the goddess I had power.

In the bowels of the earth my creatures were digging. In the lakes and rivers our converted fish were taking more and more animals. In the valleys of the mountains our herds multiplied.

I wanted my first lover back.
And when she came back to me as a servant of my goddess I would finally be complete. To the despair of the world.

Thank you Sephrena Miller, again.

Tribe of the Mountains Chapter 11 — Dark Plans

“Usually revenge is something stupid, useless, ugly and bad for the formation of a society.
But, depending on the circumstances, …”

Anora the first.
Philosophical musings.

 

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You are having a vision.

In the vision you see that there is a large cave system in and under the southern part of the mountains that practically cross the two continents from north to south. In it lives a monster, a goddess, a creature old as the earth and immensely powerful.

This creature has four followers. They live in a nice cozy cave with a pool in the middle.

You can see that the cave suffered a series of alterations since its new residents came to live, it now has rugs on the floor, the walls were carved to make stone shelves full of clay pots, there are hammocks tied to stalagmites near the pool.

Nearby, in the complex of caves, there is an storage area full of dried meats and fruits, there is also a kind of workshop where many attempts to build a weaving machine resulted in stone and wood scattered all over the floor. But this workshop also has an oven and some pieces of iron, weak and breakable, a first experiment that may lead to better materials in the future.

In the pool cave, sat cross legged forming a circle near the hammocks, close to the pool itself there is a group of four young incredibly beautiful women. And, somehow, you know their names.

Anora is brown skinned, a brunette with straight luxurious black hair kept short with the use of a stone knife.

Erica is of a similar race, and also keeps her hair short but she is taller than Anora and would look boyish if her muscular arms and abdomen were not compensated by two big, very firm breasts.

Bastet is the smaller and also the most exotic, with skin dark as coal, dark short straight hair and green vivacious eyes with pupils that sometimes look like those of a cat.

Finally Erynia, with her blonde, almost white hair, pale skin, blue eyes and icy expression.

The four have perfect unnatural skin, no blemishes, no scratches, no acne. Their bodies are well toned, with long legs, wide hips and beautiful, long and sleek muscles.

They sat for hours, emitting no sound, moving very little. From time to time a dark tentacle would rise from the pool and caress one of them, sometimes even feed a girl with its dark juicy substance.

Their eyes are opened, looking mostly into space only moving a little in the direction of a face or another as their internal debate rages and here and there a flicker of expression can be seen.

Suddenly their eyes are filled with darkness, with a black substance akin to that of the goddess. Without looking at each other these creatures with black eyes get up. Their muscles moving with an unnatural grace showing for a bare moment the incredible amount of speed and strength within.

Erica, Bastet and Anora leave the cave. Erynia goes in the opposite direction, to the depths of the earth.

The cave remains there, silent, with only a few dark tendrils rising out of the water from time to time and searching around, as if missing the presence of the girls.

One of the tentacles appears to feel your presence. It comes in your direction.

The vision ends and you, a girl named Selen, wake up screaming.

Erica speaking:

After opening the forest to the goddess we stepped up our information gathering. It was a bit like hunting, but our prey was words and news. Our tools were mainly a veritable army of bats leaving the caves to feed before the rainy season came.

The fish also continued their mating ritual, eventually finishing it and going down river to wait for the rains at the swamps. During all the process we took more and more of the animals that fed on this abundant prey.

When the rains came we retreated to the caves to live in darkness. The pool of our cave rose, but the excess of water went to a side hole in the floor to feed immensurable depths where giant lizards and our beloved lizard women lived.

Bastet and I went to the drier caves to set a trap for gigantic scorpions that preyed on our servants. Anora tended to her herds, giving shelter but demanding milk and a few deaths in return.

I also did something that I love, horse breeding. With the help of my sisters and a few wolves we captured some horses on the grasslands and I spent a lot of time playing with them, changing them with the help of the goddess, to the extent that Bastet complained because of my lack of attention to her needs.

Of course I soon attended her needs. I may have been a boy, but I got better. I am not a fool.

Finally, when the land was dry enough for travel we sent our little scouts all around again and found a large caravan leaving last fall, the new domain created by Urk on the hill where our parents died, and going to New Rome, a large city at the eastern ocean.

This caravan had slaves taken from the three tribes of the free people. Urk had been busy, going to the traditional hiding spots of the tribes, stating that all was well, that the danger had passed and attracting unsuspecting people to his traps.

Even using bats and a few birds we couldn`t find any remaining survivors of the free people in the grasslands. Latter we found that the ones that didn`t trust Urk had died, killed by the dangers of the land, or been forced to seek shelter in one of the cities when they understood that rain and lack of enough people to deal with things like velociraptors, pterodactyls or deformed beasts from the pit would be their doom.

We had a long discussion at the end of the rain season; Erynia was worried about Stephen and wanted us to try to get him. She also argued that we needed artisans, mages, people with knowledge.

Anora wanted to save as many as possible and then think about what to do next.

In the end, the goddess interfered ordering us to do both. Get more people and use them to get not only Stephen, but all misfits, all that had a different way of thinking, all that didn`t fit. She craved domination of more people and we wanted to obey.

So, while Erynia remained making the tools that would help in the next phase of the goddess plans Bastet, Anora and I were going to catch and destroy a caravan.

We crossed the forest north of the mountains at night, called the horses that the goddess gave to us and continued into the grasslands.

Anora tells me that it is needed a hunter to describe hunting and mayhem. And tells me to “write a full account of our exploits” or something like this.

Well, since I have to continue telling this lets at least state that the horses that I bred worked wonderfully. I am really proud of that job.

The grasslands though, are getting more and more dangerous perhaps because now there are not something around one hundred thousand hunters going up and down and killing the worse treats.

Perhaps it is because all that magic cast close to it made the stone at the bottom of the pit emit pulses of raw magical power again. Like it did, in the old, bad times of legend.

Two days into our travel we met trouble.
I was hiding ahead, paying attention to the land, but it was my other senses, those attuned to all life around me, that detected a large creature in ambush ahead.

We were close to a water hole and it was midday. The ever so attentive Bastet had led us around velociraptor territory only few hours before and we all could feel the presence of a group of large elephants perhaps a half day ride ahead. Both the raptors and the elephants seemed to avoid this area but going a bit to the west would lead too close to the pit and to the east I was certain that a huge magical beast hunted, there were signs of its power all around us for one that could see.

<Anora, can you feel a magical beast ahead?> I asked.

<Yes, less powerfull than the one to our right though, I think that whatever is hunting to the west made this one here run in our direction.&gt Anora`s perfect face had a crease in her forehead as she told this.

I knew that my sister was hiding her magical aura, if she hadn`t the big monster to the west would be coming after us already. While I was thinking in what to do Bastet sent a mental image of us doing something much more pleasant. As always, this helped me to put things in perspective. The important was that I was a woman, feeling my naked pussy rub against a horse over which I had complete mental control, I was stronger than ever and much more agile than any man. The day was hot, but my skin was not burning much, my lovers were besides me …

That is when I understood what to do. I couldn`t feel magic, but looking into Anora`s mind I knew exactly where the beast was hiding.

We spread out, around the spot where the thing was, with Bastet`s horse coming closer to it but not close enough for most creatures to catch in one jump. As expected, the beast left its hiding place and started to run to get the horse. Usually it would get its prey since, as most ambush predators, it was capable of fast, short bursts of speed and most creatures take a little while to see a creature coming through the grass.

Bastet didn`t take a moment, even before she saw that it was a big lizard, a stone lizard to be accurate, coming after her she had already ordered the horse to move. A short burst of speed latter, made possible by muscles enhanced by dark tendrils of our goddess and they were out of reach of the lizard.

Usually arrows do not penetrate these creatures, they are named stone lizards for a reason. But some man eating plants can get trough and both I and Anora had arrows with special hollow tips containing the digestive acid of these plants.

Arrows hit the lizard in both flanks, they were not enough to kill it, or even penetrate deeply in its skin, but hitting close to its leg joints we made it much slower. Then, when she noticed that she didn`t need to run anymore, Bastet took her bow and hit the lizard with an arrow in one eye.

This was how our tribe hunted. Spread around the beast, shoot arrows coated in acid or poison, make it get confused, do not give a target. We knew how to clean the meat to make it edible after the creature was dead.

Few creatures in the grasslands had long range weapons and we were masters of the composite bow.

When the lizard finally fell we got to it. There was no time to cook or clean the meat, so, we simply let the parts of the goddess that were stored in our bodies (including the horses) feed. We had to touch our mouths to the meat so that the goddess would not be damaged by the sun, then from our mouths dark tendrils left, getting inside the meat and consuming it, storing the energy in the black deposits that we had in our bellies, muscles and even in parts of our heads.

People ask if I worry because many of my muscles are enhanced by dark fibers that actually belong to the goddess and that I am controlled by her desire and whim. Why should I care if she is also joined within me since she actually helps me through enhancing both my mind and body? It would be like worrying about the virginity of an old prostitute, wouldn't it? I chose to join my sisters and I decided that the price of having so much of HER inside was worth the dependence. I do not regret anything.

The horses ended up consuming most of the meat. I suppose that their bellies were a true pool like those in the caves by now.

After our meal we actually went faster, not sleeping or resting. Eating a magical creature increases the reserves of magic of another magical creature, so, Anora got a boost to her abilities and her restorative magic was stronger than ever. In a total of ten days from the moment that we left the pool cave we reached the caravan.

We approached it at night, using the normal humans’ bad night vision to our advantage.
Anora and Bastet could hardly contain themselves; they really wanted to do to the caravan guards what we had done to the lizard.

Am I the only one left with some mercy in our group?

<Yes, I know > Sent Anora with exasperation. <But I am really starting to dislike this thing, I can feel them, there are three wagons made of ironwood. They are using our wagons, large wheels, three axis instead of two, our wagons to cart our people into slavery. I know that I abandoned the remains of my tribe because none of them would escape with us. Rationally I can think that these same people that now are slaves would do the same to the cities if they could. We all know that we had to leave because …>

Bastet interrupted her <OK, Ok, calm down sister. Erica, this whole thing is a piece of shit and it has to stop. Simple as that. You feel it too, you know that we have to terrify these guys. We all can feel the suffering of the people on that middle wagon. This must stop now and with extreme violence.>

Bastet is usually a playful person, but when something must be done she does. This is one thing that I love in her. She is fun, but never forget her duties.

Unless she is asked to write a report.

<OK sisters, one last time, inhuman approach, sexual inuendo or discourse?> I sent.

< Sexy and inhuman> answered Bastet.

The decision was definitive. Exchanging information very fast we set the details of a plan.

For one day we just watched. We sent our horses some distance away, and through mind speak asked Erynia and the Goddess to send the birds that were still nearby. Slowly we got a sense of the content of the three wagons and who was who in the caravan.

They had four scouts mounted in good horses, but one of them was a tribesman, one of Urk`s own. Another, named Iuri, was bound by a quartz crystal stuck to his forehead, if he strained from the caravan the wizards in the first wagon would give a command and the jewel would start to convert ambient magic into heat.

Anora had her doubts about the ability of the mages to do this from a distance and she could feel magical, untrained ability in this youth. He might be capable of taking control of the jewel. A little bird “told” us though that his sister and mother were in the second wagon, as Urk`s crony loved to remind the guy all the time.

This one was a good candidate, Bastet was already choosing a female name for him. Iuria would not work, of course.

So, four scouts, one marked for violent death, one to be turned if he accepted and two to let the fates decide.

Three wagons, the first containing four mages, being three males and a female, the female being a rarity since in most cities a female with the gift was never allowed to learn enough to become capable of defending a caravan, a mystery that would remain probably unsolved.

The second wagon had about twenty slaves in chains. Eight children, four boys and four girls. Two young adult males and ten women, most of them young. By the talk of the male mages when they stopped to urinate we could deduce that many would go to bordellos all over the romanish empire. Also, the elder mage was not very happy with this job.

The slaves were never allowed to get out and the result was a terrible smell of human waste and sweat that could be felt even outside of the wagons and even by birds with little sense of smell. Apparently the slavers were afraid that the former tribesmen and women would disappear in their homeland, even the eight children.

The third wagon had five armed men and an assortment of goods for trade, we could not know what exactly, but were very interested.

Behind the third wagon rode the usual mules and armed men of a caravan. Apparently the merchants had not been able to get more wagons or had not trusted them too much.

The merchants themselves were in mules, we knew more than a few of them. Protecting this last group were ten men armed with bows, swords and a few enchanted shields.

OK, fifteen armed men, four mages, three merchants that knew how to fight.

Even I was licking my lips and excited by our plans now.

Tribe of the Mountains Chapter 12 — Scary Girls.

Transforming magic can make a big cone of ice.
Transforming magic can make a big fireball.
Transforming magic can launch rocks.
Transforming magic can stop arrows.

Magic can heal, harm or transform.
Heal if you find it in yourself.
Harm if all that you can think hurts.
Transform if you love the workings of the world.

Heat can become magic, magic can become heat.
Fire can be extinguished. Fire can be set.
Magic can become movement, movement can become magic.
A stone can be stopped, a stone can be moved.

By healing, magic can save. But healing and harming are the same.
Healing and harming are transformation, are mutation.
You heal by creating growth, you harm by creating growth.
Magic always mutates.

So, magic can do only one thing after all, magic can change.
And yet you can do only a specific thing with magic.

You can heal, you can harm, you can transform heat, you can transform movement. Or you can enchant stones to do this for you.
No one can do all.

Textbook on magical science.
Author: Epidaurus Vacilantus
Magical academy of Thebes.
Written in five hundred and thirty one from the foundation of Tebes, tenth year before goddess (10 BG) by our tribe`s accounts.

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Anora Speaking:

I am not the most suited to talk about stalking prey or physical combat. In combat I am only a healing mage, with little ability to do harm.

But both Erica and Bastet state that I am the better person to describe our little ambush that night. They say that I am the one that could follow everything as it happened.

Heh, I can feel them both making love in a beautiful mountain valley right now. As good reason as any to avoid writing a book.

Erynia, on the other hand, is writing that book that she says will “destroy that stupid textbook from Epidaurus, and show the world that he is a pompous fool”. I doubt that anyone will take a book written by “those bitches of the mountains” seriously, except for some priests that will use it to light a bonfire but to each its own obsessions.

I must admit that putting all the amazing events that led to so much death, but also so much development in written form is my obsession.

Well, Erica likes to write about horses and hunting, I am sure that she would start to tell the way that we defeated fifteen armed men, four mages and deceived four experienced merchants used to the grasslands as a nice hunt done with a good horse. She would not be completely wrong.

But since I am writing, let’s start by the subject that I love, that is, logistics.

We had traveled with pack horses, but our ability to live of the land had been really increased by our stay with the goddess. Memories of hundreds of animals helped to understand the prey while our speed and ability to feel life made us very good at finding our quarry. This means that a substantial amount of the water and food didn`t need to be packed. We could travel lightly and fast, loosing little time to hunt and yet, hunting enough to complement our rations.

The merchants though had to feed slaves that were forbidden from hunting. Also, the merchant route was well known by all creatures in the region and they had adapted, large predators had learned to avoid men in this path but prey also disappeared when human voices or the human scent was felt.

This merchant route was the best path to follow; the merchants knew all the water holes, streams and rivers. The path was mapped and the use had improved it to the extent that in some places it could almost be called a road. Of course we also knew it all, including the place where the merchants would sleep that night.

It was a nice location, at the top of a hill close to the northern lake, with a beautiful view of the lake and the mountains north of the grasslands.
As we found out, when preparing our ambush, the lake had dark places and hidden underwater caves where the goddess could thrive, if SHE was careful, since there were dragons, elves and other powerful beings in the lake and the northern mountains. These powerful beings would not like if SHE showed herself there.

Anyway, we left a part of HER in the lake and it started to get material and grow, going to the depths. With this our link to HER strengthened and we got the ability to control more creatures, although we only needed the horses for the current task.

In the future though, I could see having the presence of parts of the goddess at both sides of the grasslands between mountains as quite a nice idea. She felt that it was more important to expand south than north, but control of this important way of commerce was vital.

OK, OK, I will get to the juicy part. We sent a gift to the merchants. A horse came to their camp at the end of the day, looking a bit lost as if it was a domesticated horse gone astray in some battle.

No merchant looses the opportunity to collect a strong and fit mare that would easily fetch a good price in New Rome or Magdan. After the mare followed the caravan a bit, as if she was a puppy wanting to be taken in, the guards were sent with some fruits to attract her. She smelled the fruit offered by the strongest guard, nibbled at it a bit and he used it to tie a rope around her neck. Happy with the catch and with the nice bonus that this horse would bring the guard didn`t mind when the mare snorted in his face and didn`t notice the dark globule entering his nose.

Guided by a link to something much bigger, the little dark particle avoided the guard`s defenses, got into his bloodstream and started to multiply. The Goddess had millennia of experience in doing this intrusion into a body. It worked reasonably well in any animal, with the exception of some dragons and other powerful magical beasts.

But I digress again. As you can imagine, since the guard was male we could not ask him to join us in the goddess or even talk to his mind, but the Goddess could be quiet, become a kind of dormant disease in his bloodstream and wait.

While she was playing inside the guard, the caravan stopped for the night and the horse was led to an improvised corral where it started to take the other horses, the dranacks used to pull the wagons and the merchant`s mules, converting them to the Goddess.

Traditionally the merchants set tents forming a circle around a fire, and built a fire pit around the camp. The trench for the fire pit in the old camp site they were using this night had been improved with the years, being reinforced even by people of the tribes since we used to protect our herds inside it when camping around. This trench already dug in the soil represented an economy of time since they didn`t need to stop earlier and dig, the wood in the area though had already been almost completely used to fuel past fires and this forced the merchants to carry some wood with them.

Lately they had been traveling with heat stones, magical stones that could be set to produce large amounts of heat when any animal approached. They were complicated to use, since a mage was needed to activate and de activate the spells, but the economy in time or carry space was considered worth it.

This caravan, though, had an interesting problem to solve. They had the usual mules and tents but also three of the large wagons used by the tribes. The wagons would not fit into the area surrounded by the old fire pit.

They solved it by making two camps, one was close to the usual tribe stile, the three wagons forming three sides of a square and the herd of pack animals and horses the fourth side. The circle formed by the firepit touched the square at the side where the animals were.

Follows a drawing of what I remember from that night:

______________W2W2W2
____________W1___p___W3_______
____________W1_p___p_W3_______
____________W1___p___W3_______
________________CCCC__________

Where three W form a wagon, W1 contained the goods and was used as sleeping quarters for the guards, W2 contained the slaves, W3 also carried some trading goods but was mostly occupied by the wizards.
CCCC was the cattle enclosure, p the fire pit.

The guards of the caravan where divided in groups of five, with five resting in W1, five in the middle of the pit, close to the merchant`s tents and five patrolling following irregular paths at irregular intervals. Of these last five, one usually went to the roof of W2 to watch the area, since the slope leading to W2 (remember, top of a hill) was the easiest to climb being the one used by the wagons to go up and down the hill.

The merchants left an opening in the fire pit leading to W3, so that the guards stationed inside the pit, close to the tents of the merchants could run and call the mages and also leave to sleep or to patrol in their turn.

There was only grass around the camp site, since the sparse wood of the grasslands around the place had been chopped long ago. The grass in the camp proper was cut to help feed their fire pit and a few fires spread around the place to give clarity, but it was still possible to approach the camp using the cover of darkness and, in some places, the curvature of the hill.

The infected guard helped to set camp, unfortunately he was not one of those assigned to cook and we could not get to the other guards trough him. Most people in the camp were from Thebes or its surroundings and a dark plague a century ago had taught this people to be careful with what they shared with others.

But, after the camp was set, the infected one and four companions went to the wagon (W1) to rest. There, in the darkness, the Goddess quietly ate the brain of the infected guard, substituting it by a version of her own.

Yeah, yeah, I know that Esculapious wrote that what controls the body is the spirit, nested in the heart. Forget, the Goddess has been doing this for a while and she assures us that it is that grey material in our heads.

The infected guard was of course, for all purposes dead. But his body still could move and the goddess would make good use of it. Its first task was moving about and spreading parts of the goddess to the other guards sleeping in the wagon. We left two of them alive though, the one that worked for Urk and the boy that had been forced into servitude as a scout to the caravan.

Right after sunset I approached the camp from the direction of the second wagon while doing my best imitation of the walk of the long legged whore in Erica`s memory of the bordello. I was using only the leather under vests typical of my tribe and tried to appear scared as well as sensual. The guard at the top of the wagon logically signaled the others and, as expected, they alerted the mages.

Why? Why did they send two men plus one junior mage to meet me? Because the tribes had used ploys to attack merchant caravans in the past, I could be a decoy to distract from a raiding party, so, the other three mages were waken and got out of their heavily warded wagon. The senior mage was sent to the merchant`s camp, inside the fire pit, while the woman mage and the other where positioned at strategic places around the camp.

They didn`t wake up the sleeping guards though, these had worked in the last shift of the day, even caught a stray horse, and were certainly not in good conditions for a fight.

The merchants though, woke, left their tents, and got bows and arrows.

Different from any of my misfit sisters I looked like a normal girl from the tribes. Except for my magical aura, but everybody knew that tribesmen did not have mages, much less women mages. So, their mage would not be looking for magic.

Not with my breasts almost poking out of my vests and my bare legs in display. Approaching the men was actually fun, when I got to a speaking distance I said to the amused guards: “Please sirs, take me in, I am alone here in this wilderness and barely escaped with my life from a water snake only yesterday”.

Of course I talked in the language of the tribes, despite knowing Theban quite well. One of the guards spoke in a mix between the two languages: “You ours now, food, water, shelter, come.”

I approached the guards and they escorted me to the compound while the mage followed a little behind. As I hoped they led me to the passage crossing the fire pit leading to the merchant`s tents. When we had just crossed the fire pit I got on my knees in front of the young mage that had followed us, mesmerized by my ass.

“Please sir, take me as your own, you are nice.” I said, mimicking what I could do to him if he took me for himself.

The guards were smirking by now and, since I was obviously really a woman and no tribesman was approaching they started to relax. This is when the taken aurochs broke free of the cattle enclosure, followed by all the other pack animals.

The animals went right for the guards, killing the other two that were on the lookout outside of the fire pit. The guard at the top of one of the wagons had already been killed by an arrow from Erica.

Now, it was my turn. The mage looked at the approaching mad cattle and started to prepare a spell, but I got up and kissed him. A kiss full of goddess. Her dark tendrils entered his mouth and destroyed his brain before he could realize what was happening.

While the body of the mage convulsed on the floor I approached the two, now terrified guards while laughing with my mouth full of blood from the dead mage.

It was really fun. The first guard came at me with raised sword, I sidestepped his clumsy human charge an spit in his face. My dark spit bore a hole through his skin and bones and started to multiply. In seconds he was a mass of dark tendrils on the floor.

The second guard turned and ran. I let him, since I was already walking into the area protected by the fire pit. One of the merchants raised his bow to shoot me, but was transfixed by an arrow to the eye, shot by Erica that had jumped to the top of one of the wagons.

An Aurock had crossed the fire pit and was attacking the senior mage. The man shot a bolt of fire at the huge beast but the Aurock, with open wounds oozing dark tendrils kept advancing until it trampled the mage under its huge mass. Amazingly the mage survived, latter I found that he was using an enchanted stone that gave some protection from physical blows, but the Aurock stood there motionless over him and I think that he got the message since he stopped moving.

I run to the second merchant, avoided his slow sword thrust and broke his arm, then I slowly took his other arm, forced it to bend as easily as if it was the arm of a toddler and whispered sensuously in his ear: stop moving or I will kill you.

The girl mage had a little more success, she had practically disintegrated with extreme heat a horse that had attacked her, but then the door of the wagon W1 opened and one of the guards that had been sleeping there came out. Only it was not a living guard anymore, it was a corpse filled with the goddess essence, with dark bloodshot eyes and an expression of pain.

The girl still had the presence of mind of shooting another stream of heat, but the body kept coming, even with a hole in its center and dark tendrils shot from it, surrounding her and putting her to sleep.

The other mage found Bastet`s bone dagger hilt deep in his neck as she appeared from nowhere in the middle of the camp.

By now two of the five guards that were inside the area protected by the fire pit had been shot dead already by Erica. Bastet jumped the fire pit and dispatched one more guard, the other got on his knees and plead for mercy.

Now the camp was ours.

The survivors in our care were the senior merchant, the senior mage and his mage daughter, Urk`s lackey, the guy that had been forced into servitude by magic and a guard begging for mercy.

We placed all of them in a goddess induced sleep and set some of the cattle to take care of them at the center of the camp. Then we went to the wagon containing the slaves.

I was the first one into the wagon. The smell was abominable, there was excrement and urine everywhere with men, women and children chained all around to rings set on the floor.

They were all awaken, looking at each other with perhaps a glint of hope in their eyes, after all, our battle had not been silent. But, of course a semi naked woman was the last thing that they expected to pass through the door. While they were still looking with astonished expressions I started to open their manacles with keys obtained from the bodies of the merchants.

Finally one of the women broke the astonished silence and asked “Who are you?” “I am Anora formerly from the wolfs tribe, now working for the goddess of the southern mountains”. I answered with pride in my voice.

“Anora, … are you Elrond`s daughter? Asked the elder of the women. “My husband would always speak good things about your father.”

“Yes, I am his daughter” I answered.

“Does it mean that the wolf tribe survived? Why are you naked?” Asked one of the men.

“Nope, the wolf tribe didn`t survive, I serve an old goddess now and she is a goddess of women. Nakedness is not a sin in her creed.” I answered with pride.

Slowly, the former slaves started to recuperate from their lethargy. Many simply left the wagon going outside to stretch their legs and look for food and water. Erica and Bastet helped them.

The elder girl and one of the men though, stayed inside helping me to release the others. In short order all were free and reasonably fed looking afraid at our “possessed” cattle and at the dead men walking here and there.

We were using the dead bodies to check the merchant`s camp and the mages wagon for traps.

“Please Free People form a line here in front of me so that I do not have to strain my voice.” I asked and, more than a little afraid, they did.

And I started what would be called in the future “the discourse”.

“The Free People of the Tribes are no more; all tribes were killed or enslaved. I would be dead also, if not for the goddess whose power you see all around you tonight. She is a goddess of women and she will turn any male that joins in one of us, she will also make you women want other women. But she will give strength, hope and purpose to those that follow her. She will also guide and protect you. She demands service, but she will allow you to control her creatures. Now, who will join us?”

Author`s note: No time to continue this right now, “see you” next week if I can find time amid the holidays.
This time the text was not sent to Sephrena, but she must be thanked for helping me find a written style nonetheless. I hope that she is well.

Tribe of the Mountains Chapter 13 — No Mercy.

Yep, we still have two sexes and yes, the girls with sperm are also known as y girls or simply y here in the tribe.

OK, I admit, it counts. A girl tend to look at a y girl as a partner and vice versa. The ability to have children together counts a lot.
But y girls transformed at a young age are not stronger than our normal girls. And even among the ones who were transformed at more advanced ages cases like that of Erica are unusual.

To the depths to this!!! Look, I am stronger than any other save Erica and I am small and fast, much faster than her. This kind of thing kills any kind of discrimination for a job or separation of tasks by gender.
For what matters guys, we have two sexes, but only one gender.

Now, lets forget this complex shit and drink some more of that new wine that Anora`s people have been brewing.

As registered by Linda Basteter in:
My Mother, the Drunk Philosopher.
Note: Only when drunk.

First copied by the mountains academy scribes, in the year 110 AG.

Previously in The Tribe of the Mountains:

There had been twenty slaves in chains. Eight children, being four boys and four girls. Two young adult males and ten women, all of them young.
………………………..
“Anora, … are you Elrond`s daughter? Asked the elder of the women. “My husband would always speak good things about your father.”

“Yes, I am his daughter” I answered.

“Does it mean that the wolf tribe survived? Why are you naked?” Asked one of the men.
………………………

“The Free People of the Tribes are no more; all tribes were killed or enslaved. I would be dead also, if not for the goddess whose power you see all around you tonight. She is a goddess of women and she will turn any male that joins in one of us, she will also make you women want other women. But she will give strength, hope and purpose to those that follow her. She will also guide and protect you. She demands service, but she will allow you to control her creatures. Now, who will join us?”

Author`s note:

First, a big thank you to Sephrena Miler for all.
Second, a warning: Things will get violent.

Now we can continue the tale.

Anora Speaking:

Bastet interrupted me: “OOOps, not so fast Anora. People, we will be here until tomorrow, then we will leave in the southern direction. You can join our goddess, follow us for a few days to reach a decision, or you can simply take a wagon and try to start a new tribe. No pressure, no tricks, we just have to see what you can keep and what we will take of the spoils of war.”

The eldest girl among the ex slaves, a beautiful one with about twenty five to thirty summers was the first with courage to speak.

“May we sit down? “ She asked. “If you want to create a tribe of women I suppose that this is our first council of the people?”

I, of course, loved the idea. Laughing I said: “Good idea, lets sit, eat some of the merchant’s food and have a council. You all are free to talk, even the males.”

And, since there is stupid people in the world, the elder male, a man of, perhaps, eighteen years was outraged: “You mock our people. Women never talked in any of our councils. This is against custom, religion and law.” Only after the outburst did he look around to note the murderous look in the faces of the ten girls his age and the embarrassment in the face of the other man.

“Huh Rughes, I think that this is not one of the tribes anymore” Stated the other man. Then he sat and continued “Besides, if we had listened to the girls, or even if the hotheads had listened to her father” And he pointed to me “Our tribes would not have ended in that humiliating way.”

Hughes was smart enough to stay quiet after this, but he was marked in my mind as one person NOT to convert no matter what.

We sat, and talked. Even the children were allowed to ask questions and some of them asked the better questions, as always happen. Things like: Why your eyes get all black sometimes? And: If you are all women how do you plan to have children? Were asked and we gave our best answers. Of course it was also very informal, while we talked people wandered around a lot, going somewhere to deal with excess bodily fluids, get food, or talk apart.

Bastet left the meeting to investigate the mage`s wagon and came back with good wine, many of the girls scouted the camp, finding food and drinks for all and John, the more reasonable of the two males, was asked to help in preparing a meal for us all and was smart enough to go and try to learn.

In the end, when everybody was fed, well rested and with many questions answered a young boy, of about twelve summers asked: “Can I join you now?”

I was surprised, the boy had been silent up to now, he didn`t leave to get food and I thought that he was sleeping with his eyes open, not that he was paying attention. Well, he was. “Why do you want to join?” I asked.

“I saw what they did to mom and to Ane”, he pointed to the eldest girl,

“You are going to kill them, and it will not be pretty. I want in. I would join even if I had to become one of them.” And he pointed to the dead men that were cleaning the former slaves wagon. The fierceness in the boy’s eyes, the age in his words, … this was not a child anymore.

“We have a problem, sisters” I said aloud so that anyone could listen.

“What is the problem?” The boy answered.

“Wait and I will answer, first help to put the really young children to bed.” And we all proceeded to take the children younger than ten summers to bed in the wagon that contained most of the trading goods. After this we finished organizing the camp.

Rughes didn’t help in anything, he just asked for a bow, arrows and travel gear. It was given and he left, alone. None of the girls wanted to have anything with him and John was too smart to do something so stupid. Rughes also asked for a horse, but all had been taken by the goddess and would be very bad choices as travel companions. I almost gave one to him just so the horse could eat him alive but this would be breaking my word and a bad start for our tribe.

Since we had attacked right after sunset, it was still the middle of the night when we all finished the cleaning job. We divided most of the goods between the wagon where they had been stored before and the wagon that previously kept the slaves. Each slave was given a share of the products, and we told them that they could take the wagon where they had been kept and leave if they wanted.

The wagons and cargo mules had contained lots of precious cloths, knifes, metallic implements, and spices. But the main content were quartz stones to be enchanted in the Romanish empire. There were also some gemstones, a few of them already enchanted to do things like heating water or lighting a fire. Of course, quartz we have in abundance in the caves, so we gave it all and most of the gems to the ex slaves. They could try to sell it somewhere.

Besides the metallic stuff like pans, hooks and knifes, the most important cargo to us where the books kept by the mages and the maps kept by the merchants. The cloths were also quite useful, but we still gave the ex slaves a fair share.

The money was also distributed, but we kept most of it since it was part of a future plan of ours. Even then, the mages and the merchants were rich and there was enough money left for any of the former slaves that wanted to start a new home in one of the cities. Perhaps buying land and one or two slaves to start a farm in the Romanish empire.

Refreshed, and feeling rich we came back to the campfire to have a second meeting. As soon as we sat I started talking. “We use sex as a means to make a man want to be a woman, part of the process involves a lot of female pleasure. Boy, what is your name?”

“My name is Pedro and I am not a boy anymore.” He answered with fierce eyes.

“I do not feel comfortable in having sex with you, too young for my tastes. Is there a girl here who would convert to the goddess to show this boy how to be a girl?”

After an uncomfortable silence Ane was the one who talked. “We`ve been talking among ourselves and I think that I speak for all when I say that we prefer to wait a while before deciding. The thought of going to bed with other girls is … weird and we are more than a bit afraid of your Goddess. Besides Pedro, I really, really doubt that any of us would feel like going to bed with you. Even Alyssa, that is your age, probably is not ready for this yet.”

“Why don`t you just cut it out and make me a girl?” Pedro asked.

I laughed at his straightforwardness. “Pedro, you are a nice find, I want to keep you as a friend even if nothing more. But, dear, you must feel comfortable as a girl, if it is a sacrifice that you are making it will not work. You will simply be a boy in a girl`s body.”

“And if we teach him to be a girl? This would be fun, there is no girl my age here, Nara is too young to really play well.” Alyssa said.

“Not a bad idea Alyssa, can you do it?” I said with a smile.

“Of course I can”, answered Alyssa with glee. She took the boy by the hand and left the meeting with him. After a brief look our way a few of the teenage girls followed. I could still hear Alyssa asking “Pedro is not a girl`s name, what is your new name?” before they got into the wagon where they were supposed to sleep. This would be fun, I believed that the boy would become a girl in one day, bringing at least Alyssa together to our fold or he would run away screaming. Looking at Ane`s smile I could see that she got the same conclusion.

“Is he your brother?” I asked.

“Yes, he and the half brother that was being forced to help these bastards are the only family left to me.” She answered with sadness.

“What are you going to do with my half brother?”

“We are extracting the magical stone from him as I speak now. He will not get a share of the spoils, but otherwise I plan to simply release him, unless he chooses to become one of us.”

“He can leave in the wagon with us?”

“Yep, I do not see why not. But you are thinking about joining us, aren`t you?”

“Perhaps” And she gave me a tired smile. “But tomorrow we will see. At least you distracted Pedro from his sad mood and gave something fun for the girls to do. When are you going to deal with the prisoners?”

“The female mage has just dreamed with our goddess, she rejected the offer. She and her father will be released tomorrow. Since they are too dangerous we will leave them sleeping when we lift camp. They will wake up only when we are far away and she knows what will happen if they follow.”

“And if something eats them while they are sleeping?” Ane asked with a bit of amusement.

“Then it was the will of the gods, we are already showing more mercy than they deserve”. I answered with a serious face.

“Why so much mercy?” John asked. “Just because she is a woman?”

“Yes, just because she is the first female mage that I know of and quite powerful at that. I believe that years from now, when her father dies, she will come to us. She will never be well accepted in the cities.”

“What makes you sure that she will not come back seeking revenge? People will not be kind to her and her father. After all, they lost a caravan that they were protecting.” John added.

“The goddess thinks that she will not. If they are smart she and her father will pack their things in Thebes and move somewhere else. I admit that we will leave little money with them, but they are prosperous and were doing this trip more as a way to travel to the learning centers of the Romanish empire than because of payment.”

“So, do you know what she is dreaming at the same time that you talk to us here?” Asked Ane.

“Yes, I am one with the Goddess. I have my individuality and SHE respects some of my privacy, but I know part of what SHE is doing or I can … access the information.”

“Access the information? How so? What does it mean?” Asked John.

“It is difficult to describe, I am afraid that you will have to become one of us to find out.”

“I think it is time to sleep then. And to put the youngsters to bed before they torture poor Pedro too much, I believe that by now he already knows more than me about being a girl” Ane said with a hint of amusement. Then, changing the subject, she asked with a bit of concern “John, where are you going to sleep?”

“I will go to one of the merchant`s tents. This way you girls can have a little privacy. Please tell Pedro that if he wants he can be a boy for the night and come sleep with me.” John answered.

We said our good nights and I went to the wagon that had been kept by the mages to sleep. Our prisoners were all there also, kept in dark cocoons. I slept well, it was a comfortable night, but I missed our caves.

The morning started with the usual chores. Since old habits die hard all women woke up early and went to the lake to get water for the breakfast. We met in the way and, laughing, since there were enough women in our group to get water for two camps, decided on a division of chores so that we would not have too many cooks and cleaners while no one would be doing masculine chores like herding the cattle and harnessing them to the wagons. Pedro was already called Melissa by now, she had been dressed as a woman and went to the lake like the others.

John, of course, slept a little more and woke expecting to eat breakfast, hunt, and herd cattle, among other “male” jobs. Bastet met him at the door to his tent though and sent him to help cook and cleaning. Latter, he, Erica and a few of the girls, including Melissa harnessed the dranacks to the wagons and we lifted camp. The female mage and her father were left behind, sleeping. But, in the end, we left the guard that had surrendered with them, fully armed and awake. Erica convinced us that it was wise to treat well those that surrendered.

We stopped at midday in a special place. It was a water hole close to the Pit, the last safe water hole for anyone stupid enough to go in the direction of the wild magical zone. Water holes like these were always used as places of judgment by the tribes.

The wagons were placed forming a semi circumference and we extended from their roofs a canopy made of leather turned white by an alchemical process. This leather was usually folded in layers at the wagon`s roof to reduce the heat inside and it was usual to extend a part of it and tie to poles when camping in the sun.

Ane`s brother was the first to be placed at the center of the semi circle formed by the wagons, in the sun, where he couldn`t see our faces as we passed judgment, since he was in broad daylight and we were in the shade. He was cooking in the sun while we were protected.

I clapped my hands and he woke, retching, eliminating the remains of the piece of the goddess that had kept him sleeping. After he stopped retching he took stock of his surroundings and saw our figures in the shadows. He was not bound, but was smart enough to stand erect and wait for what he imagined would be a sentence passed by one of the tribes.
He was, of course, very surprised when he heard my female voice talking from the shadows. “Marcus, the camp was taken by a group of followers of a female goddess, we had to put you to sleep or else you would be forced to fight us. Your sister is well and told us a lot of good things about you. You may come into the shadow. The light was needed to wake you up.”

He didn`t answer and did not argue, just walked to the shadow and then, orienting himself, to his sister. He had passed my test, since now I knew that he had quick wits and knew when not to speak. I marked him as “convert if you can”.

Next we placed the merchant in the center. He woke up in chains, tied to a post. While he still took stock of the situation I came to the light I front of him.

“Hello Evaristo” I said in my mildest tone. His reaction was quite satisfying, he pissed in his pants, strained against his chains and went very, very pale.

“I see that you recognize me, I heard that you placed a prize on my capture, isn`t it?”

“No, no, you are mistaken Anora, no, do not hurt me, please stop the pain, I just wanted to protect you, it is hurting, I was always a friend to your father, … please, please … I had nothing to do with it.” He was stammering, his words cut by small yelps of pain as the goddess inside him had fun. Fortunately Alysa and some of the other girls were keeping the youngsters inside a wagon. I could feel through my connection to my sisters the ugliness rising in our core.

“Ane, what do you think must be done with this piece of dranack`s but?”

Of course, hearing the name of the slave girl he had raped less than ten days ago did not calm our guest.

“Evaristo, you have two choices. A slow death, or a slower death. But first, Anora, there is a little thing that I want to cut since a long time.”

Well, Ane got a small, dull knife and … better not write the details. Let ´s just say that a long, long time latter we let the poor bastard die. In the meanwhile he told us how Urk`s father had talked to him and some others right after loosing the command of the tribe to my father. Some people really were bad losers. Unfortunately for them, so am I.

I must note that Pedro, now Melissa, was allowed to see it all and was the only person besides me, Bastet and Ane that did not turn her head at the ugliest parts. Actually, by the end of the deed only the four of us were there. Even Erica simply couldn`t be there until the end. The four of us and the presence of Erynia, since she watched it all through my eyes.

After finishing with the merchant we started with Urk`s lackey whose name I will not register. He confirmed that Urk had planned it all, including details, to set himself as the lord of a new city, in the middle of the grasslands. The city of Last Fall.

It didn`t work as well as Urk predicted. He got his city, but had to answer to a group of merchants from Thebes and a representative of the self proclaimed Duke of Narsi and Vanis. Both groups kept a tight leash on him and denied him the power to tax the merchant caravans.

Anyway, Urk`s lackey was cursed with an ugly, ugly death. After all was done the goddess kept his body alive for a time, controlling it but keeping his brain working, feeling the pain of each little wound. Even angry as we were we simply couldn`t keep this torture for long though. We allowed him to die after only a few heartbeats in this state.

No, I am not proud of what we did.

It may seem weird, but Erica in many ways saved the day. She couldn`t stand looking at what we were doing, so, she took a group of the girls, including Melissa and went outside the camp to teach them how to shoot an arrow. Marcus also went with them, since the goddess had been good to him, improving his muscles and refreshing his body, he was full of energy and wanted to exercise.

It seemed a long time to us and certainly to them, but we probably dealt with the two captives in less than a quarter of the morning. When we finished cleaning the blood and went outside to join the rest I was amused to see the girls divided in two teams, one under Marcus and the other under Erica, shooting targets for points, with John as a referee.
To Melissa`s amazement, many of the girls proved to be very good shots, including Alyssa. I could see a strong bond forming between those two, something more akin to the friendship of two girls of the same age than between boy and girl.

In the end it was a tie, since Marcus and Erica took care to use the right girl for the right target and both were more interested in teaching than wining.

Then the two went hunting, bringing only Ane, John, Bastet and two of the girls with about sixteen or seventeen summers (my age at that time) with them. Melissa and Alyssa wanted to go, but they were considered too small.

When the hunters came back, though, we all helped in cleaning the meat and treating the skin to become leather. All of the buffalo was used, from its skin to its bones. This time Erica, Bastet and Ane were the ones teaching and Marcus proved to be an avid student.

By midday, after eating lunch, we left that place of judgment. We wanted to be very far from the pit when night came.

That afternoon we again divided chores in setting up camp, which was done fast, leaving time for Bastet to play with the girls, both teenagers and toddlers, teaching them how to hide, throwing knifes and climbing. Erica joined in the fun and, finally, not even our two last “men” around, John and Marcus, resisted and soon were having as much fun as the others. Only Bastet is capable of making something complex like throwing knifes into fun.

Me? I simply sat in a corner, got one of the books from the mages and started to read listening to their cries of joy. May seem weird, but studying while I heard their fun was fun in itself. For those moments everything seemed right with the world.

That night we got around the fire to tell tales and debate our futures. Marcus had a lot of questions of his own, including availability of training for his magical abilities. He had lived a hard life, being the result of a fast and furious romance between a woman from the fox tribe and a yeoman from the Romanish Empire. He lived most of his life at his father`s house, but five years ago his father married a noble girl from the empire and Marcus was not as welcome as before. Fortunately his mother had married a good man from the tribe and the fox tribe was quite open to new hunters, especially one as capable as he was.

Marcus and I were fast friends, we started talking about magic, then our lives, politics and the time to go to bed came very early that night. If I was still a normal girl I probably would have gone to bed with him that night. But I knew myself, if we went to bed Marcus would be a girl by morning and I wanted him to choose it, to choose me when rational and not in the throes of passion.

Melissa was also having fun. She and Alyssa could be seen frequently at the corners, exchanging confidences. That night Melissa asked Bastet to turn her into one of us. I didn`t even noticed, so engrossed that I was in the conversation with Marcus, but Bastet called the elder girls, Ane and John as witnesses and, after Ane gave her consent, Bastet simply spit a little black glob into a cup of water and gave the cup for Melissa to drink.

The Goddess was improving her technique. Since Melissa wanted to be a girl the Goddess found way to give dreams to her that night. She dreamed of being a girl all her life, with details taken from my memories and slowly, as her body transformed, her sense of self began to change.

The next day followed the same routine, eat breakfast, hunt, clean the catch, travel, dinner. As before, we distributed the chores so that everybody would do all with no separation between male and female jobs.

For instance, who cleaned the pots in the morning would hunt in the afternoon and rest at dinner. Some would clean the catch of the hunters and rest in the wagons the whole afternoon, and so on.

Melissa was already showing a very feminine body, with small breasts and many internal changes that I could follow through my link to the goddess. Her sense of self was a bit shaken but deep down she still believed that she was a male that wanted to be female for revenge.
While I was eating dinner that afternoon, Alyssa came to me with Melissa and Ane. “Lady, what did you do to my friend?” She asked.

“What do you mean?”

“She tells me that she is hearing whispers, like someone talking in her head all the time.” Alyssa retorted angrily while Melissa looked with fear.

I smiled. “Oh, I think that I know what it is.” And I sent by mindspeak: <Melissa, can you hear me?>

She answered surprised “Yes, I heard you, but very, very low, like a whisper. Lady, how could you talk if your lips were not moving?”

I looked into her eyes. “Melissa, you are becoming one of us. You will be able to hear my thoughts as if I was speaking to you, when this is finished. Tonight the goddess will come to you in your dreams and, if you accept her, she will teach you to control this, to tune out some thoughts and pay attention to others. Soon you will be able to talk to our sister Erynia, deep down in the caves far away from here.”

“I imagined that it was something like this” Said Ane seriously. I agreed to let my brother become my sister because a really do not see much future for us otherwise, but I wonder if you are really human.

“Define human” said Marcus. Of course he was by my side, it appears that in more than one sense.

“Oh, I quit, it is clear that my two brothers will soon be sisters. I may as well take this dark liquid of yours sooner than latter” Ane answered. “Really, I`ve been thinking. My half brother and you can barely be seen a moment apart, Pedro is now Melissa and clearly will be one of you tomorrow. And, what chance we would have in one of the cities? I don`t have the slightest idea of how to survive as a lone woman in a Romanish town and Marcus tells me that it would not be easy to adapt. We could, with a bit of deception and labia, go to a lord, talk to him and buy a piece of land, but would have to pay taxes and be always afraid that someone would find that we were what they would call escaped slaves.” She looked intently at my face. “These dark eyes of yours are not so ugly. Give me this mad beverage of yours and lets meet this Goddess.”

“Wait, let us call for witnesses then, I don`t want people to say that I forced you somewhat” I answered.

Soon we had everybody together around the fire. After a little talk we found that all of the former slaves had decided to join. They made a line and, one by one, with the exception of the ones younger than twelve summers stated their reason to join us and drank from a mug containing a little of the goddess.

The children would be raised in the caves and offered a choice latter in life.

Ane was the first.

“There is no other real option. Better to serve this goddess than being a slave in one of the cities. Besides, I like the idea of a society made by women.” She said this aloud and drank. Then her body walked to the side and she stood there, looking at nothing while the goddess talked to her mind.

Next came Alyssa: “All that she said, plus I want to share thoughts with Melissa. This will be fun.” As soon as Alyssa drank both her and Melissa got that vacant look of someone talking to the goddess, they sat together near Ane.

Marcus was a dear. “I drink because the love of my life is already part of this”. You know, he was probably the only one that could really live in the cities, he knew how to survive there and he choose to join us mainly because of me.

Of course he did not get an immediate vacant look. I would have a lot of fun in the next week slowly converting my lover, one little piece at a time. She would be called Rebecca, like my mother.

The other nine women followed in a sequence. The two eldest among them were twin sisters, named Freya and Meia, they decided that their chances were better with us than in the “male dominated world” as they said. Next came a sweet small girl named Karen. I believe that she already had a severe case of hero worship for Bastet. Latter she became the first to be called Basteter, that is, Bastet`s daughter.

I will not describe all the others here. Their choices are annotated elsewhere and most of the houses that they created still stand.

I must admit though, that besides Marcus, my main concern was for John. Would he join us? We needed the sperm. Although, of course, finding sperm donors in the cities was not impossible and also the goddess can take something from a girl and inject in the eggs of another, making a daughter I always believed that a healthy number of what we came to call y girls was important.

Of course he joined. His reason was simple: “My chances of survival otherwise are far from great and well, this will be an adventure. He smiled and donned the cup.”

Well, the reader may say: they were forced to join, their other options were uncertain and dangerous. MY answer, to this was always: Nope, they where not forced, at least not by us. Perhaps they were forced by the circumstances, but we gave options to them.

The next morning found a very silent camp. The girls were all talking a lot by mindspeak, speaking aloud only to talk to John, Marcus and the children. They were all stronger than before, more agile, but we followed our schedules with the rotation of chores taken even more seriously than before.

Only at might I had some alone time to start teaching Marcus, now starting to become Rebecca, the joys of being a woman. A shared orgasm with Bastet and Erica did a great part of the job but I dulled it a little since I wanted this to be slow and fun.

John was becoming Johane. His sense of self was strong and the idea of being male very important to the foundations of his personality, so, we had to work slowly. This was done with a lot of help from Ane and the girls masturbating in front of him/her.

After twenty days of slow travel we got to the caves with everyone thinking in themselves as women. No predator dared approach our group.

Now we just needed to get Stephen from Thebes and destroy the city of Last Fall. Destroying a city in the middle of the grasslands was not so much trouble, but getting Stephen out of a place so far away from the Goddess domains would be certainly difficult.

Tribe of the Mountains Chapter 14 — Stealth?     You ask me about the times of the lingering death. Nobody else talks about this, isn`t it? They are wrong, we must pass the horror onward lest our city forgets. The plague that destroyed half the city it is called. A lie.

I believe that there were very, very few survivors.

Certainly not half the city survived.

Imagine a disease that comes from the water that we drink or the meat that we eat. If you are infected you will start to be eaten alive from the inside, becoming more and more emaciated. Until you die of starvation, no matter how much food you eat.

But it does not stop with your death. Your corpse will rise hungry for more food, eating anything, even leather and attacking any living being around. Spreading the disease.

Now you know why we cremate our dead here in Thebes.

They say that it started with the body of a dead God, buried deep in the caves of the northern mountains …

 

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The Mountains Ring with Magic

 
 
People, fourteen people speaking mind to mind, making dwellings both in the physical and in the spiritual planes.

The mirth of a Goddess feeling more alive than in any day since the rock fell from the sky.

Deep, deep in the roots of the land a forgotten people start to reawaken. The lizard women slowly regain sentience after millenia of semi intelligent behavior.

There is activity everywhere as beasts are herded and bred to develop new species, minerals are extracted, new weapons forged and knowledge shared as memories in a pool not of this world.

Gifted women as far as the Romanish empire start to feel a call to the south.
 
 
Anora Speaking.

Our little community soon became very lively as people adjusted to life in the mountains.

Most of the girls that we rescued decided to create a settlement in a valley up in the mountains, a nice place with good water and where I had been growing some fruits.

There was plenty of food, many caves leading to our underground complex and the weather tended to stay reasonably stable most of the year.

The place was called waterfall valley due to its myriad waterfalls big and small, many coming from inside the mountains. It seems that millennia of tunneling had led most of the water that fell into the mountains to flow through the caves.

In a few months they turned Waterfall Valey in a little paradise where the rescued children could live free until the day of choosing.

Ane became a sort of leader to this group, working with me a lot in the projects for breeding, sowing and harvesting.

Menja and Freya, together with Rebecca worked for a few months, studying iron making. Rebecca had seen iron been made and had some idea of how it was done while Menja and Freya had seen more than their captors expected as they were “shared” among the garrison of Last Fall.

Bastet was pregnant and was a wild mother. The goddess allowed her to know what was happening to the baby in each moment, which helped to relax and do almost everything that she would do normally. Bastet started to “build a nest”, that is, a large home at a high spot overlooking waterfall valley. Besides working on building their home she and Erica also worked on our defenses.

I believe that they got a little paranoid now that they had a new life to protect. Some of the defenses that they scattered around the valley made even Erynia pale. Looking into the goddess memories of creatures past and present they found a myriad of poisons and weird mechanisms of defense that the Goddess could duplicate since She tended to keep the information about the creatures that she had taken in the past. This, together with altered animals, bottomless pits and even worse fates waited for any enemy strong enough to cross our corrupted forest.

The knowledge of natural substances that the Goddess had together with our own knowledge of the products used to work the ironwood from the grasslands formed an extensive “library” in the Goddess cave in the spiritual plane.

Most nights all of our spiritual bodies met in the Goddess cave in the spiritual world while our bodies slept. There we shared memories, controlled other creatures and enjoyed each other`s company. Each one of us created her own place in the huge cave.

Our memories were shared mostly using the pool, so that we could have some privacy for the memories and thoughts that we didn`t want to share. It soon was considered impolite to pry into memories or thoughts not willingly shared.

A complex system to deal with the information in our collective mind was created. We could access most data left in the pool, but some information was of restricted access being allowed only for those that the sharer wanted to see it and, in very rare cases, there was data the Goddess herself made public independent of what any of us might want. After all, She is the boss.

It was after one year of our rescue of the slaves that Erynia left in her most famous quest.
 
 
Erynia Speaking

In the third year of the Goddess (3 AG) I submitted myself to an ugly transformation.

The knowledge that made it possible came mostly from the book written by Galenus about the wasting disease. For some reason the sage decided to use the first chapters as a compilation of his knowledge of the workings of the human body and how the so called “natural” diseases affect it. Then it goes on to describe the wasting disease and its effects using the moving bodies of dead victims as a way of study.

It was this author that found that both sunlight and fire can damage the fluids that transmit the disease and that the “Zombies” as he calls them created by the disease are weaker in daylight since any wound inflicted on them starts to burn.

Studying his notes I found that the disease comes from a part of the goddess that survived the cataclysm but stayed in a kind of inert state until a group of miners entered its cave. Unfortunately it acted on its instinct of growing and feeding without the intelligence, even the basic animal intelligence, that the main body was capable of keeping.

Galenus, of course, does not have how to know this. He regarded the rumors of “body of a dead God” as superstition and the fact that some women were immune to the disease or, at least, remained reasonably rational when infected to our “more base nature, closer to that of the evil beings of the earth” and concludes that somehow our menstrual blood helped to spread the disease.
In other words, a fool but a fool with great capacity for detailed descriptions of the bodies both of men and women.

Using the knowledge that the goddess already possess I could correct his stupid mistakes (the heart as the home of the soul, for instance) and make a detailed diagram of our bodies in my spiritual cave. Being able to use our collective memories and to draw in a three dimensional space helped a lot.

After all this research, the transformation was anticlimactic.

The goddess sedated my body, thickened my vocal cords, ate the fat in my breasts making them flat (but preserving the mammalian glands), fed me with hormones to change my skin and changed my face. But we couldn`t touch my vagina, or else I risked losing my connection to Her.

After this, I had classes with Rebecca on how to use armor and the short sword typical of the Romanish. With the help of Rebecca`s and Erica`s memories it took about two months of training in that despicably altered body to get proficient enough to pass as a mercenary.

Deciding what point of entry to choose to get into the male dominated world led to interesting debates. In the end, it was decided that a solitary horseman crossing the grasslands would call undue attention, so, going to Last Fall to scout out the city was possible only if I joined a caravan in the Romanish empire. Not practical and would force me to keep that horrid appearance for more than one year, which was unthinkable.

The other frontier town, Resistance, is also wary of strangers coming from the surroundings of the pit, but it was usual for caravans to split before getting there, some travelers going to Vanis or Narsi while the majority went to Antigon and Thebes, only the second group getting to Resistance. Solitary horsemen were unusual in Resistance, but not unheard of.

So it was that at the end of a hot and wet summer, in the third year after goddess, about one year after the attack on the caravan, I rode into the city of Resistance alone, disguised as a male Nordic mercenary of the kind that often worked for the Romanish empire. I had to use a horse free of the goddess influence, and typical male clothing, including hard boiled leather armor that helped to disguise what little remained of my female shape.

Resistance was showing a little improvement, the paint on the buildings was newer and there was now a mage tower located in the hill facing the town, strategically placed between city and grasslands. Fortunately I had come prepared, using a few romanish style magical stones in my armor. This effectively cut my connection to the goddess and destroyed my ability to use magic, but also disguised my magical aura.

SHE had given me control of her parts inside my body so that they would not follow their nature and eat me alive creating a new wasting disease. It was weird, SHE had to change my brain a little and now I was probably thinking a bit more like HER. This made for an interesting and strong desire to go into the bordello. I kept daydreaming: Alone in a bedroom with another woman I was sure that I could convert her to be MY follower, then we could spread it through town and latter join the main body as a valued part.

Like I said, strong temptation but, since the wasting disease, bordellos were very well protected with stones capable of detecting the mindspeak communication between “the infected”. If I took another woman our connection would be detected and the building torched to the ground.
Besides, as I kept reminding myself, this was not the task assigned to me by the main body, that is, by the Goddess.

Still, I was only half paying attention to my surroundings as I rode to the docks and went to the harbor master`s office.

The town lived mostly of ferrying goods up and down the river, so, they had centralized their business almost from the beginning in a kind of Free Traders Corporation and all deals involving transportation by boat were done in the same office.

At the beginning of the season, as we were, the office was mostly empty. There was only a middle aged clerk behind a desk full of shipping schedules. Of course, since they dealt with money in his building, there was also a guard at the door and he was paying a lot of attention to me, after all, I was armed and armored.

I approached the desk and said with a bit of a Nordic accent: “I need passage for Thebes in the first boat available.”

“Name, profession and reason of travel?” Asked the clerk.

“Eric Deepwood, sword for hire, going to Thebes to seek employment in a ship leaving for home.”

“Any relative to contact if something happens?” Believe or not this is a usual question for people getting into a boat. Boats sometimes simply disappear.

“No one around, but send a message to Deepwood cove and my relatives will send a small reward for your report.” Which was sort of the usual response.

“There is a boat leaving the harbor by midday, third boat on the second pier downstream. It will be bringing ikari fruits. Are you going to bring your horse?”

“Yes, I will”

“Then it will be ten Denaros and you must take this piece of paper to captain Dorkisk, he will be supervising the loading of the fruits and must leave open space for your horse. After talking with the captain you may rest in Jaciara`s house, red painted door, up the ladder leading to the city center.”

I paid, taking care to show only a glimpse of the coins in the bag at my belt, said “Thank you.” and left. My bag clearly full of coins indicated a mercenary going home after a successful campaign and everybody knew that the Romanish had been fighting the Small People recently with some success. A fake history made without saying a word.

Jaciara`s house was well known to me from Erica`s memories. I wondered if the clerk got a commission from the bordello, but, with nothing better to do I first went to check on the boat and the captain and then, satisfied that if you see one river barge you saw all, I went to the most tempting place in town, reminding myself over and over that I could not take those girls for the goddess.

I was not surprised to find the red door open and Jaciara herself waiting for me. News travel fast in a small town. What surprised me was a little difficulty to pass the threshold and a sense of warning coming from the altar of Afrodite. Fortunately Jaciara, now wearing a very nice red dress didn`t notice my hesitation at her doorstep, but it was clear that I really had to be careful not to convert anyone to other goddesses while inside of Afrodite`s home.

I bowed a little in the direction of the altar, which had the extra advantage of gaining a nod of approval from Jaciara and then walked to the balcony, noticing that the place looked the same as when Eric had been there, years before.

“A mug of that Narsi beer, please.”

As she went to the barrel to fill a large wooden mug she asked.

“Only beer sir or you have other interests here?”

“Tempting, but I must be in the boat by midday.”

“Going to Thebes?” She asked as she gave me the mug.

I simply nodded and then drank the beer in practically one gulp. It was surprisingly nice and not watered, of course it was also not really made of barley but from another cereal, a mutated plant called beer grass typical of the borders of the grasslands.

Most things commercialized in the region came in one way or the other from the altered species created by the Pit.

Important to me was that the beer was rich in sugars, essential to feed my less human parts. So, I ordered a second, then a third mug and, to the astonishment of the hostess, drank it all fast without getting even a little drunk.

After the second mug I deigned to answer her question.

“Yep, going to Thebes harbor.”

“You are an impressive drinker sir” She said after my third mug.

I only nodded, paid a denaro for the three mugs, said: “Keep the change” and left.

My keen, supernatural hearing got murmurs of “good warrior” and loaded with money all the way to the harbor.

Well, being inconspicuous in such a tiny place was difficult anyway; I just do not understand even today why they associate heavy drinking without getting drunk with ability as a warrior.

I got into the barge and we left for Thebes. The trip was far from calm though, but this is a tale for another day.

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To Be Continued...

Tribe of the Mountains Chapter 15 — Traveling   Thebes was created as a trading post between the two halves of the northern continent. Even with the tribes occupying the grasslands it was easier to carry goods by ship to Thebes and then, by caravan to Magdan then crossing the mountains. There are, of course, other passages north, mostly in the vicinity of the internal sea controlled by the Romanish empire. Rivers flow to that sea, and some of them almost cross the continent. Almost is the key word here, the whole continent is divided in two by the mountains and they get bigger as you go north so that a distance that looks small in a map proves to be full of ups and downs in real life.

As I said, there are passages, just none as good and what are a few scattered nomads compared to a full grown dragon?

 

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Erynia Speaking.

The river boat looked and felt like my bathtub in the lower caves, including some water ever present in its bottom. It was a rectangular, broad and shallow boat with a square sail in the middle and three rows of big oars at each side, each one manned by two persons when needed.

Going down the river as we were the oars were kept in storage while the sail was used a little bit to increase speed when possible. To steer the ship there was what amounted to an altered oar, a pole with a big paddle in the extremity lowered into the water. There was a little raised platform in the back to allow the captain to see the front when steering using the heavy pole, but this platform was not very high. Bellow it was just enough space for a kind of storage locker containing spare ropes, sails, fishing material and the like.

There were no cabins in this boat, only places amid the boxes of fruit where we could set tents to sleep. If it was raining, one of the spare sails could be placed as a covering for the captain in the back, while the boat was taken to the margin to wait the storm anchored in a safe place.

Being away from my sisters and from the goddess, with my communication interrupted by that damned armor with those thrice damned magical stones imbibed in it was making me crazy. So, it was not surprising that the first thing that I did, as soon as I was in my “tent” amid the rows of boxes was take out the damned thing and send a complete report to my sisters using mindspeak.

That moment, a strong red light covered the ship. Afraid of what this might mean I donned my armor and left the tent. The twenty or so crewmembers and passengers of the boat were doing the same by now, all leaving their improvised sleeping spaces with weapons in hand. Looking for the source of the light I saw a gem high up the mast of the ship blink once more and then go dark.

The ship`s captain screamed from the raised platform. “This is the wasting disease warning!!! Get ready for boarding. The damned zombies must be coming from the water!!! Nobody stays alone tonight. Crew, go to the watch posts. This boat is officially under quarantine.”

I admit that by now I was thinking a lot of words unfit for my upbringing and my station in life. Many of these words were so dirt that I knew them only because I shared a mind with former males, but weirdly enough, cursing inwardly helped me to look calm, keeping what I hoped was a stone face in the outside.

The other four passengers were merchants going to Antigon and then Thebes to sell their fruits. The stacks of boxes went only as high as our bellies, so, it was possible to see everybody in the boat. Since the others were moving amid the boxes to stand at the sides in places where I noted that some boxes had been stacked in a way to make a kind of barrier against beings coming from the water I did the same, pairing with a young merchant at one such spot at the side of the boat. Both of us with swords draw.

There was no conversation, as people waited for what could be a group of diseased leaving the water to eat their flesh and I waited for someone to scream that the stranger in their midst had to be the cause. Looking in the face of my young watch companion I could almost see first the fear of being eaten alive, then, as time passed in our uneasy watch, he started to look less at the water and more at me.

I could feel the stares of the other passengers as well and, for the first time, thanked the fact that the magical stones in my armor, the same ones that didn`t allow me to communicate with my lovers, were kinetic stones. They would slow down any arrow launched at my back, probably avoiding serious injury. More important, the rabble around me knew this.
As it were, after what seemed a long time looking at the murky depths of the river, brown and murky in the best light, dark and foreboding in this night, the captain barked an order.

You and you and he pointed to me and to my young companion, go there, to the tip of the ship. Jonas, you come here to the platform, get your bow, …

He adjusted the position of crew and passengers, creating a rotation of guard duty, but also let it clear that I would be isolated at the tip of the ship until we got to Antigon. No problem to me, I simply passed my guard duty time counting the signature of the living things that I could feel passing under the boat. Some of these things proved to be very big, one of them at least great dragon sized.

After what may have been half a night in watch duty, or better, half a night in display with everybody watching me, I was allowed to go to sleep, but my tent was moved to an isolated position “close to your guard post” as the captain said. No problem at all.

I slept soundly and quietly in my makeshift tent, after all, I knew that the pieces of the goddess inside me would feel the presence of any one nearby and I would wake up. Anyway, my suspicious companions of travel kept their distance, as expected.

The next day was quiet, at first everybody was on alert but, as the midday approached and nothing happened people started to relax. It was a nice sunny day with a small breeze refreshing us under the white cloth that we tied to poles around the boat to both keep us and the fruits protected from the sun, the red gem kept quiet and people started to talk about “just a bad spot on the river”.

Of course, my habit of peeing into an urinal inside my “tent” and then toss the contents out in the water met with at least one derisive comment. A sailor said boldly to another while I was around: “Heh, the big bad mercenary must have a tiny weenie. So small that he can`t pee like a man.” To which I answered: “If you want to hang you bits were every single crocodile in this river can see the little morsel it is your problem. I prefer mine well protected under my armor when I get close to the water.”After this I saw some of my fellow travelers start to use urinals.

Well, latter that day a big head, similar to that of a dinosaur, but with a more “rounded top” were certainly fit a bigger brain, emerged from the river and looked at us for a while. Its eyes had pupils and an aspect similar to those of a human and they stared with what looked like amusement, like someone looking at a group of ants that proved to be smarter than expected.

I had seen big animals before, but this one was huge and there was an uncanny intelligence in its eyes. I must admit that I was afraid for the first time since meeting the goddess. But the boatmen reacted as if this was usual. They simply lowered two crates overboard. The creature went to the crates, opened them with two big paws with opposable thumbs, nodded to the captain and them swam away, its tail, certainly bigger than the boat, making lazy movements behind it. Then the captain proclaimed: “The toll is paid. Lads, lets go back to our routine.” And everybody relaxed.

Latter I learned that that creature protected the boats from other monsters in exchange of products that it would not get in the neighborhood. It loved Ikari fruits, but also the wine that was in the other boxes and, from time to time it would request weapons, like steel claws and the like that would be used to fight other monsters. Since no wasting disease would be allowed to pass through the territory of such a beast, the people of the boat relaxed, while I wondered if it had sensed the goddess in me and what weird designs had convinced it to let me pass.

Sometimes, in this world of gods, dragons and other beings I wonder if humanity is not just a little dot in the landscape, a kind of pretentious animal pretending to rule while the true powers are looking at more important things.

We got to Antigon the next day. A beautiful city, I may add. Located in a big river island, surrounded inside the island by a ring of farms that produce all kinds of fruits and with a beautiful harbor with houses whose walls were made of clay covered with white plaster and whose roofs were made of red tiles. Actually, the same building materials used in Thebes, perhaps with less wale bones in the plaster. But, somehow, the houses were whiter with less smoke arising from the few foundries around and the smell of the harbor better with no sewer pipes visible above the water level.

Of course, as is customary, the harbor was separated from the city. The town itself was located in a hill near the water and had nice white walls, clearly made of stone, perhaps even some marble. While the harbor was of course, practically in the river, with piers, depots and even a small market, but separated from the city proper by the slopes of the hill. An area clearly kept free of buildings and vegetation.

The interesting part is that this arrangement is customary because, this way, if something like the creature that we met in the river, decides to attack the city it will probably only destroy the harbor while people run to the safety of the walls uphill. I just wonder if such an arrangement really works against the really smart ones but, perhaps, this is another way of paying toll. The creature comes, eats or takes whatever is in the warehouses and leaves the people alive. Or, something like this since most of the really fancy stuff must be stored in the city proper.

Anyway, I didn`t leave the surroundings of the boat in Antigon. By now the desire to communicate with the Goddess was a burning brand in my mind and I could not risk falling into the trap of thinking that a road or field was safe for communication when it was not.

During that day the captain and the merchants on board exchanged a part of the Ikari fruits for other products, mostly other fruits but also wine and some meat. Nobody was stupid enough to carry large amounts of salted meat over deep water, but it had a price so good in Thebes that they couldn`t resist it.

I used the day to watch the commercial transactions in the harbor and learn. Many of the crates being exchanged had the markings of my father`s house and I could deduce that he had purchased a farm near the city. My keen hearing also allowed me to piece together much useful information. Father was making a lot of money selling fruits and products from our clan`s land up in the northeast of the continent to the romanish empire trough the grasslands but what caught my attention was the selling of a few “communication devices” made by my father`s “treasured slave” as a merchant stated. I could not read magical auras well while using the magical armor, but I could bet that these communication stones had the magical signature of my beloved Stephen. Of course, after noticing this I had to control myself not to give another very severe case of wasting disease to this city and to Thebes.

But my father, he would pay. This he would.

Next day we left and I must admit to enjoy the view of the countryside between Antigon and Thebes. Most of it was still forest, but here and there were peaceful hamlets protected by nice fortresses and, sometimes, a mage tower or two. The woods themselves looked less foreboding with their spirits more tamed or used to human travelers.

When we finally saw the harbor towers of Thebes I was in a better mood, I even could admire my city, the city where I was born. A city so bold that it built part of its walls into the water with thick gates capable to stand even the tides, walls full of mage towers with expensive mages paid only to protect the town.

As we approached from the river, the minor first wall could be seen still towering over our boat. It had a gate wide enough to let two such barges pass at once. When we passed this first gate I saw that they had improved the second wall, it had a feeling of power to it and I could see some magical stones scattered here and there. Then we crossed the gate in the second wall and I felt a bit at home.

As they sing: “Thebes, with its white towers, huge parks and beautiful fountain. Thebes of the water gates, of the ballista towers of the stone fortresses. Thebes of Greco and Nordic merchant houses, city where the world meets to share its wealth. City of artisans, of free men and elected mayors, city of opulence and respect where east meet west and river meets sea.”

Yes, in a sense I was home, but before I met the goddess, home never meant a good thing to me.
 

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Author's Note: Thanks Sephrena for all.
 

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To Be Continued...

Tribe of the Mountains Chapter 16 — Thebes   Underground caves, secret passages, sewers. All of the usual weak points of a building in tales. Also, all of the most guarded points of a building if its owner has both money and a minimum of intelligence. Anora the First Philosophical Musings

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Erynia Speaking

There are some advantages in the architecture of a city that was once destroyed and reborn. Sometimes, the destruction is used for a much needed urban reform.

Thebes, for instance, was practically destroyed by a horde of the hungry dead and saved both by their powerful Greco mages and by a Nordic fleet that saw a chance at profit. Of course it took days to clean the old city, full of twisting roads and small alleys and, in the end, most of it was simply destroyed.

The humans found that it was much easier to torn down a building during the day, destroying it from its foundations and then torch the remains with mage fire for good measure than to go into a dark place looking for zombies that see better than you in the dark and have a lot of advantages in close combat.

After the battle ended, the local aristocracy had been mostly killed or fled and all that remained were the merchants and mages, both Greco and Nordic.

As they say, crisis sometimes is a synonym of opportunity. The city was rebuilt with Greco technology and Nordic practicality, and became a lovely place. The first thing that they did was set their homes in the hills of the island, surrounded by high walls and with storage places inside the compounds. Then, they elected a mayor and this first charismatic leader set a ring of buildings around each of the two port areas, the river and the sea port. This ring of four or five stored buildings was built to accommodate the poor, avoiding the creation of slums but also protecting the inner city and the rich homes since this populated area became a natural place for any sea monster to stop by.

The buildings, with their narrow corridors, dark apartments and desperate hardened inhabitants became both a natural line of defense and a place to recruit troops. One interesting thing about the soldiers of Thebes is that they know that if they fail, their families will be the first to die, when the flesh eating monsters reach the buildings.

Of course, if a plague of living dead, if they attack a building it will be the end of this building. There are escape routes, but the city will not hesitate to destroy the infected place after giving some time for the living to escape. A trap for the living but also, for the dead.

No wonder so many of these buildings have chapels to the sun God on them. They believe that, since the wasting disease was weaker in the sun, Apolon can give protection in the times of need and keep the building clean.

Despite their gloomy interior, these buildings were well built, with reasonable ventilation and a sewer system. They had food stalls inside the buildings and even a playground for children together with a daycare center in the better administered ones. The rent was cheap and the buildings tend to have some slaves to do some of the hard work. Of course, if you do not pay the rent you will become one of these slaves and your living quarters will be much worse.

Beyond the buildings of the poor the city is a complex system of hills with cisterns or artificial lakes at the top and rich homes at their slopes. In the valleys or just less higher ground there are parks, some commercial establishments, the forum, much of the temples and some houses of people rich enough to get a home out of the buildings, but too poor to place their homes in a more defensible place.

The roads are wide; there is an abundance of public baths, a public library for the citizens and the huge complex of the mage academy. Interesting to note is that there are mage towers spread around the city. Some think that mages love to live in high places because of some magical reason, but it is simpler. Mages are long distance fighters and the city wants them in high places from which they can rain death from above.

Oh, most of the folks that live in the buildings are not citizens. A citizen must have either a commerce or land. If you have any of these you can vote, use the public library and request some services from the city, among other things. You also pay an annual tax, but nothing is perfect, isn't it?

The city was even more beautiful then I remembered. Even the buildings inhabited by the poor looked nice. From the outside you couldn't see the small apartments and long, dark corridors and, apparently, the mayor decided that fixing the painting at least of the ring of buildings surrounding the harbor would get him some votes. Interesting if you consider that you must own land or a business to vote, perhaps some of the small shopkeepers had made some pressure.

Anyway, I rode slowly, with my sword tied by a peace knot, leaving the port area with its myriad depots, taverns and bordellos. Along the way I had to stop in many taverns since I was hungry, really hungry as the part of the Goddess inside me needed nutrients.

Even after fifty years a person eating so much would raise “wasting disease” alerts in the minds of a few, so, I spread my feeding and used the opportunity to listen to tavern gossip, helped by the enhanced hearing given by the Goddess.

The city was growing, there was talk of new business everywhere. Slave trade had never been a good option for this city since the tribes loved to free slaves and add their numbers to their own, but now the way was mostly open and there was an increase in demand from the Romanish empire as it conquered new lands and built new farms. As a consequence, the tribes and small towns in the west of the continent were being attacked by Nordics to provide slaves.

On the other hand, the bigger cities and the nations that had trade agreements with the Nordics where prospering due to the increase in trade. While, at the other side of the continent, the Greco islands were also getting richer since most of the material coming from the west coast was passing through Thebes, crossing to New Rome and being shipped to the islands for distribution to the rest of the empire. The Romanish governors didn't care that the grecos were getting rich as long as the taxes were paid.

All this information was useful and proved that closing the pass would be stupid, too many people making too much money. But, the amount of angry, desperate females that would be passing as slaves by the pass would allow us to grow into a new empire if we wanted to take the risks.

I also learned that more than a few merchants already knew that the pit was about to release a new burst of magical power in a year or so. It seems that I was not the only one that knew the signs. Also, the great dragons where moving, redefining their territories and offering protection to new cities in exchange for metallic weapons, wine and other things. Most thought that the drakes wanted to create their own empire, but I knew better. They were waiting for the new magic, while those that wanted to mate had to do it now before the excess magic made it impossible to have healthy "babies" for a few years.

For a dragon, a stable territory with tame humans was good to attract partners. I wonder how many know that while magic increase the powers of mages, elves and dragons it also make it more difficult to have normal children. Magic incentives mutation, after all. Humm … time to have a baby before things got too magical.

Well, at that moment I had more pressing personal business to attend. After eating in a nice tavern by the forum I continued on my way passing close to the mage academy and its huge towers, going to the westernmost hill, where most of the Nordic merchant houses were located.

My father`s home was actually a group of buildings, one with depots and offices where he did most of his bookkeeping and met with the captains of his ships and caravans. Another, much better protected, had his personal library, the women`s quarters and his bedroom. Well, there were other buildings, workshops and a place to keep slaves, but these two were the most interesting to me.

Of course, I had access to neither as I rode by in my horse, pretending to be only a curious passerby. After all, the complex was surrounded by a high wall with thick ironwood gates. Also, I was certain that if I passed in this road again the security would start to take notice.
 
 
One interesting thing about Thebes, though, is that, despite a lot of the dirtiest jobs being done by slaves, the household jobs and most accounting is done by freemen and women. Scouting the buildings, finding if Stephen was still in the library, would take a long time, but there was a shortcut, I was sure that some of the employees would accept what I had to offer.

Besides, storming the building, fighting everyone inside and rescuing my beloved may sound nice as is the "oh so classical" sewers crawl but, my father had lots of guards and, at least one mage doing security at any given time. I could deal with them, but not without raising “ wasting disease” alarms. I would, of course, check the sewers, but my father never was stupid.

I found the employee entrance, observed for a while and then left to go to the fields around town. There I rode as far as I could, to a nice glade in the woods between two farms, far away from the damned red magical stones, took out my armor and contacted the Goddess.

What a relief !!! I felt whole for the first time in months as I talked to all my sisters, sharing memories and asking for advice. In the end, it was Bastet that gave me a solution for a serious problem: I had to watch and learn from the employees, but I could not be seen watching father`s house for a long time.

So, I followed my sister`s advice, first I donned my armor and looked for a sewer entrance somewhere. It was not very difficult, since there were a few maintenance openings to the storm drains here and there. Searching at night, I found one not so far from my father`s home.

The entrance led to a large chamber where many pipes converged. Its purpose was clearly to work as a hub to join many pipes, but also, as the pipes were all above the chamber`s floor, as a place where some of the material that could clot the pipes “down stream” would decant and stay waiting for a slave to come down and clean it. All nice and, actually a big chamber, but none of the pipes leading in the direction of my father`s home was big enough for a person to crawl.

As Bastet had expected, I also didn't see any red gems. I am sure that they put some of these expensive stones underground somewhere but, since these pipes where too small even for zombies to crawl, they had not taken this precaution. So, I cautiously sent a dark tendril a ways down a pipe, then I told the tendril to grow, absorbing the organic material around it (yes, “that material”, beggars can`t be choosers). It grew and spread through the pipes, especially in those close to the surface, it also dug a little getting in places where it could listen to what people where talking. In other words, I didn't dare approach my father`s home with the tendril, even from underground, since the stones at its walls might give warning. But, all around the house I could listen what was happening and feel the movement of people. I had placed the house under surveillance.

And I waited, of course, not all the time in the hole. I actually rented an apartment close to those used by the most “interesting” maids of the house. There were many of those apartments available, since mortality rate was high and a Sahuagin (fish men) attack five years ago had resulted in some deaths. So, I only had to tell the landlord (that worked for my father) that I had found a job and was staying for a while before going to the north and he was happy to accept my money.
 
 
Within a week I was already sure that Stephen was still in the library, with one side room being converted in a bedroom with a latrine. I also knew that not all maids were happy. In his old age my father was getting tired of my mother and his concubines, perhaps in a desperate bid to feel alive he was now trying to take the maids to bed. Weird, since he had slave girls for this kind of service, but perhaps the challenge was also part of the attraction.

Actually, he and the prettiest maids where playing a kind of game when he was home, the girls were trying to extract as many gifts or favors before going to bed with him, he was trying to give as little as possible before taking a girl to bed. Of course, once he took a girl to bed another game started, with her trying to keep him as much as possible to get as many favors before he got tired and dismissed her.

A dangerous game and the only that the girls could play, if the girl was married she could deny my father at least for a while, but if she was not she was doomed from the start. Losing the job meant a beating from her father or other male relative since women could not own property and most of their income went to their household. Sooner or later they would, of course, tire my father, perhaps loose the job and … well, some were smart enough to either marry or find a trustworthy male relative and convince my father to either give a piece of land or a job in one of his many businesses.
 
 
Anyway, this state of affairs had been going for the past three years. One girl held my father for six months and ended elevated to concubine, one killed herself, one got a piece of land for her and her husband … and the one that I found interesting was a special case.

She knew how to read, was the daughter of a weak mage that used kinetic spells to help in one of father`s ships and was gorgeous in a childish way, with chestnut hair, green eyes and a sort of childish appearance that I found endearing. My father had approached her with a sweet tongue and she used it to get better wages for her father, but Elric (my father`s name) was going in a trip and in a hurry, so, in the end, he took her by force.

So, ashamed and violated she got home that day and her father pretended not to see anything. The usual deal, she had only to keep quiet and pretend nothing happened and latter her father would use the increased wages to pay a little extra dowry, so that her husband also would pretend to ignore certain facts. All normal, but she had thought that Elric was going to wait and so, had not taken the usual herbs.

She was now the mother of a beautiful baby girl and had to live in shame, out of her father`s home, in one of the smallest apartments in the building. At least, she had not lost her job and was even promoted to the library where the work was softer and her ability to read useful. I am sure that her daughter would soon be working in the house of my father or one of my brothers, and so was she. This fact, actually, increased her despair.

Do I need to tell you that this girl was perfect?

Now, I just needed to seduce her.
 
 
Author's Note: thanks Sephrena.

---

 
 
To Be Continued...

Tribe of the Mountains Chapter 17 — Seduction   In Thebes, "free women" is the name given to all women that do not have a proper father or husband to protect them. They can`t have lands, but some few banks accept their money. The taxes are very high though, so many of them keep money stashes where they can. Most end depending on a male relative to live, or on a pimp. Nowadays there is one exception, a woman adept of magic. If she is good enough she may be allowed to have money in any bank and to own land. But this new rule is not accepted by all and long judiciary battles where their male relatives try to confiscate the money are usual. Of course, a powerful female mage can be very persuasive and make her relative to drop the cause. After all, as everyone knows, people sometimes simply disappear.

In Thebes, "free women" is the name given to all women that do not have a proper father or husband to protect them. They can`t have lands, but some few banks accept their money. The taxes are very high though, so many of them keep money stashes where they can. Most end depending on a male relative to live, or on a pimp.

Nowadays there is one exception, a woman adept of magic. If she is good enough she may be allowed to have money in any bank and to own land. But this new rule is not accepted by all and long judiciary battles where their male relatives try to confiscate the money are usual. Of course, a powerful female mage can be very persuasive and make her relative to drop the cause. After all, as everyone knows, people sometimes simply disappear.

When I went to Thebes to rescue Stephen though female mages where not accepted by society, they said that our frail intellect was not capable of controlling powerful magic. It took years, many deaths and several serious incidents for this to change. And in many cities a powerfully gifted female is still killed as a witch, even nowadays.
 
 
From the Journal of Erynia the first.

OK, girls you want to go out, explore the world outside.

Perhaps find a decent man and marry, have “normal” children as you say and not worry about losing a part of yourself to the goddess.

You keep saying that none of us, goddess servants are telling the truth, that we only want to force you into losing your individuality and becoming part of a monster.

If you do not believe in your elders, in the books, in the testimonies of those that came from outside and prefer to trust your dreams. Then you are either visionaries or fools.
So, the door is open, you know the way to the next town, go to your paradise then and see what it is. I will tell you one more time:

        - There is no romance outside of the mountains, here you can meet a partner, date her and be together for as long as you want. Outside, it is your father who decides if the boy can or can`t date you, sometimes the families even marry girls at a young age.

        - A girl that wants to be respectable can`t go to a tavern with a boy, they can meet in parks or in parties. The rich do have dances and special commemorations, but there will always be a chaperone nearby and the father will know who talked to his daughter.

Now, you will be girls without father coming from out of town. In most cities, women can`t have land, practically only barmaids or whores have any source of income and many need a male to administer this income since not all banks open accounts for women.

So, a group of barbarian women with money come from nowhere? The authorities will be looking for excuses to take the money and make you slaves from day one. Even if you get in a better city and put your money in a bank, males will think of you as bed partners, never as proper ladies for marriage. They need to find a social hole for you in their society and the place of “free women” is the only available.

I know it, I was there, but if you doubt, again the door is open. Let`s see if you are visionaries or fools.
 
 
Discourse of Arya Erynier on the day of loss.

Five girls of the third generation left.

Two of the girls came back alive but badly hurt, they became serious man hatters and a terror in nearby lands.

The tribe freed one that was enslaved.

One actually had a successful career as an adventurer and came back years later with a partner willing to be converted to the goddess. But this is a tale for other day.

The other simply disappeared.
 
 
Arya Erynier's Journal:

Erynia asked me to relate the facts that led me to be “seduced” by her. She told me that she could barely understand how she succeeded much less write about it.

This is most amusing, since I do not think that she seduced me. In fact, what happened was quite the opposite in a sense. Erynia would not be able to seduce anyone, after all, her previous experiences were with Stephen and this was mostly a kind of intellectual friendship that evolved to something more over time and with the girls after the Goddess altered their whole sexual identity and in a moment of high sexual tension created by new feelings and physical changes.

She had the memories of the boys though and tried to use some of them. Well, I had dealt with much more skilled men. But, let me start this by the beginning.

Since Erynia`s father, Elric had raped me my life was complicated. My father, though grateful for his promotion and fully aware of my lack of choice, had to keep the appearances and send me out of his house. Since he was a good man, he covertly administered my money allowing me to deposit some economies in a bank, where they could not be easily stolen.

On the other hand, now any man could rape me since, as the law states: “A man shall never lay hands on a woman without permission since this is a disgrace to the father`s or husband`s name and he has the right by law to demand compensation.” As my father had expelled me, I was considered fatherless. Raping me was not creating dishonor to him anymore and, as such, it would not be punished. This is why many women in my situation find a pimp to protect them and end being prostitutes.

But I was a servant in a powerful house and the protection of the house was over me. Everybody knew what had happened and, in a sense, I was considered property of Elric of Melbor. If I, or even worse, my daughter was harmed House Melbor would take matters seriously and, weird as it may seem, thus it was that the same man that raped me now protected me.

This protection extended even, to some extent, to forcing the landlord to be fair with my rent. No, he never talked to the landlord, but it was not needed. As I said, everybody knew what happened to me, the landlord would not risk Elric`s anger because of a few extra coins.

What kept me safe, also attracted the attention of a few, rich men. They wondered what Elric had seen in me and some had sent their servants to make very improper propositions regarding my sexual life. For now and while the House protected me I could ignore their advances.

I was not making a lot of money, just enough for rent, food and daycare. But, if there was extra work in the House, like a party or something similar I was allowed to get a wage a little bigger that month and this extra I saved in the bank. Not a bad life financially.

Of course, my daughter, Sonia, would have to work for the House, but I am sure that they would find a way to justify paying her dowry and would arrange a marriage for her. All proper and good, I would work to my death serving the man that raped me, then my daughter would work for his family until they decided who she would marry and I, of course, had to be grateful and remain a quiet little pet.

I was desperate. My girlfriends had abandoned me, even the few that were also servants in the House. Nobody befriended me, many proper families forbid their children to play with my daughter, she was already being called names and I was always afraid that someday a man would risk Elric`s anger, get me when I left my job to go home and do worse things than what that old man had done.

I had noticed the mercenary living next to my apartment mostly because he never brought girls home and was a bit effeminate in his mannerisms. I did not doubt for a second that he was good with his sword since his posture indicated this and he also had a nice ass, but his hairless, almost feminine face and something in his movements called my attention. I really doubted that he found any girl attractive at all.

No, I had not lived a sheltered life, my father being relatively poor and all, besides, I had caught two male servants of the House kissing once or twice when they thought that no one was looking. It is interesting what you can observe when you are “invisible as a maid” as we would joke among ourselves while I still had friends. So, I probably caught mannerisms and well, something in my neighbor ways that most people would not notice, but to me were very obvious.

And yet, he came to talk to me one afternoon while I was watching my daughter play in the playground. When he approached I first found it scandalous since a young male does not talk to a single woman without chaperones and near children. The appropriate thing to do would be asking my father and then meeting me with his presence or of an elder relative … and then I caught myself. There was no right way to approach an orphan, a widow or a “free woman” like I was. Weird, but knowing that my social status would fall more only if I started to openly offer my body for money was in a sense liberating. Since I had nothing to lose I decided to listen to the young fellow.

Erynia must have known all of this in that cold, calculating mind of hers. She approached slowly giving me a lot of time to think and to see that I could talk to her. The damned cold bitch even knew in what day to get closer. A day where there were no followers of the hanged God about since they were in a cult and also, reasonably few of those women that love to make life difficult for everyone else.

Sometimes I really love Erynia for all the wrong reasons. She is incredibly considered in that cold way of hers. Who else would wait one or two weeks for the perfect moment to be able to speak with me when she could be blunt and look for me in my home at any time like some former “interested parties” had done? Yes, those interested parties had not succeeded, but I was getting desperate and she knew it. Then, perhaps this is why she waited. Oh, I quit. I will never know. When I ask she simply gives a cold smile and show another memory, completely unrelated.

Anyway, this feminine looking man, with his expensive armor and clearly well used sword approaches me and show me a piece of what I took to be jewelry. Well, enough is enough, “Hold on mister, I am not this kind of girl.”

He looked into my eyes and answered in a cold tone of voice “You are a young mother, aren`t you? This stone will test your child for magic and some magical illnesses.”

“What is the price?” I asked.

“Give the stone back after use and go to the fountain park with me in your next day off. No demand, just walk and talk. In public.” It was the weirdest proposition that I ever got. The park was used by groups of youth in what looked like a choreographed ballet. The women would walk the park in a certain direction, the boys in the opposite one, the chaperones that were always nearby and the gossipers that were everywhere forbid them to talk too much with each other, but they could appreciate their possible mates and act more boldly in the next party or ball.

So, this mercenary was inviting me to walk with him in a park where the only couples walking together were married, usually watching their teenager children in their dating games, or fiancées getting to know each other better, but with the approval of the girl`s father and a chaperone nearby. Anyone that did not know better would think that we were a married couple, especially if we brought my daughter.

“OK, but we take my daughter Sonia with us. And since she is only one year old we will not be able to stay long.”

As if she heard her name Sonia quit the little game of “trying to throw the wax ball” that she was playing with her favorite friend and tried to approach us in that weird way of walking typical of her age. Of course, she fell after only four steps, but this is why the daycare center had a floor of sand. Before Sonia could cry the priestess of Luna that was taking care of that part of the center came, took her and brought her to me. We mothers were forbidden from walking into the sand to get our children, they said that a bunch of mothers cooing to their babies would make it difficult to watch the ones that didn`t have a parent nearby.

The young priestess gave me my baby and I saw that she had a new scrape on her knee. Actually, Sonia showed the scrape to me as if it was the most important thing in the world. Well, while I was looking at my daughter and “talking” to her, the mercenary approached.

“May I touch the stone to her forehead? It is all that is needed.”

“Do you know this kind of stone? Is it trustworthy?” I asked the priestess before she could leave to take care of her other charges.

The priestess looked at the stone for a while, then at the mercenary with a mix of fear and astonishment. “By the moon, I never saw a medicinal stone so well done. You must know a very good mage. Wait, I can sense the influence of a Goddess in it too, it was made by a mage and a priestesses? Please allow me to test the children with it. The temple will pay.”

The mercenary answer was weird. “No problem, it has charge only for ten children though. You can test these ten, let`s consider this a favor from one goddess to the other.”

Something passed between the mercenary and the priestess, even I could feel a little disturbance in my spirit, as if something was talking to me, but not to my ears, to my soul. The priestess stood there for a moment with vacant eyes, then she said “Let`s start them, just give me a minute”.

The next moments were a bit frantic, as the head priestess was called, the excited priestesses decided which children to test and talked a lot with the mercenary in a kind of language that I simply could not follow, things like attunement, kinetic energy, spiritual plane simply went over my head. In the end, Sonia was tested and they found that she had a little capability for body magic and some strong affinity with the spiritual realm. The perfect combination for priesthood. Well, at least here there was an option, an opportunity to run from her father`s household.

“So, in Aesir`s first day may I come to your apartment and get you at the first bell?” The mercenary asked. The Aesir days were three days of celebration for Odin, Thor and, oddly, Morrigan. Also, in the mix of religions typical of the city, those days were a kind of non official commemoration of the delivery from Hecate`s hordes or from Loki`s children depending who you considered responsible for the wasting disease. They were the only holidays in the dry season.

I had to admit that this mercenary had given me a precious gift, a possible future for my daughter. “Yes” I smiled coyly. “But you will hire Bernard and sons to carry us in their carriage.” Bernard was a good neighbor, ex military and both he and his sons did a kind of police work in our big building. Hiring them would make sure that all would be nice and proper.

The mercenary smiled a cold, perhaps self deprecating smile. “Of course my lady, as you wishes” He said and added a flourish very properly executed. And this was the same as proclaiming that he was from the aristocracy or had worked a long time for important people. After all, many of my neighbors worked in rich households and knew the manners of those born rich when they saw them. Then, he kissed me in the face and left. This last gesture, the accompanying formal turn and the way that he walked away in a “proper” way left more than a few of those that were looking in awe. Rumors of rich mercenary and “emperor`s guard” started almost immediately. As I left the daycare with Sonia many women that, the day before, didn`t deign to look at me came to talk and desire a good night.

Weird, but this single chaste kiss and his smell made me wet. I, on the other hand, was very confused. I had served drinks in more than one fancy ball and had seen the flourish that the mercenary executed with perfection before. It was the flourish used by a dame of society to accept an invitation to dance from a proper suitor. It was never used by males. But he had done it in such a way that his scabbard didn`t even touch his leg, as only someone used to the sword can do.

My dream that night increased my confusion. At first it started as a normal dream, I was walking in the fountain park with the mercenary, he was very well dressed and a perfect gentleman, then, in that abrupt way typical of dreams, the scenery changed and we were in a lavishly decorated room, like the ones that I saw in House Melbor. This stranger that had not even given me his name kissed my mouth, took out my clothes very slowly, kissed my breasts and continued down, passing by my navel to kiss my vagina and keeping his tongue there, doing something that I had only heard about but felt wonderful. Finally, he rotated in bed placing his naked loins over my face but there was no penis there, only a kind of alluring darkness. I penetrated this darkness and suddenly I was licking a vagina. I woke up startled, but feeling very aroused.

Being raped had forced me to confront the truths about human sexuality, because the most degrading, the most infuriating thing is that for a second, while that stinky old man was penetrating me, I had felt a jolt of pleasure. Of course the pain and the disgust overwhelmed it very soon, but in latter nights I was forced to understand that my desires were not as cut and dry as I thought. That I could hate and love at the same time, be attracted and repulsed, want to steal that silver candelabra over the table in Elrond`s house and want to stick it up his ass. I was capable of hating the majordomo and yet keep his dalliance with one of Elric`s sons a secret. I learned that Because I am a human being and as a human being I feel a little pleasure when touched in a certain place it doesn`t mean that I like to be touched by anyone there.

Looking inside myself with the same calm understanding that allowed me to keep alive after being raped I noticed that now I could imagine making sex with a woman and not get nauseous. Actually, as I started to play with myself, taking care not to wake the baby, I imagined both male and female lovers. Weird, but since my experience with males had been ugly and the mercenary had a certain feminine feel, why not indulge a little fantasy?

When I went back to sleep I was not surprised to see a naked mercenary in my dreams, only now he clearly had a pussy and small breasts. He, or better, she didn`t take a moment to come to me and start caressing my body though, then she went to my vagina, but left hers for me to play with and, the more that I played the more desire I felt. After a while, when I was already feeling comfortable with what we were doing, she increased the pace of her ministrations and brought me to an amazing orgasm.

I woke up the next day feeling refreshed, even the mess that my daughter had done in the straw that made her bed didn`t make me mad. Healthy children pee and poo, after all. After cleaning us both using the little stone basin, that came with the apartment and was always full of water from the building`s pipes, I took Sonia to the daycare and went to work as always.

But those days were all but usual. I found myself paying more attention to details of the household and the city, smiling more and in a general pleasant mood. Every night I would dream of MY mercenary, sometimes as a male, but usually as a woman and I even wondered from time to time if he was not a woman in disguise, like in some novel. But I dismissed this as a flight of fancy since no woman would be able to use that sword and armor.

One night I looked at my dresses and realized that I was in trouble, I still had one or two from when I lived with my father and the House gave us an uniform, which reduced my expenses with clothes a lot. But even fastidious maintenance can only do so much for a dress, I needed a new one to be able to go to the fountain park. Worse, Sonia would need diapers, expensive diapers, made of good cloth and I would need a bag to put the filthy things on when she got dirty and to keep the clean ones still clean.

It may seen little to you girls in our secreted valleys and communal economy, but believe me when I say, cloth was not terribly expensive, but still too expensive for my situation and good cloth more so. Nowadays the romanish empire is flooding the markets with cloth made by their kinetic machines powered by mages and we have one or two of those machines here in the mountains also. But when I met my mercenary cloth was made by hand, in a loon, by a single woman. The best cloth for diapers was made of cotton fibers and the region of Thebes produces cotton, but it was not large scale like today.

When I started to think about dresses, I noticed that my shoes would not serve also and my purse was in shambles. I admit that in that night I fell to despair, for the first time realizing the extent of my disgrace. I should have been smarter, used my female charms to snatch a man while I still had jewels and reasonable clothes instead of waiting for the perfect match. Now, how could I even date, bringing a young daughter and with no wardrobe worth the name?

The worse was that if I went to the mercenary and told him to cancel it he would ask why and I never was good a lying. If I told the truth he would think that I was extorting money from him and might demand something in return. I was considering giving myself to him anyway, but not this way. I needed romance, dates, perhaps marriage. But, who was I deceiving? He would simply take me sooner or later anyway, perhaps pay one month of rent and that would be it. No romance for the defiled.

The next night I was still desperate, I had thought about getting a loan somewhere, but the interest rates that a “woman like this” would get in the banks were simply not worth it. I went to bed crying again to the point that Sonia escalated her crib, came to me and gave me a hug. After this the tears flowed even more freely, but the resolve to go increased, after all, if I got a husband or even just someone to pay part of the bills it might mean a better life to her. For Sonia I would take any humiliation with a straight face.

I cried until sleep that night. The erotic dreams came, but I banished them, such fancies were for those that could, not me. Rolled in bed, felt sorry for myself and all those feelings that only one who was there may understand, I felt trapped, I would have to go to the park in the less horrible finery that I had while carrying a naked child and face the humiliation that this would bring to me as some of my former friends, now with respectable families and husbands, talked among themselves and laughed of my fate.

It was in such a dark mood that I woke early in the next day. As soon as a little sun could be seen in the badly covered single window of the room that we called an apartment I got out of bed thinking dark thoughts but ready to face the day for Sonia.

That is when I looked at the table of our single room apartment and got the weirdest surprise in my life. There was a bag over the table, and a loaf of bread. No indication that the lock on the door (foolproof, the landlord had told me, open only with the right keys) had been forced. The window was still latched, there were no footprints and, thank the gods, Sonia was untouched. But the bread and the bag were there, as if they had grown out of the wood. No note, nothing explaining. Just two simple objects, the bag made of brown, rough cloth closed with a single white lace and the whitest bread that I had seen in a long time, except for Elric`s house, of course.

I approached the bag warily, undid the lace and found a small fortune in gold inside. More than a month of my father`s wages were there, much more than needed to buy a dress, good diapers, food for a month and perhaps even some sweets for the baby. No note, nothing, no strings attached, but only one person would be crazy enough, good enough, weird enough to do this.
 
 
So, in the day before our date I left work earlier (started earlier also, thanks to a deal with the majordomo), went to the baths in the hour reserved for non citizens and paid for the privilege of a complete massage plus scented bath.

In the day of the date I woke up while it was still dark, cleaned myself as well as possible using our water basin, tidied Sonia as best as possible and only then risked putting on my new, expensive dress.

When I finished dressing I looked in the mirror bought with the mysterious money and saw that I was looking like a proper lady. For the first time since my pregnancy became impossible to hide, I had a proper dress, a nice necklace, good shoes and my daughter was not looking as a pauper`s daughter, always naked not to mess her clothes, she was in a nice dress herself, with good diapers. She was not happy, of course, always trying to take out the lace in her hair or wiggle out of the clothes, but nothing can be perfect.

I was still trying to keep Sonia from taking out her new shoes when there was a knock on the door. It was the mercenary, tidied up, clean and smelling of perfume, wearing an expensive black jacket over what looked to be a dark colored silk shirt, nice dark breeches and black boots. His appearance was still martial, but in a parade ground style, with the dark colors calling attention in this hot day of the dry season. I could also discern a net of small magical stones spread in his coat. Small, expensive stones that, together with the sword in an adorned scabbard tied to his large black belt would certainly make a thief think twice before attacking us.

In other words, dangerous, dark, but also, to my eyes, looking beautiful instead of handsome. The jacket could not hide his relatively narrow shoulders, the shirt showed the shape of his chest and I could see what looked like nipples, the large belt didn`t hide his wide hips and the tight breaches showed slender legs. I was sure that nobody would notice, when people see a sword and the ease to wear it they think male. But I started to think on him more as a woman than a man. This was somehow proved by the ease with witch “he” complimented me on my clothes.

Sonia calmed down, looking with big eyes when the stranger, the mercenary a little bit bigger than her mother approached. Without saying anything he bowed to us both, took Sonia in his arms and produced from somewhere a sweet that granted to him her undivided love, at least for the next moments.

He had hired a carriage to take us to the park.

He, or better, she as I shall call her from now on led me to the carriage, being the perfect “gentlemen”, helped me to get on it but talked very little during our trip to the park. When we got to the park Sonia was all excited with the fountains and the mercenary took her from one to the other, talking about their history and showing a knowledge of art and, particularly, sculpture that was really not in character with the figure of a northern mercenary.

Sonia ruined her dress with the sweetened corn sold in one of the food stalls, played as much as she could and then decided that the mercenary was a comfortable place for a nap and slept in his arms as if there were no problems in the world.

Since we finally had a little moment of peace, we walked to a quiet corner of the park and I asked the mercenary “Sorry to be rude, but life taught me to be wary, please tell me what you really want with me.”

She didn`t answer at first, simply curved her body, taking care not to wake up the child in her arms and kissed me in the mouth. This show of affection was allowed in the park, but it bordered on the scandal. I loved it. And a new wave of pleasure coursed through my body as I could feel her breath.

After a long pleasurable time she answered “I have chosen well I see. What I want is you. I want all that you are, all that you have. I want you to be one with me.”

“Please explain yourself” I answered a bit worried by what I took to be an evasive answer.

She smiled a cold, weird smile half irony and half genuine amusement. “Come with me first to get married by contract, then to a glen in the woods that I consecrated to my goddess, drink from the marriage cup and everything that I have will be yours. Then you will know that I can`t betray you. I really admire you and would do everything in my power to take you out of the desperate situation where you are.”

Marriage, civilian marriage as they say, but marriage nonetheless, little guarantee of prosperity when the mercenary could simply leave Thebes in the next day, but enough to improve my social standing. A married woman, even a poor, abandoned one was still better than a “free woman”.

“Will you register Sonia in your name?”

“Of course, my love, she is a nice kid after all and, in a sense we are relatives already.” She said this with a cold tone, again with that half smile, as if there was a joke here that only she could see.

“Of course I accept” I said with a genuine smile. She might be cold, but was somehow gentle, which I know seem to be impossible but she managed with those cold eyes and precise way of talking and move while, at the same time, showing attention to Sonia and playing with her. I imagined that marrying her would be at least interesting, besides, it was hope.

We went to the carriage, gave Bernard the good news and both he and the two of his sons that where working as our escort accepted to be witnesses. Then we went to one of the city`s register offices and in a brief ceremony got married on paper.

Oh, I keep forgetting, perhaps this journal will one day be read outside of our little community. Let me explain. In Thebes, there is a diversity of religions, while here in the Mountains we have many different kinds of unions and the Goddess considers marriage useless. So, in both societies when a couple wants to build patrimony together they make a contract stating what are each other`s duties and who will inherit what in case of death. Of course, in Thebes women do not have income and the contract becomes even more important, because it protects them and their children from being, for instance, expelled from their house if the husband is eaten by something and his relatives get greedy. These contracts could be very complicated since the woman could not own a house, loopholes in the law had to be found to protect her. Nowadays things are easier in Thebes since they accept the right of property of some women. Of course, here in the Tribe both sides will have some income and the contract has to be clear on how the properties of the couple will be shared in case of separation.

Well, we used one of the standard contracts given by the city. They tended to be really good since it was not in the cities best interest to have destitute children in the streets. And only when she signed the contract I learned that I was getting married to Erynia the First. When the clerk asked about the weird name she said that it was a new custom in her tribe and, somehow, the clerk decided to accept the female name. Erynia, after all, looked male enough and there was that sword to prove it.

After getting married, it was no scandal for us to leave the city and go to a little altar that my mercenary had consecrated to her goddess in a beautiful glade close to the river. We left Sonia sleeping in the carriage guarded by Bernard and sons, walked a little into the woods, she took a cup of metal, drank a little bit of water. Gave me the cup, I drank.

After drinking the water I found myself in a large cave together with Erynia, only now she was naked and was obviously female. In front of us there was a beautiful Goddess. “Welcome, my child.” She said. “I am here to ask you to join our tribe, be one of us.” And She showed me the waterfall valley, followed by a series of images of the life of the tribe and also of what we had to accept to belong.

“What will happen to Sonia?” I asked.

“She will be raised as a normal child, we will teach her to read, write, hunt and much more. When she is of age she can choose to stay and be one of us or to build a hut close to our lands and live a normal life.”

Even in that day I could see that Sonia would have little choice, if we went to the Tribe Sonia would become too much of a foreigner to live in a city ever again and living in nature, close to the mountains would just postpone the day when she would quit and accept the Goddess.

“Erynia, you married me, are you going to provide for us if we stay in Thebes?”

“Yes, I will. Even if you do not join I will leave you with enough money to survive, but I doubt that house Melbur will leave you in peace.”

So, I could say no, but I would have to leave the city and hide. True, the house would never leave me alone no matter what, not with Sonia being Elric`s daughter.

“OK, Goddess, I accept your offer.”

The dark goddess of the mountains raised her arm in my direction and I was flooded with pleasure as something changed inside me.
 
 
Soon I was able to listen to Erynia`s thoughts, could see her memories and had the choice to help in rescuing Stephen. If she had told me in words that she wanted to rescue her beloved and needed me I would have felt used. But trough her memories I could see that she had been very ethical. I was not only a tool to get to Stephen, she had chosen very well and had come to me only because she felt that we could live together. In her somehow cold way she considered our marriage to be true. She would go to bed with Stephen but I would always be considered someone to protect. Better yet if the three of us could be together, something not completely disagreeable since I had been working with Stephen for the past year and liked him as a person.

So, yes, I would help her to get into Elçric`s house and I started by giving all information that I had on the place to her, every single detail that only a maid know about a place.

Then I opened my eyes and I was still in the glade, looking at Erynia, my lover, my sister, my partner while still holding our marriage cup. Now I could feel the goddess in the water, I could feel the life of the men at the carriage a little distance away, there was a big creature in the river nearby, there was life under the soil. The day was beautiful and, despite being possessed and feeling as a part of a Goddess of the caves and mountains I never felt so free.

Erynia approached, kissed me and placed a pendant with a magical stone over my chest. I felt our connection disappear, but I knew it was temporary, only until we finished the job. Then I would be part of the Tribe forever.
 

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To Be Continued...

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Image Credits: Title Image of Brook by Eduardo. Divider licensed for use in publishing from Photoshopgraphics.com ~Sephrena.

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Anya`s Journal

After I became part of the tribe, Erynia told me all about her plans to free Stephen. I suggested some modifications and we started to implement the revised plan using the last two days of the holidays.

The first thing to do was to move to an apartment on the ground floor, with easy access to the sewers. This was easy to justify to the landlord since we were now officially married, my husband had money and it was reasonable for us to move to a larger apartment. We got one of the largest apartments with three bedrooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen big enough to put a table on it and receive a few visitors.

Not even my father`s home had been so big. Now we had space and the next logical thing to do was to buy slaves. Erynia didn`t like the idea, but it was what everybody would be expecting us to do and, if the slaves were beautiful women, they would serve two other very important purposes.

So, I went with my husband to the slave market in the last day of the Aesir`s holiday. Since it was Morrigan`s day, the slave markets offered discounts in the price of “prisoners of war” and it was actually normal for a newlywed couple to visit the market on this day. The place was well organized, with a heavy labor section, one for household slaves and one for special slaves like scholars to teach your children, and pleasure slaves for your bed.

We found Melusine within a cage inside the household section. According to the slave master, she was well educated and would serve a man in bed if trained. She was also really, really beautiful and I wondered why she was not sent to be trained as a pleasure slave. Her price was also a little high, but within the price range between a simple maid and one of the special slaves.

I took Erynia by the arm and we went to one of the food stalls to eat (our third meal that day and it was midday yet) and talk about our options.

“Erynia, what do you think of Melusine?” I asked with a little frown.

“Well, a blue eyed redhead, Nordic, from the Osir people. Must have been sold by her father. I heard that they got mutant rats attacking their crops last harvest, so, she is actually fatter than I expected. Did you notice that they cut her nails very short and that she is using a collar even inside the cage? They probably are not feeding her very well also. Even though they are keeping that magical slave collar on her, I can feel that she has some magic about her. I suspect that she has at least some minor body magic and has seriously hurt one of the slavers before.”

Erynia said this all without once altering her cold expression with no inflection on her voice. It was if she was talking about a broken wheel in a cart and not a woman sold by her father in times of famine. And yet, I had not noticed any of these things. The collar, which I had taken for granted as being there to emphasize and show off a slave`s large breasts, was actually restraining her with a magical stone.

“So, do you agree to buy her?” I asked a bit nervous. Now I really wanted this girl. She would be a nice addition to the tribe and, well, to our bed.

“Yes, she and the two white cat girls” Erynia answered.

“Cat girls?” Selling white cat girls was illegal! Black ones like Batet were fair game, but the white ones only came from Melbur clan and were considered part of the Melbur household. That merchant worked for house Melbur, for moons sake! How could he sell them from that house?

“They do not show cat girl features, no glowing eyes and probably only a little improved vision in the dark. I have been looking at them since we got into the tent and would not have noticed anything different if not for the goddess inside me. To the goddess they feel somewhat similar to Bastet. The feeling is a bit weaker, but it is there. They are also from clan Osir, not Melbur, so …” She said this last fact with that little twitch of her head that she uses when she wants me to figure the rest out by myself.

“Melbur and Osir had their last fight more than a hundred years ago, they are illegitimate or descendants from a rape that happened long before Melbur came to Thebes” I finished with a little smile that she corresponded. To this day one of the few pleasures that Erynia shows in her face comes from teaching me things. The damn cold bitch is weird this way.

We went into the tent and used a magical blue stone to pay for Melusine and for the girls, named Anya and Beitha. Anya found it weird that she had the same first name as me, but I simply started calling her Ane two, which brought a smile to her face. The two girls proved to be well mannered and to accept their fate. Melusine, on the other hand, had stated quite clearly to Erynia as soon as we opened the cage that she would come with us but would not be her plaything. Erynia`s answer was short and cold:

“Do you prefer to be a escaped slave in this city full of soldiers, to stay here to be sold to one of the big farms or to come to a household where the job is light and there is only one male to make demands?”

After this Melusine followed us quietly, considering her options. We got into a carriage rented for this purpose, with a cage in the back to hold our new slaves. Then we drove to our little glade outside of the city and asked them to drink from a cup of water after we had drunk from it.

Of course there was more than water in that cup. All of them accepted the goddess' offering. Now, we had more than enough people to implement the rest of the plan.
 
 
I believe that every maid in Melbur`s house was surprised when I went back to work after the holidays. But, to anyone that asked, I answered that my husband was breaking in his new slaves and that I was contractually bound to finish with the house - a contract whose escape clauses included the payment of a large sum of money if I left before giving three months of warning to the house. This was true, the house had me in a contract more strict than the usual since I worked in the library and because Elric was the biological father of my child.

Once I passed by the two guards at the door and entered the library, I could feel the presence of a male behind one of the walls, near the ceiling of the huge chamber. It appears that I and Stephen were being spied from a secret passage. So, I continued my work as usual, first cleaning the place then being at Stephen`s disposition to take books from shelves, catalog new magical stones made by him and help him in his research.

Stephen was, as always, in his wheel chair, studying a set of books at a table in the center of the library. He had to produce about ten magical stones per day. The double of what a normal mage would make. But, if he accomplished his quota the rest of his time was free to do whatever he wanted. Since Stephen slept very little and liked to make new stones, he would frequently use half of his day to do research on various topics.

Stephen was one of the few mages capable of making stones from any area of magic (fire, kinetic and body were the areas known at the time) and even make those distant communication stones that seemed to be from a new area of magic, something related to lightning. But Stephen`s stone making ability had a limitation: he could only charge up the communication stones. The problem was that he had little raw magical power. Although his stones were a higher quality than most being made, he could not fuel a fire stone, for instance, with enough magic to do any real harm to someone.

Elric tried to keep his pet artificer happy and supplied him with all books that he asked for, even in subjects not related to magic. Everybody in the household was afraid that Stephen might one day find a way to charge stones and build to himself a magical armor capable of destroying the building or something like this. Logically, it is stupid to keep an inventor captive in a room full of things that he can use to invent; so, if you must do it, at least keep him happy and under strict surveillance.
 
 
The first time that day that Stephen had called me to help him, it was already afternoon. He had just finished his quota and wanted me to get him a book on dragons and their behavior patterns. I brought that together with Galenus book on the wasting disease.

Stephen looked at my face with curiosity then and I made a little sign with my hand - a sign that meant stop and listen in the little sign language that he and Erynia had developed so long ago.

This, of course, brought his full attention to the book in his hands, to the marked page and to the sentence that I had underlined using a piece of the chalk that he kept by a blackboard to the side of the library. The sentence read: “The plebeian believe that the wasting disease came from the dead body of a goddess, buried deep within the northern mountains.”

Stephen looked from the book and, trying to keep astonishment from his face asked me: “Hum, it seems that some of these are linked to Hecate. Could you please bring me that book over there?”

Of course, there is no link between dragons and Hecate, but our spy within the wall might not be so cultured. While I brought him the book, but with a NOT HECATE written in large letters on the front page, I asked: “Sir, aren`t dragons from the time before the cataclysm? Perhaps a book on historical suppositions?”

“Anya, Hecate is old, certainly she was around before the star created the pit.” He answered.

“But, what other creatures were around when the pit was created?” I answered.

At that moment I noticed that our little spy, perhaps tired of our academic discussion, perhaps because he needed to pee, had left his post. So, I turned my back to Stephen while pretending to look at a row of books, put my hand inside my dress and took a piece of paper that had been hidden in a “special place” (oh, the advantages of being a woman). Then I took a book on the legends of the cataclysm, placed the paper within (yes, the paper left a nice smell on the book) and brought it to him.

Stephen`s eyes looked like two saucers as he recognized the encoded and very complex diagram draw in that piece of paper. I couldn`t understand half of it myself, but Erynia told me that there was a message with details of what we were and our offer to him, plus something of our plans of escape encoded in that drawing of an ancient goddess and in the weird letters surrounding the picture.

I couldn`t even look at the damn thing without my eyes hurting. I could almost swear that the picture had moved “down inside” making me feel weird until I could deliver the message, but Stephen looked at it for a second, wrote something in the back and gave it to me saying. “I agree with all my heart, some ancient creatures were here with the dragons and forgive me, some ancient goddesses are not like Hecate.”

All nice and cozy, but the fool here had to hide the damned thing again and I could swear that the goddess in the paper was smiling with mischief when I looked at her briefly before. Well, let ´s just say that I excused myself saying that I needed to pee and went to our little employee bathroom. Once there, I re-hid the damned piece of paper.

When I returned to him, we continued our talk, now discussing about Hecate, Isis, Persephone and even Aphrodite; Stephen seemed to be suddenly very interested in ancient strong goddesses - especially those related to dark magic and mysteries.
 
 
After my day of work was finished, on trying to leave and return home, a guard escorted me to a small chamber with only a chair as furniture. There were two men there, one completely average Greco and another completely average Nordic. When I say average, I mean it. They had average build, average height, nothing remarkable about their faces, had no prominent features at all. It was even difficult to describe anyone of them except as generic Greco or Generic Nordic. In other words, spies treated with body magic to be completely forgettable.

As soon as the guard closed the door behind me, the average looking Greco man said: “Please have a seat... Lady Anya the First.”

“Pardon me, sir?” I answered showing apprehension in my face as I eyed this person.

“In your marriage contract, it is written Erynia the First as your husband, isn`t it?” The Greco continued in sarcastic tones.

“Sir, unfortunately my husband was renamed by the emperor when he decided to come this way to the Nordic lands. If you desire, I can bring a document proving this tomorrow. We plan to change it back to Eric Deepwood as soon as possible.” I admit that we had thought that the marriage contracts would be beyond Melbur`s house power since we had paid for sigil and our witnesses didn`t have much time to read what Erynia wrote. Well, we had an escape plan, but that really had been a stupid move.

“And why use the name given by the emperor?” The Greco man asked as he walked behind my chair. The Nordic was in front of it with a smirk on his face.

“You never know sir, the emperor has eyes everywhere... even where you might least expect it.” My face was now showing true abject terror, but inside I was cold. I believed that I could kill these two if needed. A false belief I would later learn, but it kept me calm inside at that moment.

Now the Greco was in front of me. He had brought forth a blue stone in his hand, the same one that we had used to buy the slaves the day before. “By emperor, you mean the same one that gave these stones to your husband?”

“Sir, this is what my husband told me.” Now my face showed true fear but I kept my voice clear.

“Do you know that the names Erynia the First and Eric Deepwood are magically engraved in this stone? Only a very good mage can see the damned writing.” Now the Greco stopped with his face mere inches from my face.
“No sir, I didn`t know that and I also believe that my husband does not either.”

Well, we really knew. We also knew that blue stones with this kind of engraving were only given to the emperor`s personal guard. The only known mine of these stones was heavily controlled by the empire and stones as clean and easy to enchant as the one that we had used were rare. Erynia had been mining these by the hundreds deep below the earth, but nobody outside of the tribe knew this.

“Let me look at this stone on your chest” He said with anger, almost spitting in my face.

I took the stone out and immediately felt the strong, very strong desire to contact the goddess. I went pale and started to sweat as he looked at the stone slowly and with care. Finally, after what looked like an eternity, he gave it back. I immediately placed it around my neck, if the goddess had not been warned about this possibility, we would have wasting disease alarms all over the city by now.

“Tell your husband not to leave his home until told otherwise, unless it is to book passage in the first ship to leave for Deepwood after the end of your contract. Tell him that we don`t like jokes with our honor and imperial agents spying on us. You will bring back a token of passage for a ship and a copy of the document renaming your husband tomorrow when you come to work.”
 
 
The next day I brought the forgery of a document made with the imperial seal and also a token proving that we were booked in a ship. Also, my husband told everyone in the building that he would stay home with his beautiful slaves. He even sent Melusine to the market to buy a cask of good ale and an amphora of wine. She was also seen in different stores buying a variety of sex toys.

We actually used the sex toys.

Everyday the Greco and the Nordic would take me to the interrogation room and ask me everything about what was happening in our home. I, being a good terrified girl, told them every little game, every little sexual thing that we played. This kept them nice and satisfied for a while. They did a full body search on me once, including a cavity search. But the goddess allowed me to hide letters deeper than they could find. So, I continued to carry messages for a few days.

Every day, Melusine carrying Sonia, Ane two and Betha left our apartment in the afternoon to go place flowers in our little shrine to the goddess outside the city walls. There they would contact our sisters and, later, share the information with us.
 
 
Three days after I came back to work, the Tribe attacked a caravan of slavers that had just left Resistance going to Last Fall. The memories of that ambush are available to all of the tribe, so, although I was not there I will tell the tale here so that the children that read this account of our history will understand what we fear and why rescuing Stephen was so dangerous.
 

 

 

 
The Memory of the Attack

The ambush started well, the scouts of the caravan didn`t see the ten women plus fifty wargs and ten velociraptors being ridden in the high grass and behind the small hills typical of the grasslands. It was a big caravan, with thirty soldiers protecting a cargo of sixty slaves, mostly women but there were no ironwood carts this time, and they had only three mages: a kinetic mage, a heat mage and a body mage. The last one was the only mage wearing magical armor (kinetic stones), since it is impossible to cast fireballs or throw enemies away if you are using magical stones to protect yourself. They disrupt any magic that passes too close to them.

When the sun was setting and the caravan getting ready to camp, the tribe appeared all around them. They came from holes in the ground and camouflaged hiding spots. The wargs were the first to attack, appearing all around the caravan. The guards and the merchants found themselves outnumbered with a warg larger than a pony attacking them from each side. They didn`t last long. Even the conductors of the three slave wagons had barely time to notch an arrow before the huge beast was biting their throat out.

The kinetic mage sent one warg to the sky, but another came from behind and bit his leg, while a third came and closed his strong jaws on his head. The heat mage threw a fireball that burned four of our wargs, but Erica hit him with an arrow containing a little bit of the goddess in the tip and he went down, being eaten alive by Her.

By now our warriors had appeared from underground and were mounted upon the goddess' horses. They were throwing arrows into the fray, finishing not already killed by the wargs.

The body mage was the problem.
 
 
When the wargs got near him, he used his magic to enhance his speed and strength. It is the only kind of magic that can be used with magical armor since magic does cannot go through it.

In seconds the damned man was a blur of motion. With his sword, he decapitated a warg that was attacking him from the front. He used his shield to hit and kill the warg attacking him from the left. He then sidestepped the warg attacking him from the right while the one from behind was repelled by his armor.

We sent two raptors after him next and he killed both with a fast movement of his body. Even the regeneration given by the goddess was not working well since his sword was full of stones set to make it cut better. Our arrows were not penetrating his armor and he had so many magical stones that it was obvious that his armor, sword and shield would have magical charge to withstand a long time.

Anora ordered a retreat. We kept attacking him with bats and birds to distract and confound while our warriors scattered the horses and pack mules. Then we attacked him with four velociraptors and ten wargs all of them shooting dark tendrils from their mouths. When he got close to one of them the others attacked from the flanks and all this time five of our warriors were surrounding him, shooting poisoned arrows from horseback.

We lost two more wargs, but finally a dark tendril landed in his arm. The little piece of the goddess walked over his body and found the faceplate, where it lodged itself making him blind by covering the eye holes and attacking his eyes at the same time. He had to use magic to regenerate his body and avoid infection by the goddess, he managed to bring one arm to his face and take the tendril from there but by then two wargs had attacked his legs and managed to bite, even if not penetrating much due to the armor.

When he freed himself from the wargs he was moving slower. Now we could see his movements. So, we simply kept surrounding him, shooting arrows while we sent warriors to get the wagons and move them out.

Then we did a complete retreat. We sent bats dropping pieces of the goddess on him until he was covered in tendrils and, while he got free we took all that was left, mounted our horses and fled.

The crazy guy even tried to pursue us a little, but he was on foot, and he had used too much magic in the fight to still be able to move faster than a horse or warg.

If we had ambushed him in the middle of nowhere he would have died, but as it was, he retreated to the direction of Resistance, reaching the city in the next day. By then our Tribe was far away, dealing with the slaves.
From the sixty slaves we gained from this conflict, thirty converted the next day. The others we guided to a place near our woods, and there we helped them to establish a settlement. This was something that we always knew that we would have to do sooner or later: the choice given to us by our goddess towards others would always be a choice between certain death in the grasslands or joining us. This was not a good choice... and we didn`t wish to have more converts by this way.
 
 
The body mages guarding Stephen`s door now terrified me. I saw that they were using only a few kinetic stones, but I was sure that they could move faster and were stronger than we. Just when I was finding myself so superior to the slower, weaker normal humans, we found that there were others above us in the food chain.

We had to face them to free Stephen though, so four days after I first came back to work, we implemented the next phase of our plans. In that bloody day, Erynia, looking exactly like me, went to work in my place. I left the building later in the morning, with my face completely altered by dark tendrils placed between my bones and skin.

Melusine, carrying Sonia, Ane two and Betha, left our apartment in the afternoon to go place flowers in our little shrine to the goddess outside the city walls. They all had bought horses to do this with and pretended not to notice both the spies and thugs following them.

The thugs had been a nice addition. That was the result of Melusine saying a “bit too much” at a tavern when buying beer for her master. She drank a little of the ale that she was buying and told the tavern master, besides anyone that wanted to listen, that she and the girls were hiding a little of their master`s money near the shrine. Only four thugs came, but, together with the four spies, they would do.

As soon as the girls were out of range of the damned red stones, a large group of birds plus two pterodactyls that were lying in ambush, attacked the men that were following them. The survivors from the first attack found two little fast girls attacking them with supernatural speed, feral savagery, and equipped with very good knifes enchanted with magical stones to cut through normal armor.

I and Melusine were around as backup, but thankfully were not needed.

Later in the day, the zombies that had been the brave men following the young girls, moved slowly towards the direction of the city. Their open wounds were covered by muddy ash to avoid the damage that the setting sun might do to the rotting flesh.

We waited by the river for the rescue that was coming. A group of our sisters had stolen a boat at Resistance.
 

 
Erynia`s Journal

Dressing as a maid to enter my father`s house was an interesting experience. If I knew how invisible this would make me, I would have done this sooner back when I was dating Stephen. Even with security paying attention to the “Empire`s whore”, after being searched at the entrance, I was free to move around.

Getting into the library and seeing Stephen for the first time in years was difficult. He had aged more than I expected. His once clean face was covered in an ugly beard. He had allowed his twisted legs to get atrophied and his torso was not as muscular as it had been.

Of course, his eyes lit up as he recognized me. Anya is strong and has an iron will, but she has no magical aura. Even wearing the damned magical stone, I couldn't help but see his eyes bulge as soon as I entered the room. Unfortunately, I had to deal with some things first before I could greet my lover properly.
 
 
Whilst I was dusting here and there, pretending to organize books and other things I also passed close to his table many times. Stephen kept giving me little magical stones that I set in a previously ordained configuration, hidden among the books. These were communication stones Stephen had already charged, and they began working as soon as they were placed. At the same time, I also located the secret passage into the wall and the little spy placed there. After three days of tedious observation, he was getting bored and left his post many times to wander about.
 
 
At midday, our little spy went to get some lunch. As soon as I felt his departure, I dropped the collar with a kinetic stone to the ground. As we had imagined, the stones that we placed around the library concentrated my instinctive communication with the goddess in a single direction, where we knew that our signal would not meet any of the red stones that detected “wasting disease.” We placed a set of stones outside the city walls to guide the signal in the direction of the caves, so now, Stephen and I had a stronger communication with the goddess than I had had in a month.

Finally free to be myself, I jumped to the spy holes in the wall and dropped two little stones through them to wait for our little spy. I then rushed back over to Stephen and kissed his astonished face. Before he could say anything I kissed his lips and sent a good portion of goddess inside of him. I wanted my Stephania to be ready as fast as we could.

Stephen was put to sleep while the tendrils changed his body. It would not be possible to do much for his legs, they would remain distorted and short until we got to the main body of the goddess but the tendrils could run inside his distorted limbs strengthening them and reducing the pain. Stephania would be able to walk with the help of a crutch.

Interestingly, the goddess soon sent me a message to masturbate so that my pleasure could be used to reinforce Stephen`s mental change into Stephania. He had been castrated by my father for violating his daughter and had been denied pleasure for so long that my pleasure alone would be more than enough to do the mental shift.

Of course, I could see the irony of masturbating in that house, in a library where two powerful body mages guarded the only door to the outside and with a spy in the walls. I smiled when I heard the body of the spy fall right after I started to masturbate. Perhaps my actions distracted him and he didn`t see the little stones? I would always wonder.

One thing that I do well is to curse people and those two little stones had an echo of my worst memories imbibed in them. The little spy probably didn`t last a second as soon as he got near them.
 
 
By mid afternoon, Stephania opened her eyes for the first time. The beard had fallen, her features were softened and her torso was already showing two little breasts. It would take months for her face to change completely, but the important part was that now she could talk to me trough our collective mind.

We stood there looking at each other and exchanging information by mindspeak as the day passed. The ideal would be to wait for darkness, but I was afraid that the two master spies of my father would want to interrogate Anya again. I was not sure that I could defeat them.

There was no door leading to the spy holes in the wall. I could not feel any secret passage, the windows of the library were narrow and high in the wall. There was only one way out, through the body mages.
The weirdest thing is that I and Anora are body mages also, but we learned to use magic to alter the bodies of other people, while the two guys at the door had learned to use the same kind of magic inside their bodies making themselves stronger and faster trough a series of exercises and devotion to the magical martial arts. They also could increase their abilities for a while using their innate magic and, as the Tribe had learned, this made then better fighters than even our enhanced selves.

Well, it would be body magic against body magic. The door of the library was at the end of a corridor but it was a very well traveled corridor, so, we had to be discreet. It was an extra disadvantage for our side
I left the library saying to the guards that I would go to the kitchen get some soup for Stephen and I did just this, but used the trip to spread some more of our little communication stones, basically allowing me to act in the building using the body of the goddess as a weapon.
 
 
When I returned, I pretended to trip on the hem of my dress, dropping hot soup, full of goddess, into the face of the warrior to my right. When his companion noticed the dark tendrils suffocating his partner, I threw a set of stones on the floor and cast the worse curse that I could. I really went inside me. I remembered all the feelings of the betrayal when my father`s guards left me to the Tribe, being taken from my horse, the attempted rape, the mistreatment in the hands of Urk, seeing Stephen being castrated, and the infernal emptiness that filled me when I realized that my father had planned to use me to start a war! I used it all in a single spell.

The guard that was also being attacked by the goddess tendrils died immediately from my spell. The other one though, still had the energy to lift his sword and come after me. He had used his own magic to fix his body and counter my spell, but apparently did not have enough energy to increase much his speed now. I saw him coming and, despite the confined space of the corridor, stepped aside and avoided being skewered by his short sword. Then I tried to strike him with the big kitchen knife that I had hidden under the tray of soup. He avoided it and, with a fast movement, reversed the direction that his sword was going, doing an upper cut that cleaved through the knife and some of my fingers.

There was no blood or pain. In the dark corridor, the goddess sealed my wounds while I gave a step back, as if to run. I then opened my mouth and hurled a dark tendril at him. Coiling that thing in my throat had really hurt, but it was worth it since the tendril, now free of my body, entangled my opponent`s arm and started to climb it, aiming for his head.

The guard tried to scream, but the stones that I had dropped earlier, in the beginning of the fight, blocked sound.

While the guard was trying to tear the tendril from his arm, Stephania, listening to my mindspeak, opened the door at his back and threw a heat stone on the floor right between the guard`s legs. Charging that stone had been difficult since neither of us was a heat mage. A blast of heat rose above the stone, scorching the body of the guard and burning the tendril that was attacking his face.

The blast was not as powerful as would have been had the stone been properly charged, but it did do its job of distraction by pain. He let his sword fall from his blackened fingers and this was enough for me to approach and give him his last kiss ever.
 
 
By now the body of the first guard was full of the goddess, becoming a zombie under our control, and we ordered it to stand guard in the doorway. With luck, in the semi darkness of the corridor, it could pass for a living being for a while. It would look like the other guard may have gone off to the bathroom.

We dragged the desiccated body of the other guard towards the back of the library and hurried out of the building. Stephania disguised as a somewhat short maid. Once outside, we donned our collars with kinetic stones that blocked our communication with the goddess. I also allowed the tendril that was giving me the appearance of having black irises to retreat within my body and change my appearance a little. Now, with my blue eyes clearly visible, I no longer looked like Anya.
 
 
We knew that, at the servant`s gate, the guards of the compound would be more alert and perhaps would check who we were. But the commotion in the street caused by zombies attacking one of the city gates currently had their full attention, so we passed by without incident. We found the local bath house I had earlier scouted and dashed inside. While the city was awash in turmoil with ancient fears resurfacing, we took a bath. Afterwards, we swapped out our clothes for some that I had left well hidden earlier. Now, we left the bathhouse as a farm lady and her female dwarf companion.

The fuss from earlier had passed as the eight zombies that attacked the city had been easily defeated. But, I was quick to notice that some people from the Melbur house were on the streets looking for us. They would not find us though, since they were looking for a woman with black eyes with a cripple for a companion, not a lady with bright blue eyes together with a dwarf woman that clearly could walk, albeit with the help of a cane.
The zombies had not attacked the city close to the gate that led directly to our little glade, they had circled the walls and attacked a smaller gate, closer to Melbur home. With the zombies defeated, a large group of farmers gathered by the gate leading to the glade, wanted to go to their homes after a day of selling their vegetables and grain. The city guard decided to send out a few troops to see if things were safe. An hour later, once it proved to be, they allowed the gate to open and everyone to pass.

We still had to walk for an hour before we were out of range of the red stones. Then we contacted the other girls by mindspeak and they brought two horses for us. Now all we had to wait for was the boat that was coming. Of course we didn`t wait close to the glade that we had dedicated to the goddess. This would be the first place where Melbur house would look. It was kind of fun since we had “little bats” flying around showing to us where everyone in the region was. Melbur house didn`t risk sending out a lot of people to search beyond the walls, and those that were outside the city were searching in the countryside away from our position.

Melbur house also didn`t want to tell the city guard that someone had stolen their most valuable slave, killed two of their few body mages and left a zombie in their house. There is such thing as “loosing face” after all.
I wonder what they thought of the little note that Anya left in our apartment? Something along the lines of “Hehehe! Bye losers!” was written, but with much more venom.
 

 
Melissa and Alysa`s Rescue Journal

Since we have to write this as debriefing after our mission, let`s start by the obvious: Girls, don`t do this unless properly trained and let`s pretend that you will not do it at home.

Do what? Sneak into Resistance, steal a little boat that they used to carry about ten slaves up river from time to time? Yeah girls, Anora is around and she demands that I prove that what we did was “morally justifiable”, as if she didn`t look when a dull knife was used on a captive`s private parts a year ago. Pure hypocrisy in my humble opinion, as if we were going to be saints from now on...

OK, OK mother Anora, we will justify our actions. Resistance is a nice city, we do not have any grudge against them, but we bankrupted that ship captain that had worked hard to buy a single small ship because he was using it to carry slaves. And, by the way, everybody around here, even the “Free People” always had slaves. Slavery is justifiable under almost all religions in this area and...

OK, back to the subject before an angry goddess makes me ugly. We had been training under aunt Bastet for the past year. She taught us to scale walls, hide in shadows, throw knifes, and use blow darts among other nice things. We had been playing a little game against our pack of wargs for the past three months. The wargs would hide a bone and guard it. We would then try to sneak into the pack and take it from them. If we failed, we had to hunt a deer and give it to the pack for food. If they failed, the goddess forced them to stay at the cave for half a day.

The best wargs at the game, the ones that remembered to pay attention to the bone after half a morning had passed, were marked to mate in the next season. So, the wargs were very well motivated as were we.

It took a month before the wargs started to become predictable. In two months time, we were winning more than losing. The goddess then sent a pair of shadow cats to help the wargs. In two more months we finally won one match against their combined forces and Bastet considered that we were ready.

More than ready!

The normal humans are practically blind in the dark and the goddess covered our faces with a part of her body, giving us breathable air even under the water and the ability to see life forms in the dark. We crossed the river, scaled a pier near the little boat, and hit the nearby humans with blow darts before they knew what was happening. We then took the boat and were far away by the time that anyone could raise the alarm.

There was pursuit, but not for long. By the middle of the next day our little birds told us that the boats had retreated back to Resistance. We were sure that most boats in the river had, by now, been warned about us and that we would face a blockade once we proceeded on towards Antigon. Since even in the dry season the river was full of side channels and places to hide we knew that, thanks to birds taken by the goddess giving warning we could hide from the other boats.
 
 
The only enemy that we feared was the creature that Erynia had seen in her way downriver. This “king of the river” would certainly demand tribute as it did from all other boats.

So, it was no surprise when, on our first day of travel, the same big, ugly head, seen by Erynia, emerged from the river, looking down upon us. We bowed our heads in respect and got on our knees, awaiting for its decision upon our fate.

The creature startled us by using mindspeak.

“It has been a while since the Goddess of the Mountains came to this river. She was once a respected and feared neighbor to my race, we are glad to see old deities coming back to life but we still demand payment for the use of our river.”

We could feel that the creature was female and she had a deep voice that reverberated in our minds.

Melissa was the one that got courage to speak. “The goddess admits that she has forgotten a lot, but she remembers that the great ones from the river like different fish. We have brought such a bag for you. These fish were created by our tribe and are full of what we are calling hormones. If eaten by a human, they would make a male grow breasts. In excess, this would even reduce his male parts.”

We both felt a little headache as the creature looked deeply into our memories of these fish. The goddess allowed it and even sent some memories of her own, with information about underground rivers and caves. It was not explicitly said, but information was also part of the payment.

“Interesting fish and interesting discoveries. I accept the payment and will even allow your future journey upstream to go undisturbed. But I must warn you that if you hurt any of the fishermen or regular captains in this river you will not leave this place alive, and your 'goddess' will suffer consequences.”

We lowered the sack containing the fish and the creature allowed us to continue downstream. It was clear that we would have to avoid confrontation at any costs while still on the river.
 
 
We navigated a maze of channels to avoid Antigon and the boats placed there. Near Thebes, though, we could not avoid been seen by farms or hamlets, so we traveled by night and remained hidden at the margin during the day. Thus it took three nights to get near Thebes and we met the girls at night on one of the river beaches at the northern side of the island.

There were few river beaches suitable for loading horses into boats. Even though our boat had been made to pass through channels and to be placed on a beach in case of a storm, the beach must have a reasonably low inclination and sand not too rough lest it be impossible to bring it back to the river with the extra weight of the horses. Truthfully, it would have been impossible without a pier if we were not stronger than we looked and the horses taken by the goddess.

Of course the beach we wanted to land on was being watched. Before we landed the boat, Alysa had to jump in the water and swim around behind our adversary's postion. Then, when she was in place, we allowed our boat to approach. Alysa put the watcher to sleep when he spotted us. A pity, he tried run to his horse as slumber overtook him.

Thank the goddess he was not using one of Stephania's communication devices!

Anya and Melusine stood watch around our beach looking for more spies while we, Erynia and Stephania, loaded the boat. It was fast since the horses were incredibly obedient. We even took the messenger`s horse, making it part of the goddess, and loaded it onboard the boat.

Yep, four horses and seven girls plus a baby in a boat made to house ten slaves in a cage plus four sailors. The boat was a little tight on space because of the horses, but still manageable. With the help of the wind we managed to go upstream and soon the island of Thebes was out of our sight.
 
 
Despite the boat being full and low on the water, now we had seven people to row - all of them with strength and endurance above the normal for a human. Helped by the wind, we rowed like madwomen throughout the night and made half the distance to Antigon. But there were war galleys coming up the river after us and also a large number of boats from Antigon were coming downriver as well.

To our dismay, we found that they were now using a different kind of red stone. It appeared to be adjusted to detect wasting disease only in the direction to which the main face of the stone was pointed, but had a much longer range. Using it, they started to find our bats and owls in the sky and shoot them down with arrows. Our long range scouting was being dwindled.

There were also men coming in horses following the river and small boats coming in numbers to search the channels. So, we decided to take one of the channels that everyone knew led only to the middle of the jungle.

Once deep enough within the jungle, we made camp and rested beside the channel. The deep tropical forest gave us cover while using eagles to see our opponents from a distance.

After a few hours of rest and a light meal, we continued up the channel as far as our boat could go. Then we left most of our gold, clothing, and even the saddles in the boat and entered the forest. Erynia asked permission of travel for the spirit of the place and it allowed us to cross his domains as long as we didn`t harm a tree or take an animal for our goddess.

At the beginning, we didn`t have much food, but the goddess would send a pterodactyl carrying supplies every night and thus we could walk slowly, disturbing little. We neither hunted nor left any trace of our passage through this part of the forest. After three days in the jungle, we reached the grasslands and there we met five of our sisters surrounded by a large number of the goddess' beasts. They also had brought one of the Tribe`s big wagons. Finally! It was with pleasure that we rested laying in the straw bedded wagon while we were ridden to the safety of the caves.

Now aunt Anora, can we go and train?

Bastet told us that she has a surprise, especially made for Urk, to be delivered to his master's chambers in Last Fall and that we get to deliver it.

Can we?

 

 
 
To Be Continued...
 

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Image Credits: Title Image by padfield.com. Interior Map and all other photographs by Eduardo. Divider licensed for use in publishing from Photoshopgraphics.com ~Sephrena.

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War should never be about revenge.

On the other hand a real war, not some little intervention to keep the peace, should never be about moral issues either.

If we wanted to attack every city state that has a bad policy towards women, we would be in constant war and this would demand such sacrifices that we would not do our most important job.

Live happily and help to bring others to our cause.

The exception was our attack on Last Fall, but this war was both for commercial reasons and to gain new members to our tribe.

It was not really revenge.

Or, at least, I like to think that it was not.

Anora the First
Philosophical musings.
 

 
Anora`s Diary

I still can`t believe that I was voted for commander of our tribe against Last Fall. The whole election took one night at the spiritual plane, in the Goddess cavern where memories were shared and nobody could lie. Being elected by the collective mind of all my sisters as the creative mind behind what is to happen put a very heavy burden in my shoulders.

Weirdest of all was that, despite being voted in such a mind blowing way, I still had to face a very human reaction of my sisters when I told that the best thing to do first was peace and commerce. Some got really mad at me and, in our little word of no deception, their thoughts burned my mind for two or three days until the Goddess interfered with one simple sentence: “YOU CHOSE, NOW OBEY”. Well, a simple sentence uttered in such a way that it gave headaches to my sisters for one day and reminded us that I will plan and decide a strategy, but who really rules is there watching and judging. Of course, the Goddess certainly could control this all by herself with no resistance. I wonder if she is not getting too much fun out of this game.

My plan was simple: first attack any caravan with slaves but leave all the others alone. We even helped a few caravans in trouble against huge predators. Oh, and we let the people that quit the caravans while leaving the slaves to us survive. We watched their groups but didn`t interfere and allowed them to reach their destination, being it Last Fall, New Rome or anywhere else. We needed a reputation of accepting surrender or else we would be fighting too many fights to the death.

Also, well... I started a commercial war.
 

 
Village of Resistance one week after Erynia escaped Thebes

Former boat captain Jean Cloutou was drunk. No, not only drunk, completely, totally irrevocably piss poor drunk. As he left the bar where the bartender had been quite sympathetic, as were all the other boat captains, the only thoughts on his foggy mind were about the last fight he had with his wife and how long it would take for him to be eaten by something when he jumped into the river. His wife simply did not understand it. She had been right when she told him to carry Icari fruits and not slaves in his new boat, the boat that he had worked so hard to buy, perhaps some of that Jewish dead God drivel of hers was even true and slavery was punished by the Gods, but now it was too late. He had put his last coin into that boat and the ghost women had taken it. The husk that had been found weeks later in a side channel of the river had been completely depredated by the local peasants or even by the same sympathetic captains that had paid his tab at the bar but would not give him a job. Nobody hired a man that had lost a ship.

As he walked to the water he imagined how his wife would fare. Better than with him, he supposed. She had a daughter, but was still young and pretty. Many of his fellows would be by her house in two days, as soon as he was considered missing, commiserating on the “accidental” loss of her husband and offering a shoulder to cry upon.

She was smart enough to know that the alternative was the bordello, and many of his fellows would want a woman that came with a nice house and a husk of a boat that could still be repaired with enough money. The daughter was a minor inconvenience, but she could be married in a few years and still bring good connections.

The worst was that he loved his wife, he simply could not see an alternative. Well, at least for him it should be fast, the needle fish had been hunting in this area of the river again, if he fell into the water they would be making holes in his skin and eating his innards in minutes. Better to be eaten by them than by the gigantic crocodile whose body had been found yesterday at the port, full of holes.

He was in this dark mood, praying to whatever god that was listening that his death would be fast and that the drink would reduce the worst of the pain when he reached the dark riverside road in that full moon night. And found himself surrounded by tall women wearing pieces of leather and cloth that covered only their breasts and their crotch, apparently more for support and comfort than modesty.

“Came to finish the job, you whores?” He slurred. “Come, see if a drunk man can put up a fight.” He raised his fists and lunged at the nearest woman only to fall down at his first step. There he remained, crying of the dirty mud. “Come on then, kill me! Better you than the needle fish.”

One of the women, actually a girl of perhaps fifteen years of age, approached him. Her beautiful face was a mix of piety and revulsion. “Jean Cloutou, we are not here to kill you.” Then she dropped a bag at his side.

Still crouching Jean went to the bag and found it full of blue stones. There was a fortune in gems and stones that could be enchanted. While he looked at it dumbfounded, the girl continued to speak: “You were making a profit from the suffering of others, but we forgive you. Take this, pay your debts, fix your boat and come to the Dromenicus channel at noon two days from now with a crew of three trusted men. We have a cargo and a job for you.” And they disappeared in the darkness.

This time he took advice with his wife, so, instead of going right away to the harbor to pay in stones to fix his new boat he went to the local money lender and made a deal. He exchanged a few of the most common stones for money and gave a few others as “collateral to a loan.” The deal included a non disclosure clause with severe penalties if anyone learned that the loan was, for all practical purposes, already paid and that magical stones had been used to pay it.

By the middle of the next day, the whole town was gossiping how “broken Jean” convinced a stupid money lender to pay for the repair of his boat when everybody knew that if Jean risked transporting slaves, he would need more than five years to pay the debt, notwithstanding the interest rates.

Jean, of course, was at the appointed place in the right time. There he received a cargo of rare stones and a list of things to buy with them. He also got a letter of introduction to house Meridien, a Greco house famous for its competition with house Melbur. Together with the letter came a few enchanted stones, including one to speak at a distance. There was also a treaty of commerce to be offered to this influent house. The treaty gave them exclusive rights of commerce of certain kinds of stones that would be mined in the next ten years, in exchange for stopping any dealings with slavers and not using the city of Last Fall in their trade routes. It also established a fee and a set of rules to follow for safe passage through the grasslands. Jean was named as the only person responsible for carrying the cargo between Resistance and Thebes for the time being. The Tribe of the Mountains as they named themselves in the treaty would not accept anyone else appearing in the delivery point for the next five years.

Jean had not bought a boat by being stupid, he understood clearly that the Ghost Women or Tribe of the Mountains, or whatever, were considered enemies of Thebes and, in the unlikely circumstance that pride won over greed, Meridien house would “interrogate” him and send him to the authorities. So, he did something unusual - he told everything to his wife and left her a lump sum to try to run with, just in case. He also used well the two weeks before his boat was ready, hiring a mage and a fighter to protect his home and family and also two mercenaries for his boat.

He didn`t have to worry, as soon as the representative of house Meridien at the docks read his letter and the proposed treaty Jean was sent directly to talk to Marcus Meridien himself and Marcus, after hearing his tale, gave a hearty laugh, signed the treaty and even sent some of his own guards to protect his new partner`s boat in the way upriver. After all, one of the signatures in the treaty was from Erynia Melbur. The irony alone was too delicious for the fat and joyful Greco merchant to resist.
 

 
Anora`s Diary

Some merchant houses are a bit too proud for their own good, after losing almost all the slaver caravans of the year, what they do? Send another caravan, with more slaves but protected by the best that the money can buy. A test, of course, to see how strong we were. And, in a sense, it worked because it forced us to use our most efficient weapon.

In the grasslands between Last Fall and New Rome

A female eagle spies as a large caravan threads slowly through the commercial route in a scorching sunny day. Something inside the birds teaches her to count and she would be surprised by the numbers, if her little brain allowed her to conjecture. Passing bellow her there are five red tinted cage wagons, the cages made with thick bars of ironwood reinforced with kinetic stones here and there. Following them there are six heavy large wagons probably full of food, but also weapons and a few warriors. Two armored wagons carried by dranacks and full of heat mages were also amidst this caravan: one in the front, another at the rear. Amongst the wagons were a large number of mules and horses bringing both provisions and well armored soldiers. This was escorted by ten full knights of Vanis, whose armor shone with a myriad of magical stones and is more expensive than a small barony. The eagle does its count and leaves. The force inside her is satisfied and now she can feed. In the caravan though, red stones flare with brilliance detecting the intrusion of an ancient enemy. But nobody cares anymore, these same stones have been flashing almost continuously since they left Last Fall pointing at enemies everywhere; from the scattered bushes to the land where they walk.

Lost, too, amongst this crowd of travelers and ignoring the repeated warnings as everybody else is doing, is Elmorier,the elf. He is perhaps the only elf to have ventured south this year and was asking himself for the umpteenth time why he accepted this job. True, human slavery is nothing to the elf, but it is not something to die for either. The payment, although good, simply did not justify the risk involved.

Besides, even when carrying slaves, a person must feel that their job will be somehow productive or, at least, that there is sense to the whole enterprise. But, as the elf knows very well, the slaves will not be allowed to leave the wagons during the one month trip, and will get to New Rome sick, debilitated and smelling really bad. Also, the small children will probably die, some together with their mothers. This cargo will lose more than half its value before arriving at its destination.

While the cargo will needlessly be tortured and weakened by the trip, the caravan is certainly the most expensive enterprise ever supported by the cities of Vanis and Thebes.

Protected by mages, knights, two groups of adventurers (including his), a large militia, and at least three extra magical martial artists that the elf can identify full of magical stones, this caravan was costing, in wages alone, at least thrice the value of the cargo.

All of this was to supply an empire that could get cheaper, better trained, and docile slaves within its own cities. They did so through slavery by debt or by getting wilder slaves in one of its interminable wars with “the barbarians” both northeast at the dark forest and northwest at the island of Albion.

Despite all these sound commercial reasons and the fact that no caravan that had not carried slaves had been attacked here they were. Probably just to prove that a few merchant houses in Thebes and the king of Vanis could do what they please or to show to the people of these powerful cities that the now infamous phantom women can be defeated.

Hah! But to defeat someone, first you must first find them. And even the ex-tribe scouts of the caravan were having trouble finding their enemies. Despite the constant warnings given by the red gems Elmorier could even believe that this caravan would not be attacked, if not for the missing scouts.

A large group had left this morning to check the land as far as the pond where they would stop this night and should have returned by now. This scout group had not been weak, they had a communication stone, one body mage and five ex tribe warriors, but no message came and no sign of the group was found. It was as if the land itself had swallowed them, but everybody knew that this happened only in the eastern continent so, something even more terrible must have happened.

Now the remaining scouts where afraid to venture away from the main body and were talking about revenge of the dead and pit spawned beasts. Despite this and a growing feeling of unease the caravan went on. The pond was essential to replenish their water supplies.

When they got to the little cluster of trees around the pond they were surprised to see no sign of a fight. It was peaceful and undisturbed. There was no sign of human presence, not even of the caravan that they knew had passed this way only five days ago going to Resistance and that had passed by them in the road.

While some of the warriors went to see what had hidden in the water (only a gigantic alligator, easily killed, a nice surprise since in the last pond it had been a large dinosaur). The rest of the caravan hastened to create a defensive perimeter, they dug a rectangular trench and altered the mage`s wagons to serve as defensive towers at the corners of the new fort. Then Elmoriel and many others took the first watch as one third of the caravan went to a restless sleep.

And many hours passed.

No noise, no animal noise, not even a mosquito. Nothing, the night was too quiet. It was the end of the dry season and, even with the relative abundance of water in the grasslands, a pond like the one close to camp should attract a lot of animal life, but here they were and nothing moved.

The feeling of unease kept growing. The waiting was getting unbearable. So, it was almost with a feeling of relief that, near the end of his shift, the elf spotted a shadow moving close to the ground a little bit off the camp. He took his bow to shoot, placing an arrow with the swiftness typical of his race, but was surprised by arrows coming from all directions, including above. He counted fifty arrows launched against the guards of the camp, two against him. His armor held, but three of his four kinetic stones went dead. At a glance the experienced adventurer knew that these stones were burned and would not be rechargeable.

Mad with the loss of the expensive stones the mercenary elf searched the shadows for anything that he could shoot, but even his eyes could only see indistinct shapes moving away from the caravan. He shot one of them anyway and got a satisfying yelp of pain followed by some fire as the heat stone imbibed at the tip of the arrow did its job. After this the shadows moving close to ground disappeared quite fast and the rest of the night was quiet. Well, quiet after they burned the bodies of the fallen before they could be controlled by the dark tendrils that sprang from the enemy arrow tips. In the end, one fire mage and ten soldiers had been killed, a minor loss for a caravan like this but put together with the loss of the scouts it hurt.

All was quiet again for a while, but nobody slept. Finally, when the moon had perhaps traveled another quarter of the sky the commandant of the security forces of the caravan did his last round of the camp, intending to send some of the soldiers and mages to sleep. When he got close to the enclosure where their cattle and some of the horses were kept he noticed that the animals were acting weirdly. They seemed to be moving with purpose, with the aurocks getting in position close to the improvised fence.

Being a veteran from many fights, some against non human enemies, the commandant considered best to exaggerate than to be surprised, so, he called a group of soldiers ordering them to stay behind with arrows notched to bows and sent a group of three body mages to check the animals. He also forewarned a group of heat mages from one of the “towers” at the side of the camp.

A soon as the mages approached, the animals broke their bonds and the enclosure, attacking the camp in a stampede of hooves and horns. They were fast decimated by heat from above and arrows from the guards, but one aurock managed to kill one of the body mages while the remaining had the charges of the stones in their armor severely depleted. The armor could be recharged, even by the body mages themselves, but it would take time and energy. In the end, these mages got very little sleep. Now the caravan didn`t have horses and aurocks enough to lift camp.

For all practical purposes they were already defeated. The merchants had to choose to kill the slaves, try to bring the slaves on foot to the market with the rainy season approaching or leave the slaves to the ghost women, take whatever they could salvage and leave. To complicate matters, a flock of birds flew over the camp a few hours before noon and dropped pieces of parchment. These were letters detailing in graphical terms what would happen next night if the slaves were killed.

The next morning was bright, with the sun shining in a blue sky with only a hint of the rains that were to come in the next fortnight. Despite the beautiful sunrise there was plenty of tension in the camp, with heated discussions being heard from the tent of the merchants that ruled the caravan. Besides, some of the humans of the caravan were complaining of headaches and a minor itch at their chests while others were a bit over emotional, complaining about their lost comrades and even crying. The slaves observed all this from their stinking cages with stoicism and more than a little bit of apathy. One of the small children had died last night, amid the putrid conditions in the cage wagons.

By the middle of the morning, one of the younger heat mages went to the dung trenches to pee and gave a strangled cry. He was not the only one, the body mage that was serving the caravan as a doctor soon received many men complaining that their “equipment” had reduced in size and they could see little breasts in their chests. Many men were feeling their strength diminish by now and some were afraid to lose their manhood altogether. Words about curse and becoming phantom women themselves could be heard thorough camp.

The elf was untouched by the changes, but Elmorier had not lived so long ignoring the basic facts of life. He took his horse, which fortunately had been tied close to his tent and away from the other beasts, called his comrades, gave back a refund of their wages to the merchants and left the camp. By the end of the morning the martial artists and almost all of the normal humans had done the same together with most merchants, all which were not so encumbered by debts that they didn`t believe in their ability to restart somewhere.

Besides the few helpless merchants, the knights, the most desperate of the mages and the ex tribesmen remained. This last group only because they knew that they would get no mercy from what they took to be the ghosts of their former comrades. The ex tribesmen chanted their death chant, asked forgiveness to their war god and waited with the eyes of people that knew that they were already dead, while watching with detached amusement the movement of the knights and remaining mages as the changes progressed, their breasts grew while their muscles atrophied and their voices changed to softer tones.

As soon as they found themselves ruling the camp, the knights surrounded the slave wagons. They wanted to kill the slaves, but the same measures taken to avoid an escape were now against them. The bars of the cages could not be broken, arrows shot from outside would be stopped by the kinetic stones imbibed in the wagons and the doors of the cages were small, allowing only one man to pass at a time. The brave companions, as they called themselves, decided that sending armored men to fight at the door to kill debilitated women and children one at a time was too dangerous. Instead, they decided to open the doors and promise on their honor as knights that the slaves would be freed. After all, promises made to peasants and lesser beings were not valid.

The slaves, though, perhaps too debilitated, perhaps a bit smarter after days of close confinement listening to the banter of the knights about sub human races and: “my peasants simply can`t understand that they are not people.”; refused to leave the relative safety of the cages.

While the captain of the ten knights tried to convince the slaves to get out to be slaughtered, a task made difficult because he was already in emotional turmoil just by being forced to speak with sub humans as if they were people at the same time that his new breasts felt uncomfortable under his armor, hundreds of beasts were slowly crawling in the grass, surrounding the camp.

The ex tribesmen were the first to spot the gigantic wolves hidden in the grass, as soon as they gave warning, though, not only wolves but also raptors and shadow cats emerged from all around. The next wave were birds and pterodactyls that took flight nearby and attacked from above, followed by one hundred women mounted in huge war horses and using long ranged compound bows.

The knights survived only while their kinetic stones lasted. Eventually, the stones in their armor started to lose their magical charge and the terrified men inside could see one stone after the other lose its brightness until the last charge was spent and a gigantic jaw or an arrow finished their lives.

Even the remaining body mage didn`t fare better, he was soon surrounded by a ring of mounted riders, shooting arrow with uncanny accuracy while avoiding his attacks. Hit and run tactics wore him down until his armor started to fail and his regenerative ability was overwhelmed.

Soon there were only the slaves, most of them showing the effects of the strong chemicals that had been dropped in the water of the nearby pond. The men were weakened, showing breasts and small penises while the women were feeling stronger and more confident with firmer breasts and better health.

Most of the slaves accepted to join the Tribe, the males that refused were given money and horses. The effects of the chemicals dissipated in a few days, the Tribe would never use the act of being turned into a woman as punishment, only those that asked for it and were found deserving were turned into y girls.

The new members of the Tribe of the Mountains desired blood. The mothers that had lost babies were almost mad with rage and they demanded to be in the front lines against Last Fall.
 

 
Anora`s Diary - Continued

We contacted other houses, besides Meridien and offered deals in other products besides stones. My favorite is an elixir that allows women to get a bit stronger without making them look masculine. But we are expanding our line, including beauty products, birth control drugs and things for “that time of the month”. We will work through intermediaries for now, but there is one condition, anyone dealing with us does not work with slaves and do not pass through Last Fall.

We offered prices below market and let the merchants profit a lot over us. Not a big problem, since the contracts were for five, ten years at most. In ten years we would be free to do our own deals directly with the consumer and our products would be already known. What we needed was some breathing time, five to ten years in which we didn`t find an army in our doorstep, time to grow and multiply.

Unfortunately, the king of Vanis and Narsi was not so easy to persuade. The lands of his nobles had been systematically ransacked both by beasts and Tribes coming from the grasslands and it was considered important for them to keep an outpost in Last Fall to watch what was happening and avoid the rising of new “barbarian people”.

As the merchant houses of Thebes took their mercenaries from Last Fall, Vanis sent their troops to replace them. In the end, when the rains started to come Last Fall was protected by two hundred knights, three hundred archers from Narsi, one hundred ex tribesmen working for Urk and two hundred mercenaries, mostly from house Melbur. To face this we had four hundred warriors, mostly slaves that we had freed from caravans or covertly bought in the surrounding cities.

Oh, of course, we had the beasts, ranging from gigantic wolves to pterodactyls and they had the mages. A bloody battle would come out of this if we wanted to play fair in a frontal all out attack. But, really, do a frontal all out attack to lose at least a third of our warriors? Not even if we could convince all two hundred slaves still in Last Fall to join us. I never considered “playing fair” a part of any war.

Soon Last Fall was isolated from commerce by the rains. Rains that didn`t bother us in the least, since we had dug tunnels and caves with good draining systems in key spots of the terrain and hid food there. The Free People always loved the rainy season because of the fish in the lakes that seem to appear everywhere. Not a good weather for moving wagons, but excellent for fishing and not a complete disaster for our altered horses.

So, we had three months to torment Last Fall while it was practically isolated. The bad thing about this is that it was predictable, Urk and his men knew that the rains would not hamper us and they forced their slaves to clean the area around Last Fall of all vegetation and excavate the terrain creating a wall of earth and a pit around the settlement, this together with the internal wall made of ironwood logs created a good defense.

In the grasslands between Last Fall and New Rome.

But we still had some tricks. We had trained a group of young girls specialized in sneaking around, so that both walls were no big challenge to them and also, our people can feel the presence of life around us even through rain. In night and rain, the girls, cloaked in dark waterproof vests, could detect the guards of the settlement while the guards themselves had no way of seeing them. I sent our little group of spies and the girls got into the compound easily, carrying a group of mice taken by the goddess with them. Once inside, they released the mice. As the mice attacked the kitchens of many houses, including the barracks and Urk`s mansion, the girls hid as well as possible in shadows and rain. The houses in Last Fall were made of adobe or stone with tiled clay roofs. It would look like a quaint little village if not for the amount of armed men in its walls and the big sensala (big rectangular slave compound) that occupied a side of the place and stank a lot. The settlement was well illuminated by lamps placed on posts, while the outside area was covered with trip wires and traps to slow down enemies and warn of their approach. The girls had avoided the traps due to their training, but the next wave of the attack was not so subtle. As I felt that the girls were moving closer to the slaves I gave the order to open the caves that we had dug in a nearby hill and release our hungry captives. Gigantic scorpions had been preying on the lizard women controlled by the goddess for the past millennium. In the last two years we had learned to hunt them down in their caves, entrap them and even direct their movements with pheromones.

The goddess couldn`t take them since their immune system was adapted specifically to resist her, but she had learned and adapted with new knowledge taken from our brains and now was capable to at least direct their movements a little.

We simply released all gigantic scorpions that we had found in the mountains in the past year and left a trail of scents guiding them to Last Fall. After the scorpions were a bit away we released the three huge spiders that had been preying on the scorpions. They naturally followed their prey.

This is the kind of attack to which everyone is used. Gigantic beasts are often attacking human settlements and all warriors were trained in how to deal with them. Even through the rain the archers on the walls identified the threats as gigantic insects and started shooting fire arrows that did little damage but disoriented the beasts and lit the place allowing the mages in the four towers spread around the city to see better their enemy.

The mages send heat and big stones against the scorpions, generally making a scorpion fall in the direction of another. While even in the rain the spiders were effectively attacked by knights that were using reinforced armor and whose horses, besides being equally armored, had been trained to outmaneuver gigantic opponents while the kinights cut limbs with enchanted swords.

The battle proved to be glorious for the defenders, it took half the night but the warriors proved their valor killing dozens of gigantic insects while losing only one knight and one archer that had got to close to a spider to shoot it in the eyes. At the same time, the tribesmen inside the city hunted down the infected mice and saved most of the food stores. All in all, a nice demonstration of valor and bravery ruined only when, in the middle of the commemoration they noticed that the sensala had been opened and the slaves taken out of the city by a side door in the walls.

We also had dug trenches near the city while hidden by the ongoing fight. We had brought lizardwomen with us and they had been digging rock similar to the one bellow the soil of the grasslands for millennia. After releasing the slaves and digging our trenches, we left Last Fall in peace for a month. During this time we dealt with the escaped slaves.

The interesting part is that we could do what we did only because of Urk`s own evil. He had killed the old among the slaves and the children usually didn`t survive or became as strong in some ways as the adults. Urk ´s tendency to select the stronger and kill the weaker played in our favor in many ways. One day out of their prison and all slaves accepted to be converted in one of us, even if just for the pleasure of attacking Last Fall. Latter I learned that Elric Melbur had warned Urk of this possibility, but the ease with which he had betrayed and captured these slaves had blinded him for the fact that the Tribes were a warrior people. A true warrior adapts.

There were so many new converts at once that we had to create “conversion chambers”, twisted corridors with erotic drawings painted on the walls and full of smells and sights meant to slowly transform the perception of the males that walked into them. To complete that transformation, women that they trusted were placed at the end of the corridor, trained to masturbate at the right time and give to the former males the final pleasure that finishes the transformation. Yep, gender transformation in large scale, but with a much needed personal touch.

While our enemies were trapped inside walls our improved army was free to move. I must warm the reader, though, that moving too much in rain season is dangerous. The new lakes created by the rains are full of magical creatures eager for flesh and magic. We had more than a few sisters killed and eaten while trying to fish but we managed to avoid the worse lakes and to keep our front lines supplied.

Besides the mages, the knights were by far the best defenders left in Last Fall, this led to the creation of a strategy specifically made for them. First we kept some pressure, but using “unfair” methods like birds attacking from above or rats burrowing through their walls to try to reach their food. We made it impossible to sleep by sending shadow cats to attack the barracks at night or mice to gnaw at any piece of exposed flesh.

Finally there was a day without rain and we sent birds flying high above dropping messages. Among them there was a warning of what was to come and a proposal of a treaty to buy Icari fruits from Narses, if the knights left Last Fall right now. After this, we stopped. For seven days they waited in boredom for an attack that didn`t come. We could see them at the walls, getting slowly crazy, not knowing if we had quit, while our rats saw them sleeping poorly wondering what would happen next. They were stubborn, though, not sending even a messenger to Narses to see if their king would accept the offer.

So, we sent the girls to do surveillance and some mischief before our main attack.

This was a mistake.

It started well, the girls easily passed by the wall of earth in the middle of the mud and the rain. But when they were in the empty land between the two walls the earth opened under their feet swallowing two of our sisters despite their enhanced reflexes. One of the girls that had fallen into the pit was killed by stakes placed everywhere while the other fell in a kind of subterranean cell.

The other ten scouts found themselves under heavy fire from the mage towers and we lost two more girls as they retreated to one of our hidden tunnels outside the walls. While this happened our entrapped sister was sending images of her prison, a dark hole, full of stakes positioned to hamper her movements. The trap door had closed as soon as she fell but she could see a small hole in one of the walls of her prision, behind this hole she could feel the presence of a male, probably the kinectic mage that had controlled the trap door.

I wonder when and how they dug an elaborate system of underground traps around their perimeter and distributed kinectic mages using the damned red stones to detect our presence. It was just unlucky that a rat or other of our animal scouts didn`t spring one of these traps or they found a way to somehow sense the size of the animal above ground?

Anyway, our trapped sister soon started to listen to a chant coming from one of the walls. It was a priest of the crucified god, trying to free her of the demon possessing her so that she could become a nice obedient girl again. Nice, if a god really answered his prayers. As it were, only his own spiritual energy attacked the link between our sister and the Goddess. SHE didn`t even feel a thing, but was enraged by the presumptuous old fool and ordered us to solve this problem fast.

I decided to do what I was avoiding, an all out charge. Starting with three hundred lizard women as infantry, using shields full of kinetic stones bought recently in Thebes. While they advanced slowly, leaving our trenches silently under the cover of the rain, our sisters mounted horses and waited while our wolves got ready, crouching in the grass as far as the edges of the cleared area.

As expected, even in the rain and darkness, the knights rode to meet our attack. They were intercepted by twice their number in wolves, many of which were using armor of kinetic stones powerful enough to deflect some hits even from the knights` enchanted swords.

Then our sisters emerged from a hidden cave mounted in horses and shooting arrows at the archers in the walls. This would fail in any other circumstance, but the archers and mages on their walls were half blind by the rain while our archers could see their life signatures quite well.

While the battle in front of the first wall raged, our scouts, plus a group of shadow cats went over it and opened by force the entrance of one of the hidden tunnels. Our entrapped sister had sent tendrils probing the area and they found a weakness, in one of the walls of her cell. So, our scouts knew where to dig.

When the scouts got to their entrapped sister, the kinectic mage in the other room tried to collapse the ceiling on them, but this time, our own body mage, Melusine was with them, wearing kinectic armor. She broke the wall separating the cell from the mage and the priest and both were killed by two fast strokes of her two blades.

Melusine Erynier, as we call her, Melissa, Alysa, our best scouts together with Ania and Beitha, the two white cat girls followed the maze of corridors using mice to scout ahead and detect traps while they advanced and killed the kinectic mages hidden in the tunnels with speed and efficiency. While this very special group progressed underground, the others climbed back the earthen wall, and started to kill the archers posted there. They were met by the lizard women, that were used to escalate cave walls and saw little difficulty in climbing.

While we were taking the first wall, Melusine found that the hidden tunnels led to an entrance opening close to the log wall. They followed the wall, hidden in the shadows cast by the lanterns inside the city, until they got to the nearest mage tower. There, Melissa, Alysa, Ania and Beitha escalated fast and silently, throwing fire stones and smoke bombs inside the mage enclosure when they got to the top.

Fire stones do not work very well against fire mages, but heat, smoke and rain were more than enough to cover the movements of the much less subtle Melusine as she escalated the tower, destroyed one of the bars covering one of the windows and jumped among the mages. She easily decapitated two of them as soon as she was inside the enclosure, than she crouched low while the other girls threw darts and knifes at the remaining mages and, finally, finished them with fast perfectly coordinated movements of her two swords.

Now our archers left the horses and moved to the first wall, while pterodactyls braved the rain and, with difficulty, brought bows and heat stones attuned to transform heat into magic to our girls now occupying the mage tower. The mages in the other tower at that side of the village had now to divide themselves between shooting stones at the almost depleted shields of our lizardwomen, while they covered our archers and sending fireballs at the other tower. By now, though, there were only four remaining mages in this other tower. The last mages in the village, except for the two body mages guarding Urk, since all mages of the place had been moved to the towers as the fight progressed.

These last four mages fell one after the other as the girls shot from the other tower. At the end one of the kinectic mages even tried to crush the tower, but ironwood is to tough. Tough and difficult to burn, this is why the remains of Last Fall still stand nowadays.

Well, with the towers beaten, the archers on the walls went next. The remaining two hundred lizardwomen advanced in the space between the walls, avoiding the traps that had been marked by our scouts while the girls shot from one of the towers and our few mages went to the field, escalating the first wall to send fire balls at the second. Erynia killed more than a few archers with a well placed curse while I started to heal our wounded and to boost the speed and stamina of our warriors.

Finally, the second gate was opened by a group of lizardwomen. We stopped our advance a little then, while our archers moved to the second wall, one hundred lizardwomen formed a square at the opened gate and the other hundred took position to protect the archers in the walls. We formed a second wave, mounted one hundred mounted archers right behind the lizardwomen.

But I didn`t send our soldiers right into the city. The last knight had just fallen to the combined forces of wolves, raptors, pterodactyls and all other beasts of the land. They fell with bravery, killing dozens of creatures for each knight but were also stupid, if they had formed ranks inside the city, or reinforced the walls protecting the archers we might never be able to take the place. In other words, the boys decided to die heroic deaths charging madly in the dark and rain and we obliged them sending enemies that they could kill but would eventually overwhelm them with numbers.

As it were, we lost few women and only a third of our precious lizardwomen. We can replace a gigantic wolf in three years, a raptor in five, lizardwomen perhaps in fifteen while women take twenty or more years to raise and train notwithstanding the loss of a sentient being capable of adding so much to our little community.

I prayed to the creator for forgiveness, but I would not lose more fighters. We kept the archers on the walls, the lizardwomen reinforced by mounted archers near the opened gates but I sent the beasts inside. Mice, wolves, raptors, even dogs, hyenas, a few elephants, they went from house to house, killing everyone except those that got fast on their knees and surrendered. Following them went our scouts, to make sure that there were no traps, the place was clear and to herd the survivors among the townsfolk to the sensala.

One elephant destroyed the door of Urk`s mansion, and was killed by a body mage. Then I ordered mice to infest the mansion, avoiding any escape and the troops to move and steadily, slowly, travel the main road of the settlement. Finally, some of our sisters got into Urk`s home and started to ransack it, as if we didn`t know where he was hidden, while half of the lizardwomen went to help our scouts to escort the survivors out of the city.

Urk was hidden in a secret chamber, wearing a very expensive armor and with a body mage besides him. We knew where the place was since he had fought our mice to get there but we were not in a hurry. While we took the prisoners out of town, took all weapons from them, even kitchen knives, gave them a cart with food that could last three weeks if they were organized enough to divide it well and released them in the wilderness Urk was still hidden in his hole, listening to noise from above.

Finally Melusine broke the reinforced door and, before even the body mage could move, Erynia sent all our pain, all the suffering of the slaves, all power of all bad memories in our collective mind right to their spirit. The body mage died instantly, but Urk would not get so much mercy.

The despair kept coursing through his mind, paralyzing him as tendrils of our goddess surrounded his body and started to attack, slowly destroying his overpriced armor and his clothes, until he was naked and still in the darkness. Then the Goddess got into him and took from him every single memory, she could not control males and usually she was not fond of this kind of thing, but we needed the information and she filled him with pain until she got all she needed. Then he was allowed to die.

We destroyed all that we could of Last Fall, to the point of taking as many ironwood logs as we could carry to make new wagons to travel the grasslands in the future. Finally, we left the place and the grasslands, back to the safety of our caves to heal and build our own civilization.

This was fifty years ago. Now, this enhanced body of mine remains strong and fit, while the romanish empire shows signs of weakness due to internal infighting, our products reach all around the world and we number in thousands, filling this southern continent as far as the domain of the great dragon in the big valley where the weather is as cold as in the northern of the empire.

Along this time we received many women running from persecution, some hunted as witches, some just because they wanted freedom to marry anyone of their choosing. We even get a few couples, from time to time. Beautiful love histories in which the man prefer to be turned into a woman than to see his beloved suffer in the hands of a cruel fate.

But perhaps our most powerful achievement is yet to come. We will create an academy. Not for our children only, but for all that want to share knowledge.

But this is a tale for another time...

The mountains ring with HER joy, as Bastet and Erica raise a large family in the waterfall valley, Anora rules over a people like she was meant to do.
 

 
Somewhere, deep below the surface of the Earth:

The two lovers don`t need to talk, they don`t need eyes to see and they never are really apart.

And yet they keep their bodies together, they talk about all and everything and they have wondrous new light in their large workshop.

Erynia is content and Stephania happy for the first time in long years. They rule the underworld, the large caves full of new devices, fire and magic. Their pleasure comes both from the cold scientific discovery and from their undying love to each other.

But it is Anya that bring smiles to their faces when she visits.