Bonewalker

“UuuuUUaghhh.” With an arm outstretched and his muscles straining, Andros tips his head back for a mighty yawn. His hand lifts halfway up to his mouth as if to cover it, but by the time the languished limb makes it, the yawn is over and it flops back down limply. He watches the colourful, blue yellow and green stained hide canopies of the caravan trundle off into the dawn, it and the grasses around it awash in the golden glow of sunlight.

He hadn’t expected to meet a friend, but the chance encounter lifted his spirits nonetheless. Of course, his own mission is nowhere near as ridiculous as poor Calais’, nor his standing amongst his peers. He was just here to learn a thing or two, maybe coax a powerful minotaur warrioress to accompany him back to the clan. It’s not the best as far as missions go, but also not the worst. He could probably even achieve it, it might take some doing but despite the overwhelmingly negative reputation of the clans, every now and then a monstergirl can be convinced into the fold, though their position is always more or less awkward even if they are rewarded richly for bringing new blood in.

But… why bother? Sure, he’d miss drinking with his clan brothers but… though a vital companionship, there’s got to be more to life, right? There’s gotta be some one for him, if not within the Clan then out there somewhere. Shaking his head, he all but puts the details of his mission out of mind, intent on merely sight seeing and enjoying his trip for now. He sets down the path towards the Minos Tara mountains. It’s a smaller, but more direct path, cutting across a section of the Great Plains. A small deprecating grin teases at his lips as he ponders the worst that could await him. Lost and destitute, forced to sell his body to the fabled gladiatorial pits of the great labyrinthine minotaur capital. Oh, what a terrible fate that would be.

He draws his mind from fantasies. With hip high grasses either side of the beaten dirt path, it would be prudent for him to keep his wits about him. Alas, the morning fatigue and the alcohol in his system combined with little to no sleep and a comfortingly warm sun makes it that he spends more time yawning as he trudges along than not. His leather boots thump tiny puffs of dust along the well-beaten track for a number of hours, one or two and sobering along as he passes by mounds of stones erected by the path and sparse outcroppings of fairly stunted trees with wide canopies casting vast shade over the grasses.

The small hints of life around him belie the true, teeming nature of the Great Plains, though it appears so desolate at a glance. Ants trail a spiral around the stones, while a tiny lizard lazily perches on the top, sunbaking as it watches him. The lizard isn’t the only one either, as Andros turns to the nearby outcropping to spy a small group of birds resting under the shadow of the boughs. As he halts momentarily to observe, a snake idles its way across the path, turning to him for a brief wag of the tongue. Yawning deep and scratching at his cheek, he resumes his march.

Despite the respectable distance still between him and his first location – the collection of settlements making up the High Cloud Mesas – the distant mountains look just that little bit closer. Maybe it’s just an illusion spurred on by wishful thinking. Andros purses his lips together as he looks out afar, sun baking armour jostling with each thump of the boot. This is the last leg of his journey. He doesn’t envy his friend, who still has to cross the entire Great Plains region. Granted, the caravan should be a good help.

As he continues to walk under the increasingly overbearing sunlight, quickly going from warm to hot, he halts a moment, frowning as a distant lazy bubbling comes to his ears. The great plains are otherwise so damn quiet, bar the birds and bugs and wind, that it stands out quite notably. Carried on that wind is the refreshing scent of water underpinning a crisp breeze and the scent of grass. Taken by idle whimsy, he follows his senses, headed towards a number of short trees, wading through some long grasses, earning a hiss from a different snake – he thinks – and hissing back before finally emerging at the banks of a small creek, lazily twisting through the grass not unalike a snake itself.

It’s fairly wide. Wide enough he’d have to take the leap at a run, even with his considerable athletic abilities. That’s what he does, pack jostling heavily along the way. He’s not, not going to rest under the shade of the trees. His hands fly out as he lands in a squat. Ah. Andros stands up after leaping and looks back and around. Is finding the road again going to be an issue?

He stands as tall as he can, peering over the grasses, but sees nothing but an endless sea of more. He thinks for a moment and shrugs, the mountains are still there. Maybe he’ll climb these trees before he heads off, see if he can spy one of those rock piles that mark the road. Thinking about it now, that might be their purpose. He shrugs his pack off his shoulders, then the shield where it hangs from his back. He draws his axe – one now missing – from his hip and looks around for a particularly straight stretch of wood that he might carve into a tip.

After a few minutes scrounging, he settles down cross legged with a decently straight branch. Saplings seemed scarce. Piled up before him are gathered river stones placed in a decently large circle, guarding some dead grasses and smaller, dried twigs and sticks. Small shavings are added to the pile, axe stroke by axe stroke as he turns the stick around, carving it to a point. After rummaging in his pack for his flint, soon a fire is born on these great grass plains, accompanying the harsh metallic scraping. Potentially an irresponsible move. Cordoned to the rock circle for now, he puts the stick aside and piles up a bunch of other dead and broken branches into a rather rough looking tepee, awaiting enough of a flame to start hardening the pointed tip. There are always better methods, but this’ll suffice.

He’d always felt his fondness for spear fishing to be a little weird given his blood. His Brothers would sooner fish with explosive fire crystals. As he takes a relaxed and poised, statuesque stance over the crystal clear stream waters, he ponders to himself the hows and whys and with a flickering, honing of his gaze, he reasons it’s this very explosive rush that appeals to him. Motive vigour surges across his bulging muscles, the tip plunging through the water and the scales with ease, then reeling back from slamming into the creek bed as best he can – don’t want to damage the tip this early.

Asides from the initial disturbance, the creek remains calm, the ripples quickly dying as though that burst of violence never happened. A fish is unceremoniously thrown onto land and Andros returns to his vigil. He looms over the babbling stream, reflected as clearly and brightly as the blue sky in the crystal clean waters, a scruffy short red beard, long crimson hair and a ruddy complexion over predominantly white but faintly bronzed skin. Small steel plates gleam from his breast, a thick lamellar cuirass extending half way down his thighs over a burgundy pair of tunic and trousers respectively, with leather gloves and boots covering the rest of him.

His figure hangs over the water, makeshift spear in hand, still as a statue and only moving in short bursts followed by the sailing of a fish and the wet plop as it splats onto the ground. He pauses after the sixth, eyeing the small pile of recent murder victims. That’s probably enough for a snack and a nap. Stifling another yawn, fatigue returning now that he’s been more or less stationary, he takes the makeshift spear with him back to the small fire and spears a fish through, slowly roasting it over the flames as he adds more branches to it.

Some spit embers into the midday air that quickly vanish, others give off a steady burn. The warmth is a little unnecessary, but with a sudden drop in temperature and a cool breeze beginning to kick up carrying with it the scent of salt, he’s more thankful for it than not. By the time he’s split the crinkled skin and gnawed in and around the last fish’s skeleton, soft juicy flesh melting in his mouth, his belly’d become moderately full. Not quite food coma yet, but a decent warmth and comfort radiating out, further miring him in that fatigue. He didn’t even crack into any of his rations, there’s no harm in delaying his venture, is there? A nap’s earned.

Snuffing the fire and finding a way with sticks to prop his shield up over him to act as a makeshift shade to block out at least some of the bright blue sky Andros curls up against the trunk of the tree, working his pack into a nook to get truly comfortable. He takes an idle swig of his canteen and slips into the kind of rest his body truly needs to break down the remnant alcohol slurry in his system, weighing down his muscles and mind. Eh, not that there was much parity between them.

* * * *

His hand moves before his eyes even open, working at the strap lashing his shield to a prong of the tree. It’s dead silent and when he opens his eyes, he’s greeted to the early onset of night, just enough that the land’s gone dark, yet there’s still some faint light in the sky to illuminate the one golden now, dark greenish grasses and the black and purple, red smeared setting sky. He takes his shield in hand, a rounder kite shield and takes his axe in the other – a long one handed, single bitted crescent axe with a bit of a spike behind it. His Clan is known for the double bitted crescent axe as its symbol, but by some tradition, only the Blooded were permitted to wield those. It might be interesting to find out later where exactly that tradition stems from, as so many seem to stem from their progenitor races.

Having stood up, he peers out over the tall grasses, alert, searching for that sense of unease that awoke him. There’s a distant glow to the north, moving ever nearer and what seems to be a fugitive, a dark shape parting the grasses as it runs, a pair of smouldering red eyes glowing beneath matted black hair. Two wolven ears, one nicked, perking up on her head and swivelling back and forth as the figure turns to him and makes a beeline, grinning viciously around her jagged fangs.

“Sorry, cutie. I’m gonna need to borrow you for a sec. Hope you don’t mind bein’ mino bait, pull one or two of ‘em off me. If it ain’t you, it’s me and I don’t have any dick to give ‘em. They’d take my hide!”

He braces himself, shield up as the wolf girl leaps at him, her claws thrust out. He takes a moment to think as she flies at him and decides to hold his ground, lowering his stance to take her bulk on his shied. The thud is jarring enough to almost break his arm, but with a shout he pushes her back with his shield and the axe comes down, balanced awkwardly as he smashes it into her head with the side, neither blade nor spike really seeming to fit here, given she doesn’t seem intent to harm his body. She looks at the side of the axe descending down upon her skull, her eyes widening and flickering to Andros in shock, stunned she hadn’t managed to bowl him over with her strength and momentum, stunned at his lightning quick response.

“Oh Fu-” Donk. She collapses near instantly and he turns his attentions to the approaching crowd, well lit by the number of small lanterns they carry fixed somewhere or another. The first through the grasses would have stood out regardless, considering their waving stalks only came up to her knee. An immense woman in every meaning of the word, giant horns, giant tits, giant muscles, giant thighs, giant axe – twice as tall as a man with a big giant blade. Various beads and feathers dangle from her long, partially braided brown hair, spilling out around her horns, down her face and down her front.

Her ‘armour’ is scarce, strappings of hide and dense cloth and the cost of that shows readily in the bleeding gashes littering her form, though they’re all apparently quite shallow. A good half of the immense right horn on her head is coated in blood and frankly, Andros is happy not to ponder on which unfortunate soul got gored by a nine foot tall minotaur.

The others aren’t quite so dramatically large, ranging between seven to nine, imposing in their own right, but not so much as the biggest, who fairly causes the ground to shake as she goes from a jog to a heavy, breast shaking halt before him, hoof sending up a small puff of dirt as it embeds into the ground. It never was hard to track a minotaur. The hilt of her axe slams into the ground shortly after, as she rests some of her formidable weight upon it like a walking stick, breathing heavily, immense jugs heaving as she looks down at the fallen wolf and Andros.

“You… did this?” She waves a beckons towards another minotaur behind her who steps forwards to kneel by the fallen wolf. After checking for breath and pulse, she nods to her leader. Andros looks over the band of women and nods, putting away his axe and shield. He doubts these girls aren’t friendly, cow women typically having a positive reputation, but he doubts even more his ability to do anything about it if they weren’t.

“Yeah!” He grins, admiring the egg on the wolf girl’s head. “I was just napping under the trees when she burst out. Luckily I was prepared and she underestimated me. Got her with a good whack to the head.” He hefts his axe in demonstration and the bull-woman lifts an eyebrow.

“Fortunate that you did. As far as we’re aware there are no kills to her name, but you never know what a desperate bandit will do. We are bounty hunters. I am Ciara Cloudhorn, leader of my little troupe. This woman here stylises herself as ‘Shadowfang’. As I said, small time bandit, only worth anything because of the small group she leads, creating havoc among travellers and smaller merchants. We performed a successful ambush on her party, but she managed to escape in the chaos. We were gaining on her, but wolves are notoriously easy to lose in the plains. Thanks to you, we don’t have to worry about that.”

“Not at all, not at all. I’m Andros, it’s a pleasure,” He shoots her a grin. “Then, I’d best be on my way.”

She shakes her head, braids dangling, “No can do I’m afraid.” Ciara lifts a large hand and points it at the wolf girl being bound by another minotaur. “That’s your bounty now. You’ve gotta come with us to claim it. Can’t very well not turn her in and we certainly can’t claim the bounty. Wouldn’t be honourable.”

A wry half smile appears at his lips. “And what if I don’t?”

She grins, “Then I spread the word there’s a suspicious Clansman roaming around and probably up to no good.”

Andros’ eyes widen. “How did you know?”

“It’s pretty obvious. You feel too familiar. I can sense the blood. There’s only two outcomes for guys born like you. Three I guess, technically. First, you’re born in the tribe and,” she looks him over with an overtly lewd leer, “You stay in the tribe. Secondly, for whatever reason you’re born outside of the tribe and either you wander around like a lost stray or you find a pack of other mutts. No offence.”

He shrugs. “None taken.”

“Given how you’re not accompanied by your wife and,” Her nostrils flare as she takes in a deep breath, “Mmm~ You certainly don’t smell taken, that leaves the latter two and you don’t look like a stray.”

Andros nods, crossing his arms, then spreading them placatingly. “I’m not. I’m here for entirely above board reasons. We don’t steal blood, or so they say. I’m to ‘poach’ a girl over to the clan, either by offering fiscal compensation or…”

“With your body?” Another less than chaste once-over.

He grins, thrusting his chest out, “More or less. Bring in fresh blood. Best if it’s a warrior who’s well trained and can train others.”

“My.” Ciara grins, “That’s starting to sound like me. Though, while I’m not taken, I’ve no real interest in becoming a blood donor. We like being milked in other ways. Say, why don’t you just stay with us? I mean,” she pauses, “Not us us, but us in general. You’ll certainly find a girl to treat you better than a clan ever could.”

Andros shakes his head and shrugs. “Been thinking about it. Need more time to think. Why, trying to recruit?”

“Oho? If it’s time, you’ll have plenty. And, maybe~” She shoots him a wink. “Sounds like regardless, you’ve agreed to come with and turn in scruffy here. Seems like you’re headed in the same direction anyway.”

“The Mountains, ultimately, but yeah.”

“Close enough. You could bypass High Cloud, but there’s no real reason to. Come with us to the Mesas first. Might be hard for a clansman to get into the capital without some kind of merit. Of course, you could just stand before the gates and announce your challenge,” The big woman smiles teasingly, “but I imagine you want to be more selective than that.”

He gives a lopsided smile back. “Just a little.”

The big cow grins and leans down. “Oh, I know how men are. Always like to think you’ve got a say in the matter. Who knows, maybe I will give it a go myself.”

“You could try.” He scoffs dryly and rolls his eyes.

“Naah…” She straightens back to her full, looming height and sighs, “You’re not my type. Not scrawny enough. What’da’ya need all that muscle for anyway?”

Andros gapes, “S-seriously?”

“Of course, you look like you’re alright in a scrap and that’s cute and all, but I bet you can’t swing ol’ Feller here. For too long anyway. A boy’s place is in the home. Also you’re too tall.” Her words hammer into his chest, each blow heavier than the last and sending him reeling backwards, clutching his wound.

“R-Runt they said… Asked out… never… Aaargh!” He cries out and clutches, scratching at his head.

“Oho? Runt? Looks like you’re carrying quite the complex there. That’s not very nice of them.” She tilts her head and steps up to him, a large hand grabbing the back of his head and pulling him in towards her. She looks down at his face between her tits before backing off, “Hmm, nah, seem a little tall for a human, actually.” A surprisingly sincere scowl appears on her face, “Makin’ fun of runts… ain’t monsterly.”

He can’t help but stare a little at the heaven so quickly granted then taken away, a faint flush on his cheeks. “Right? They’ve got no idea what they’re saying. Though… it’s true I’m a little shorter.”

“In the first place, I’m pretty sure only us minotaur produce actual runts. Besides, runts are great, you’ll know ‘em as Holstaur. Can’t live without ‘em. Lovely girls.” Ciara shakes her head and turns to her party, where two girls have hogtied the still unconscious wolf girl up to the shaft of a long poleaxe and carry her between them. “Looks like we’re ready to get moving. You need to wrap anything up?”

Andros shakes his head clear and heads over to shoulder his pack, “Nope, all good.”

She looks him up and down again, a gesture somewhat belittling given her stature. Her eyebrow rises “Want a ride?”

He blanches. “Uh, excuse me?”

She hikes a thumb over her shoulder, pointing to her shapely, feminine but relatively broad back. “A ride. The mesa’s still a good way away, but we’d all decided earlier to head back in tonight instead of camping out. You…” She gives him an infuriating smirk, “Won’t be able to keep up.”

He bristles, answering off cuff. “What do you know? And what happened to the whole sympathy thing?”

“This and that are separate matters. And more proof men belong in the kitchen, if you ask me. Not being mean, it’s just biology. Come on.” She turns from him and drops to a knee. “You’ll see.”

Pulling an uncertain, lopsided kind of face, he gingerly places his arms over her shoulders and awkwardly mounts the big woman, wrapping his legs about her waist. She rises and all of a sudden he gets to experience the world from a perspective radically different. For one, the grasses are far less of a visibility issue, though the night kind of ruins that, spatterings of cloud masking the moon as they drift past.

The big minotaur looks over her party. “You girls ready?”

A chorus of affirmation sounds followed by nods.

Ciara waves a hand forwards “Alright. Kill the lanterns, move out!” A blinding darkness descends on Andros, as the last rays of sunlight had slipped well and truly below the skyline. He frowns, blinking bewilderment but by the time he formulates his question, his eyes had already adjusted and he looks up to the brilliant part-covered moon in realisation, the light still such that he can make out the distant mountains, even.

Vague, jutting, looming figures. Meanwhile, the pale glow cast over the endless grass sea grants the plains an ethereal, beautiful yet foreboding mood. As if to set the scene, a distant wolf howls. Andros’ eyes flick to the hogtied woman. Hair covers her face, but he sees her ears twitch as she begins to rouse.

She’s probably in for a rude awakening. As the unit begins to move out, Andros pokes his head over Ciara’s shoulder, still sceptical at first that he’d be incapable of keeping up. It takes them a moment to ease into their stride, but they very quickly surpass the gait of a man and they do so with apparent ease. In fact, they speed up beyond that, powerful hooves thundering down upon the land, speeding up to a horse’s gallop and holding it as they run together as a tight unit, although the way they run isn’t fast as much as it is… powerful, like they’re exploding off the ground with each pump of their powerful legs. Given her stature, it seems Ciara’s slowing down to keep with the group.

That vague unease at clinging to a woman for dear life swiftly vanishes, his powerful thighs clenching about her hips, as her stride rocks him, the safest place for his poor joints, being glued as close to her as possible. A pace like this for him would not be an easy run. He could manage it for maybe fifteen minutes… he pauses as his hair streams behind him like a banner. Maybe ten if he dropped his gear and armour, but after that he’d be absolutely wiped. If they’d gone at his speed, he wouldn’t reach the mesas for another day’s walk. As it stands now, however, he could see himself getting there while the night’s still young.

* * * *

Wind all but howls in his ears, the great warmth radiating from the large woman’s core – far hotter than a man’s – the only thing keeping the swift night breeze from chilling him to his own core. Little surprise she’s heating up either, they’ve already been running for a little over half an hour. “How you doing back there? Comfortable?”

She speaks naturally, but it’s a little harder for him, given her great jolting strides. “I’m fine.”

“Let me know if you’re getting a little too comfortable, you’re not exactly my type, but if you really want me I won’t say no! Kahaha!” A number of the closer minotaur girls look over momentarily and roll their eyes.

He blushes slightly, a little unused to attention, much less seeing his own boisterous character reflected back at him. “I’m fine for that too!” He half shouts over the wind and the rhythmic pounding of hooves. Their prisoner had been gagged so she’s not making noise, though he thinks he hears a pitiful retching from the woman and the gag itself seems to drip… something. Probably not the easiest ride on her stomach. “You’re beautiful and all, but I think I’d like some one a little shorter than me and not so… twice my height.”

“Shorter?! Huh. Didn’t peg you for the type. Figured you were a fighter. Hey, no shame, holstaur girls are great!”

His fiery red eyebrows rise. “I hadn’t really considered that…”

“Not gonna find a minotaur shorter than you, bud. Holstaur girls though, I’ll introduce you to my cousin. Tits just as big as mine, but half the height! It’s some sorcery I tell ya! Hey, we’ll stop in a bit for a short five minute rest. If you need to eat or drink, only take a little.” Her big head turns and he eyes those immense swooping horns with some trepidation. She tips her head to the wolf, “Don’t want you ending up like her all down my back.”

“I’ll uh… keep that in mind.” Andros grimaces a little, shooting the bandit a sympathetic look before turning away, observing the grass flying past and the great plains in the distance slowly rotating as they cross a great deal of land. Under the pale moonlight he can make out great dark shapes stalking through the grasses and herds of immense placid beasts, rugged with fur and bearing colossal horns. The largest of the fluff hills spread over the plains like small mountain ranges is the size of a small building, with immense variance amongst their number down to the smallest, a little larger than a large dog. They lie placidly in the grass, sleeping, heedless of any predators and certainly nothing’s going to mess with the biggest.

The group of minotaur – herd? Continue to run for another five minutes almost exactly, before slowing to a halt out on the plains. Andros is so engrossed in the scenery – far from anything he’d known back home – that he jolts when Ciara calls out, “Comfortable back there?”

“Oh! Sorry.” He disembarks the great bull woman, clattering as he lands on his feet shakily. The women all around him produce produce canteens and bars of something to eat. Seeing him looking Ciara breaks a bit off hers.

“Want some? Throw it up and I’ll kill you.” She holds her hand out, holding what’s now a jagged cube of… something.

Andros baulks for a moment and eyes it sceptically. In the dim moonlight it just looks like a dark brownish blob. Then, he tentatively reaches out, concluding she’s referring to an upset stomach caused by the run, rather than the food itself. Though, he also fishes for his own canteen as to wash it down if absolutely necessary. His eyes widen, whole body perking up as he takes the cube, slightly greasy to the touch and pops it into his mouth. Instantly, flavour explodes, a rich fatty meat flavour, with some darker complexity, like marrow while an array of spices gives the tongue a pleasant burn and quickens the heart. The thing practically melts down his throat but despite wanting more, Ciara’s warning pops out in his mind. Regretful, he takes a sip of water and nods to her. “That’s delicious.”

“Isn’t it? Ol’ home blend. Made almost entirely of those buggers over there.” She tilts her head to the far distant herd and grins “Here’s a secret, the bigger they are, the better they taste. ‘Course, the harder they are to put down.” Andros nods his understanding, but as his covetous eyes watch her devour the rest of her bar, a powerful sense of fullness rises from his stomach.

He widens his eyes and licks his lips, “Mm, dense stuff.”

“Oh yeah, girl like me only needs one of these. Amazing stuff. Great Plains speciality. The tribes further in to the mountains have their own thing depending where you go. Up, down, north, south, it’s like entirely different cultures, really. Just don’t go west, out of the mountains and into the jungle. That’s snake territory.”

Andros looks her over, “So you’re Great Plains?”

“Mhm, travelled all over. It’s a bit too chilly for me in the peaks, a bit too muggy south and a bit too tight in the labyrinth. Let me run the great open plains any day.”

Andros’ brow rises, “Labyrinth?”

“The capital Minos Tara. Set into the mountains, mostly open air thank the goddess, but confusing as all hell. Come on,” She points at her back again. “Breaks over.”

* * * *

He can’t help but gape at awe at these looming geological features, each brimming with firelight high in the heavens as these cloud cities revel in the night. These great mesas, from his perspective by the foot of them, seem to spire into the very sky, immense rope bridges looming over head connecting them, wide enough for two large carriages to pass one another. The grass around here is such a dark green that at night it appears black, dense and soft, nearly overtaking the hoof-beaten dirt roads entirely. Wind howls through the natural tunnels formed by the gaps.

A dim, flickering firelight highlights a number of caves dotted around within these rises, though he has no idea how one might enter. Scaling the things is surely a fool’s errand. Probably from somewhere on top. The party leads him through the darkened passage of the mesas, towards an immense pillar in the centre of them all, totemic carvings along its surface, peaked with a gigantic stylised bull’s head coming to life in the moonlight and bellowing with the shadows cast by the clouds. A colossal windmill slowly rotates at the peak, rising high over the mesa tops, blades a patchwork mess of countless hunting trophies no doubt.

More of the great bridges extend from near the top of the pillar to the nearby elevated landmasses and as the group heads for it at a leisurely pace, they converge with other night time travellers. Andros comes to see that the pillar is hollow within. Tens, perhaps a full hundred metres in diameter.

Maybe the group is tired, or unusually disciplined because outside of explaining the tied up wolf girl, they don’t speak to the minotaur guards stationed by the entrance to the grand pillar, despite their evident acquaintance. Neither does he and though some fatigue gnaws at the corner of his consciousness, most of it’s for the awe. A grand spiralling staircase leads up the interior of the pillar, lined by sconces a daunting, dreadful climb no doubt. Thankfully, the windmill seems to operate an immense lift system. Two great platforms, each able to fit large groups of people and even a number of wagons rising and falling beside each other to the tune of an ever present mechanical drone, though the evident creak of woodwork belies a less than entirely metal make up.

The platform halts for a minute as it completes its descent, long enough for every one to board before rising at a steady pace, neither too fast nor too slow. The speed with which it rises is such that one might comfortably step off onto the nearby stair spiral with perhaps only a small stumble to adjust. The rise takes another two or three minutes, before jolting to a stop at the highest level, only the great machinery of the enormous windmill above, at this point. And a few bird nests.

The lift opens out to a large platform, with exits carved in great arches to each bridge, not unalike the singular entrance down below. The ancient, scuffed to a polish wood gives the structure an almost natural feeling, the rope bound bridges a kind of wholesome simplicity.

“Come on,” Ciara approaches Andros as he gawks about himself like a bedazzled tourist. She side steps a passing pedestrian along her way. “After we drop by the guard and turn this girl in, we can hit up a tavern I know. Great place, good atmosphere. I’ll put a word in and you can probably get a room for the night for free, maybe even a companion.” A now-familiar easy grin comes to her lips.

He looks to the still bound wolf girl, attracting the odd glance among passers by. “I still think you should take some of the reward.”

“Bah.” She takes the lead, headed for one of the bridges, Andros and the other minotaur following suit. “We’ll take the bounty for the group, but the leader’s a separate issue. She’s yours.”

“Uh,” He looks around, “group?”

“Yeah, we split to chase after miss small dark and runny. The other girls should be over there already with the rest of ‘em.” The suspension bridge is so large that it barely registers the few passengers upon it, some of the ropes as thick as a burly man’s chest. The wind still howls through the gaps of the different mesas, blowing most prominently across these sky bridges. Each mesa except the largest is utterly crowded with structures half wood, half hide, skins stretched over apparent frames. Their surfaces are weathered and aged to an almost uniform sun-faded white facing the sky and a bleached beige where the sun’s gaze is less direct. Each settlement is clearly permanent in nature, almost random in their irregular shapes, of tent peaks and towering totems.

“Welcome to the High Cloud Mesas. Each is its own district. You can spy them by the great totem heads on each mesa. The bull is where the chieftains and the other elites reside, the reindeer is where most travellers and traders pass through, the horse is where a lot of the smiths, workshops and warehouses are, the bear is where we’re headed. There you’ll find the guards and barracks and lastly, the raven is where you will find the shaman lodges, healers and sages.”

She points to each and as he looks over he can spy the great pillars, vaguely lit by the light from the city below though largely obscured in the dark of night. This would be an amazing place to behold in the daylight. An excitement for the coming morning builds within him, a feeling of wanderlust. The bear headed mesa is close, not like the distant bull that he can’t reach directly via the otherwise central pillar. To reach there, he’d have to pass through either the reindeer or horse districts. The others are directly accessible via the great lift nearer to the middle.

The mesas, from what he can see are matted with lush green, soft grasses. This one, the one of the bear is also, though major thoroughfares have given way to dirt paths, long since compacted and stomped flat by thousands of hooves. Probably an issue when it rains, which it seems to frequently by the health of the grass, but probably also preferable to walking over paved roads, unless one were to shoe one’s hoof. A number of women – mostly minotaur and the odd holstaur – wander this mesa, standing guard or carousing taverns. Despite their currently empty state, there are a number of training and sparring grounds scattered about and he imagines the mesa to ring with the cries of instructors during the day.

Ciara leads Andros through streets that seem to be at once open and labyrinthine, perhaps due to the irregular spacing of tent-buildings, less the structured grid of a mindful architect, more the natural chaos of an organism, a colony of tents. She leads him to an unusual structure, unusual for its construction of stone and wood, with thick, heavy wooden doors rather than open doorways. Evidently a prison, by the solemn and foreboding atmosphere of the place. A pair of guards stand outside the doors, along with another large grey haired and furred minotaur, the best dressed out of all of them, in something that could almost pass as a dark uniform of blackened leather with a symbol of a bear upon her shoulder standing out in silver. She speaks with another group of minotaurs loitering by the prison.

All turn to Ciara’s group as they approach. The well dressed woman breaks into a grin, “Cloudhorn. About time you returned. And…? Perfect.” She leans to a side, spotting the hog tied wolf between the shoulders of the women. “Guard.” She waves a hand, “Find a spot for our new guest.” The two guards nod and step forth to untie and receive the wolf girl, who’s unceremoniously dumped onto the floor as one of the minotaur retrieves her great axe. “Good work Cloudhorn.” The warden reaches into her pocket and pulls out a fat leather pouch, clinking as she hands it over.

Ciara shakes her head as she takes it. “Wasn’t us.” She opens the sack and starts counting coins, before taking a fistful out and handing the remainder over to Andros. “Our friend here took her out, we just chased her to ‘im.” She grins and the warden’s eyebrows rise as she studies Andros.

Then they fall, as her brow furrows. “Oh… is that so…”

Ciara rolls her eyes. “Leave ‘im be, Ironhoof. He’s here to match make, not steal.”

Andros fights the urge to squirm at the realisation that she realises where he’s from. The warden thinks for a moment, then scoffs. “Hmph, I suppose it isn’t theft if you’re honest about it. Good work…?”

“Andros, pleasure to be of service.” He grins at the stern woman and thrusts out a fist with his thumb up.

She looks at it, bemused. “Andros. But keep your nose clean, I don’t wanna hear about girls waking up missing organs okay?”

He rubs his neck awkwardly, “Uh… usually it’s only just a little blood, but sure.” The warden snorts and turns, heading back in to the prison now that she’d received the wolf girl. A large hand thumps down on Andros’ shoulder.

“Ah, don’t mind her. Come, grab a drink with us. Lets see if we can’t lighten that purse!” She raises her voice and looks over the gathered minotuar. “First drink’s on me!” Fists rise in cheer.

* * * *

His arm strains, the cheering, jeering din about him shut off as his own blood rushes in his ears, pulsing rhythmically, hyper aware of the groaning, creaking protests of the table as he grips it with one hand. His other, locked within the soft, feminine, yet iron grip of one of the other minotaur of Ciara’s group. The muscles in his arm quiver and his forearm starts to subtly ache, as if under too much strain. But no matter what he does or how hard he pushes he can’t break past that fourty-five degree angle. In fact, as a fat bead of sweat rolls down Andros’ chin, he’s losing even that, the fiery red haired, green eyed, white horned woman opposite him, slowly but inexorably besting him with a faint smug grin on her lips. Made all the worse because were the roles reversed, it’d be on his.

His knuckles finally hit the table with a solid thunk, to the raucous cheers of the women around him, brought back into focus now that the blood isn’t rushing in his ears. He massages his forearm gingerly, as the woman grins. Andros sighs. “Haah… you really are going to make me lose all my money… Waitress! Another round!” Another cheer goes up as the group disperses back to their tables and Ciara thumps down heavily beside him, laughing as he massages his forearm.

“Ha! Whose fault is it you bet a round on arm wrestling a minotaur?”

He dives into the mug placed before him so fast he almost brushes hands with the waitress, grumbling into the lip before downing it “I’m part minotaur too, you know.”

She snorts, “Coulda fooled me. How many generations removed?”

He rolls his eyes. “My grandfather. Family history’s a little hazy on why or how he left, but he eventually found his way into the bed of one of the Bloodhorn women. Sired a number of Blooded and a few sons.”

She sighs mournfully, “Ah, always a pity to see a virile man go…”

He chuckles, self satisfactorily scratching his short scruffy beard, “I’d be glad to make up the deficit.”

She shoots him a glace out of the corner of her eye, then looks to a corner of the tavern, insofar as a large tent can have corners. “You might have your chance.”

His smile falters into a soft frown as he thinks about, but doesn’t dare acknowledge that dark figure across the room. It’s a complete first for him, being so ardently… noticed. He’s not really sure how to react and that makes him nervous, forestalls his otherwise rambunctious personality. Not to mention she doesn’t seem entirely right. “Who is she? Why has she been staring at me the past hour? Why is every one else keeping their distance?”

“Judging by her size she’s a holstaur. Judging from the… aura she’s emitting… I’d guess she’s Bonewalker tribe. As for why she’s staring at you…” Ciara grins and smacks his back, “Maybe she’s into you. Go git ‘er, Mr. Deficit.”

He tilts his head at the unfamiliar terms. “Bonewalker tribe?”

She raises her mug to her lips and takes a long sip. “Mm, weirdos. Hang around the Bone Wastes all day. It’s a place kind of like High cloud mesa, only ground level and surrounded by a bony abyss.” She raises her hands and waggles her fingers spookily. “Something compels the biggest and the baddest beasts to all head over to die. Place gathered so much death, the land itself began to decay, collapsing in on itself. Only the places where their tribe set up tents remained, so the story goes. Now great pillars in their own right they extend down into the depths. Some say the earth’s still sinking into itself to this day.” Her eyes widen in emphasis. “I’d say only they know how deep it truly goes. They’re nice girls, if quiet and a little weird, but people tend to keep their distance because of all the death. But hey! They’re still horny cow girls just like the rest of us. Have at her!” She pushes at his shoulder, near pushing him directly off his seat, but he goes along with it, rising as he’s somewhat curious himself. Drawn. Besides, liquid courage always made him brasher and at the least he’d like to find out why a pair of eyes have been boring into his back for the past hour.

He stumbles his way over, smacking his hip into a thankfully uninhabited table in passing, giving a strangled grunt of pain and half limping the next few steps of the way. He finally comes to a stop before her table and before her. He puts his hands on his hips, surreptitiously massaging the bruised sore as he studies the woman, or as much of her as he can. She sits with a straight back and oozing a quiet, almost morbid confidence. A deep cowl’s drawn over her head, two frayed laced slits running either side, probably about the only way you’d get a hood to work with her short, six inch, white, black-tipped horns. Long, incredibly long streams of white hair run down her enormous bosom and pool in her lap.

Unfortunately, unlike the other monstergirls around him, amply prepared to show of their bountiful assets, a pair of mountainous bulges enough to make a customs officer pause are all Andros gets. The entirety of the woman is cloaked and covered, bar a single slender, delicate and deathly pale arm poking out of the nebulous folds. Evidently, this cloak of hers has slits to allow the use of one’s arms without having to bare the bosom. Pity. A curious envy arises within him, as he glances over her cloak. It’s thick and though it looks like it would be useless in the rain, It’s almost… fluffy. Comfortable. Warm.

He opens his mouth, some loud stream of drivel already on his lips, but she forestalls him by throwing something out to scatter over the table instead, a great many little things that rattle with each rolling bounce against the wood. Little white bone things, some longer, like short twigs, some like little pebbles. A cold shudder works its way up his spine, as they settle unnaturally into the shape of a skeletal hand, a crooked finger outstretched and pointing at him. His lips open, but this time it’s his own voice that fails him. Her hand swipes out to collect the bones and she rises from her seat – a head or two shorter than he – and walks around the table as he watches transfixed, and takes a seat perpendicular to him and again throws out her bones.

Once more, they land in the shape of a gnarled, skeletal hand, pointing directly at him. He side steps, the hand follows. He shudders again, finally talking, blurting, rather. “That’s creepy.” The woman looks up at him from her seat and for once he can see her face. If not for the thick, flowing locks of white hair covering it. All he catches is a cute, upturned nose – full, almost pouty ashy charcoal black lips and a delicate pointed chin.

“Husband.” Her lips curl up in a smile as she turns back to the bones momentarily, then returns to him. “I’m so glad to finally meet you.” Her voice is soft and low, almost whisper thin, yet he has no issue hearing her over the noise behind him. Something about her hypnotic velvety black cadence lulls him into an almost unquestioning acceptance, but at this moment a round of cheers erupts from behind, jolting him out of it. He glances behind, to see another round of arm wrestling.

“Husband?” He turns back to her with a lopsided grin, recovered some what. “Aren’t you moving too fast? We only just met. I haven’t even introduced myself yet. Give me a moment, I’ll call the waitress over and we can at least have dinner first.”

“I’ve already eaten. And, time matters not, my dear Andros. What was before is worthless, what comes next is…” He gets the curious sensation her eyes are wandering over him, caressing his skin adoringly. He takes a subconscious, uncertain step back as she calls his name with uncanny familiarity and reaches a hand out to him, fingers curling in a beckoning manner, making him take an involuntary step forwards. “Inevitable. Eternal.”

His heart tickles, latching onto a vague kinship, in a strange land, before such a strange woman no less. A familiar sense of confidence, nearing finality that he didn’t even feel with Ciara or her troupe. Yet whereas with the Blooded of his clan it inspires a belligerent competitiveness in him, from her there’s… acceptance? He struggles with himself, but decides to ignore the strangeness of it all and spins a chair around to sit down, armour clinking. “Alright. I’ll humour you. Is that why you were staring? What makes you so convinced I’m your husband? How’d you know my name, anyway?”

“The bones spoke me when I turned to them, to help me find the one who would assist my tribe.” Her black lips curl into a slight smile, “They were even so kind as to tell me the name of my beloved. They guided me out of the village for the very first time, all the way to High Cloud Mesa, told me I would find the one who was at once my husband and my champion. I’d cross the world for you, but I’m glad our first meeting was so convenient. Fated.” You can’t gauge much from the mere tip of her nose and her lips, but she seems happy about it.

“Assist your tribe?” He lifts an eyebrow.

She nods to herself and idly starts playing with one of the knuckles still out on the table. “We’re struggling to handle the darkness that threatens our home, but we cannot just move either. Our foundations are there, we reap wealth from the bones, we’ve been changed by death. But we can’t let it just take us.”

He shakes his head and shrugs, “I’m no wizard or mage, I don’t know magic. I can’t help you with death.”

She chuckles, lips twisting into a smirk. “We don’t need wizards or mages. Nor are we in need of practitioners, we need you. Or rather, we need people like you. Only I need you, dear. Our tribe has been weakened by death, but we’re more spiritual for it, the number of wise women, among us is high, our problem is that skeletal constructs know no fear, feel no fatigue and abide no curse.” She leans over, summoning an arm out of the voluminous abyss of her solid black robes and rests her hand on his muscled forearm. “We need this.”

He’s not exactly quick to remove the soft, cold thing. “Why not hire mercenaries?”

“What would we pay them in? Bones?” She shakes her head, “Nor can we convince any allies to risk their warriors in an endless war of attrition with some reanimated, tireless dead.”

“What makes you think you can afford me?”

Those dusky lips curl, then a pair of white teeth sink in to the giving bottom lip. “If you’ll come with me to my room, husband, I can show you how I’ll repay your… valour.” Carnal suggestion drenches her soft voice, inspiring a pressure in his trousers made all the worse by her teeth sinking luxuriously into her lusciously plump lip.

Andros stares at them and gulps. “So uh… if hanging around your place made you all weak, what’s to say it won’t make me weak too? Wouldn’t that defeat the purpose?”

She looks around the bar for a moment, then scoots her chair closer, whispering low and quiet. “I wouldn’t normally tell you this at the start, but the bones never lie and they tell me we’ll grow old and die together. We’ve ancient rituals and rites, passed down to us through the aeons. Some say from Mother Tara herself, in her far reaching wisdom. They allow a man to convert death energy into a potent life energy. It makes them powerful and… very virile. Unfortunately, my tribe struggles harder than most to birth men. What’s a rare occurrence for most is something almost unheard of for us. I believe our last male was born around five hundred years ago. So we don’t get to conduct these rituals much, given few men are willing to give it all up to join us.”

“And I would be expected to…?”

“Crack skulls.” She smiles. “And breed me.”

He hooks a finger into his collar, hoping to vent a little heat, gulping as his eyes trace her curves under the dark cloak. “Allow me to uh… reconvene with my associates for a moment.” Andros rises stiffly and makes his way back over to Ciara equally as stiffly, now sitting alone at the table, with some of the ruckus having migrated to different tables, her only companions the mugs and a passed out minotaur. She turns to him as he approaches, easy smirk on her lips.

“So? How’s you go with miss short, dark and huge titted?”

He settles down, resting his elbows on the table and interlocking fingers before his mouth. “She called me ‘husband’.”

She gasps in a minor surprise. “Oh?”

He nods, deeply torn, perturbed and horny. “She knows my name. Something about the bones leading her to me. She’s got really huge tits.”

“Oh. That makes sense.”

He blinks, “It does? Wait, the tits or the bones?”

“Both.” She chuckles. “Of all the shamans, theirs are the best at the really weird stuff. I wouldn’t trust ‘em to call the rains or sooth a raging earth elemental but they’ll find your spare axe and tell you how you’re going to die. If she’s calling you husband, then…” Ciara pats him on the shoulder, “I’m glad I never made a move. I’ve got many, many years ahead of me and I don’t want to wake up cursed.”

He withers a little, lost. “W-what do you think I should do?”

The big woman leans back and shrugs. “Do it, go for it. That’s what you came here for, isn’t it? Be glad, no wasteful human courtship, no monster’s intuition to contend with. She came here specifically for you, what more could you want? Just don’t get your dick wet unless you’re going to stick with her.” She turns, face grim and places a hand on his shoulder, leaning in. “Once she’s got your essence, she can curse you with erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation at the same time, forever.”

“Yeesh…” He hesitates a moment to think. “I’ll do it.”

Ciara’s eyebrow rises. “You probably won’t be able to take her back to your clan. Actually you definitely won’t be able to.”

He shrugs. “Ah, fuck ‘em. Was gonna desert anyway. Right!” He thumps his fist down on the table, then nabs Ciara’s mug, downing it in a single mouthful.

“Hey! That one was mine!”

He stands powerfully, thumping the empty mug back down. “Let’s do this.” He grabs his pack from where it was sitting kicked under the table, turns on his heel and strides back towards the cloaked woman, leaving Ciara to surreptitiously check her passed out companion’s mug for more booze.

He stops before her again, a hand on his hip again. She looks up at him, the ghost of a smile on her lips, still cowled with hair covering most her face. “Alright. I’ll be your husband.”

“I know.”

“What was your name?”

“Iris.”

“So?…” he deflates a little and looks around, “What now?”

“Now~” She rises from her seat and steps up to take him by the hand, her own chillingly cold. “Now we consummate our marriage.”

***

She pulls him into the room behind her and steps aside. Blushing faintly, eyes shifting about nervously as anticipation gnaws at him, he walks further in and finds somewhere to dump his pack before turning around as she closes the door behind them. She tips her head down, fingers working at the laces tying her cowl together around her horns. Once those are undone she draws the hood back, revealing her large, floppy, fluffy white ears. “There’s one thing I’ve yet to mention, husband…” She reaches up to work at the cloak clasp and a moment later, the whole thing falls, pooling around her hooves to reveal a dress at once simple and elegant.

Simple, form hugging a wide hourglass, long and black. The most embellishment comes from the designs morbid and terminal in nature woven into the under-bust bodice cinched about her ribs by neat little knots and in the lace patterns of her wide, loose sleeves. Her dress has a deep square neckline, although perhaps it’s only ‘deep’ because of her expansive, near spilling pale white bust. Maybe it’s less depth and more breadth. Needless to say, as a holstaur her assets are extensive, such that the black lace capelet she wears about her throat, shoulders and over her bust – patterned with the same macabre motifs – is less something one wears down their chest and more something one drapes over a corner table. Still, the thin veil covering her ‘immodesty’ has the no doubt desired allure.

“Due to the circumstances of my tribe, when they do arrive…” She undoes the ribbon tying the small and thin article to her. It drifts down to the floor like a feather, uncovering what little of her cleavage Andros couldn’t make out through the weave. “We tend to treat our men very… very well, deffer to them, let them take charge. Within reason, of course and mostly only in the bedroom. So I just wanted to let you know, you can use me however and whenever you like, I’ll always be ready for you. Although…” He feels her gaze burn across his face, as what little he can make out of hers tinges a faint red while her fingers work at the black ribbons trying her bustier together. “Your red hair does make me a little excited. Don’t blame me if I can’t keep my hands off you~” With a final loosening tug and a graceful shimmy of her shoulders, her dress is the last addition to fall into the puddle of clothes now on the floor. She wears nothing underneath.

Andros gets this strange notion that with the last vestige of black leaving her, she in turn leaves this mortal realm. It’s not so rare to find a minotaur with a singular tone to her fur. Ciara is one, of a deep earthy brown. Holstaur, on the other hand, are usually more mottled. Not Iris, bar the lips and the tips of her horns and the faded ring of black at the bottom of her hooves, she’s a stark white all over. Excepting of course, the lighter pink of her more sensitive areas, though of her womanhood he can only assume, as inverted above, so innie below. The only other black breaking up the white being a few eye catching rings emanating a dark pressure sitting upon her slender fingers, the rest of her soft rolling hills, vales and vistas awash in the purest of whites.

He doesn’t know if he’d call the colossal things perky. They definitely hold their shape alright, though perhaps the fat, puffy areola point a little more forward than up – if something so deeply inverted as to appear like horizontal slits can still point. More than anything they just give the overwhelming sensation of enormous softness. Sink in to the forearm into hopes and dreams soft. Her stomach is much the same, far tucked away under the shelf of her breasts as it is, shapely enough, no unseemly rolls or bulges, but not an ounce of visible muscle either. Soft, with a faint tuck down from her belly to her puffy, hairless vulva.

Her hips are almost as wide as her bust and it isn’t until you reach her thick thighs that you get some modicum of muscle definition, though those too still fly the same decadently soft banner as the rest. Pure white fur starts halfway down the thigh, dense and fluffy, it gives the illusion of her form being more bottom heavy due to the volume of her fur. The ankle tapers to a comparatively slender point, though still sturdy enough to support her weight on a pair of almost all white cloven hooves, if not for a faded ring of black at the very bottom. A long tail softly flicks behind her, the end a big puffy brush of white the size of a man’s head.

Iris stands, baring herself before Andros and waiting patiently, dusky lips curled in a small smile. It takes a moment for him to gather himself and stop gawking. Taken by curiosity – perhaps because it’s the last thing yet to unveil – he steps up towards her and reaches out for her hair. She flinches, lips tightening imperceptibly before relaxing. “Be careful not to be too shocked, husband.”

He hesitates a moment, given her warning, then reaches out with both hands, parting the hair before her face like a curtain. A pair of thickly black rimmed eyes look back at him, the rim – makeup or natural markings he cannot tell – is uneven, as if worn by time, almost splotchy. Faded. Her eyes, however… his arms tense, but he avoids any overt reaction as she gazes at him placidly. Dead. A pale, milky white, the ghost of an iris, no pupil. Glassed over, though not unfocused, he gets the eerie sense she’s looking at him.

“Can you see?”

Her lips curl softly, “Yes, dear. I see my love clear as day… Do they frighten you?” Her voice is a soft, husky whisper.

He swallows, “A little.”

“Then let go, dear husband.” Andros holds still a moment, thinking, before sliding his hands down and forth, cupping her cheeks and tilting her head up so that he may lean in and kiss her. Her expression widens in one of mild surprise, warmth transferring from him to her, as his lips press up against her plush, lovable ones, tongue poking out and lightly caressing their dusky full curves before her jaw opens and she rises up on the tips of her hoofs, leaning her weight and considerable chest against him as she pushes back into the smooch, tongue gracing his before she retreats back down.

Iris gives a faint smile and reaches up to his face with her hands. Their touch is soft, but as cold as the grave. “A side effect, of living and breathing death. Not uncommon. Some girls are outright born undead. Would you like me to hide them, husband?”

He shakes his head, gazing into their milky abyss. “No. I mean, it’s up to you I suppose.”

Her smile widens as she softly takes hold of his wrists and moves his hands from her hair, “Much as I’d love to have your hands on me forever, if seems a bit impractical for now.” She collects the hair that had fallen over her face, “I’ll find a hair tie later.” Hooking the curtains with a finger, she pulls them up, to hang over her horns, freeing her face. “I’m glad they don’t put you off, husband. I’d hate to have to tear them out, mother tells me that I have my grandmother’s eyes. I can never be sure how literal that is.”

He blinks. “Uh, yeah don’t do that.”

The same ghost of a smile hangs on her lips, “I wasn’t born undead, that’s almost rarer than birthing a male. I might be cold to the touch but I promise you, I’m very warm inside. But before then, let me help you out of your armour, husband.”

Dutifully, she steps up and begins working at various belts and straps. First to come off is his hauberk, then the gloves and boots. She hesitates a moment as she grips the hem of his tunic as if savouring the moment, then pulls it up off him in one smooth movement, his arms rising and falling to permit it. She stands about head height to his chest, her horns just barely peeking over his shoulders. He hisses a gasp in through his teeth as she leans in and plants a cool wet kiss on his skin, slipping a knee between his. She rubs herself against him bodily, pressing her breasts into his stomach, while kissing his chest, smirking lips wrapping about a nipple while she rubs her thigh against his crotch. She looks up to him, opaque orbs gleaming.

The feel of her cool skin on his is just a little sharper than fresh, cool linen, but less intense than the radiating coldness of ice. He lays a hand upon her arm and reaches down with the other, fingers sinking into the side of her large bust. He gives the pliant fat a squeeze and is rewarded by a sudden warm wetness on his chest, his eyebrows instantly shooting up as she looks up at him, grinning as if to say ‘what did you expect? I’m a holstaur, remember?’.

Meanwhile, Iris slides a hand down his chest and over his trousers, feeling and stroking the hardening bulge. Apparently satisfied, she disengages, leaving a dribble of white on his chest as she moves back to squat down, long white tail lazily swaying along the floor. His ears pick up on a faint pittering, like a droplet splatting on the wooden floor. His eyes hone in on the milk leaking from her inverted nipples, but those white beads are not only landing in her lap, they’re dripping with far too slow a frequency and off-rhythm to boot. Idly, he runs his finger through the milk running down his chest and brings it up to his lips for a taste. It’s rich. Creamy and vaguely sweet. A powerful compulsion forces him to swallow, a small flutter in his chest as it works its way down, a twinge in his trousers. “I love the taste.” He comments, idly but in the next moment, her fingers hook around his waistband and his attentions are brought to her hungry grin as she begins to slowly pull his trousers down.

The moment his crotch and the base of his cock is revealed, she presses her face against his loins and takes in a deep, shuddery, desperate breath. “Mmmh~ I love the smell.” She plants her lips on the bared section of his shaft and slides them down the hot, throbbing rod, sloppily kissing along the way and leaving a spit-slicked, faintly black smeared trail as she pulls the trousers lower. Finally his hard cock springs free, slapping her across the face with a wet plap and leaving a streak of precum in its wake. She gasps, lips open, wide even as it rests against her cheek, throbbing almost audibly.

She all but nuzzles into it, worshipping. “Husband’s cock at last…” For a moment his attentions are drawn back to that wet sound from down below, seemingly louder now. She turns her head, lips and warm tongue sliding along the side of his member. The tip of her soft wet organ curls under the crown of his cock, licking and rubbing against the frenulum, causing small jolts of dick-twitching pleasure to judder down his shaft. She opens her mouth wider, a lewd air of desire issuing out with her heated breath and with a needy “Ahhn~” she moves her head forwards, guiding his manhood into her drooling hot mouth, slowly but surely.

A cold hand reaches out to grasp his ass and she twists and tilts her head a little as his cock slides in deeper with seamless passage. Her other hand darts between her legs, causing a disturbance in the constancy of the dripping sound before wet squelchy noises replace them. Long white eyelashes flutter over her dead eyes as she pokes her tongue out between her teeth and his shaft and she gurgles softly, sinking down to the hilt, tongue lavishing love on his sack as her black lips leave a ring around the base of his cock. She lets out a low, throaty, cock rumbling moan as her thighs begin to shake and her hot throatpussy constricts. He gets the feeling her eyes’d be rolling up now if they were normal, but as it is they levy that same blank gaze, though something about them do look more intense.

Andros groans, his cock throbbing in her wet, enveloping throat and he reaches a hand out to rest atop her head, stroking and scratching her floppy white ear while her passage milks him to a hardness he’d never before known.

It’s all too soon she pushes him back and Andros gives a short cry, his shaft exiting her wanton, warmly welcoming mouth, the trousers wrapped about his legs sending him toppling until he lands, bouncing on the inn’s bed – which is little more than hides and sheets draped over a flexible frame. Her knees collect with the floor with a soft thunk and dusky lips leering lustfully at him, she crawls her way over on all fours, leaving a visible stain of excitement on the floor under her. Her wide hips and large ass sways, tail bobbing while her bosom rocks with the motion, nipples almost reaching the wooden floor.

He barely has time to settle himself before she’s ripping his trousers off from around his ankles and tossing them aside. She settles in between his legs and rests her arms upon his thighs, breasts resting on them too, but instead of immediately heading towards his manhood, she kneels there and looks up at him. “You’ve never laid with any of your clanswomen, have you?”

Andros gulps as he drinks in the sight of her between the legs and shakes his head softly. Iris smiles. “Good.” She moves her hands from his thighs to her breasts, lifting the enormous things up and dipping her head down, dark lips latching around her areola and her tongue circling the hidden nipple within. She stays there for a minute, jaw working as she suckles. Her cheeks hollow out as she pulls back and the breast pops free, pink nipple exposed and leaking milk, while a bead of it dribbles down her chin, cheeks puffed out around a mouthful of the stuff. She reaches for her other breast and does the same, revealing that nipple too as she swishes the milk around her mouth. His already hard cock throbs painfully at the display, fat bead of pre-cum forming at the tip.

Lips curling into a grin, she shuffles forwards, breasts jiggling as she gets closer. With a lewdly wet sound, she spurts a little of her mouthful out onto her hand and reaches for his saliva coated cock. Her graceful, slender, milk slicked fingers curl around the base of his throbbing shaft, already well aroused by her attentions and lascivious display. She jerks along the length of it with her milk and spit soaked hand, somehow eking out yet more arousal, more need, his thighs clenching as she squeezes and caresses. Iris spits out the last of her mouthful onto her other hand and swirls her cool, soft palm over the swollen head of his cock while her other squeezes his base. Blood swells the visibly throbbing mast, veins popping to the surface as her milky touch burns through him like lightning.

Meanwhile, she leans down low, past her stroking, jerking hands, horns pressing worrisomely into the softer flesh of his inner thigh, as she rubs her soft cheek against his balls. “Mmmm,” She plants her nose into the base of his full sack and all but makes out with it, lining black smooches along the fat orbs. She offers a soft, wistful, whining sigh into his loins, “Ooohhh my darling, I could stay here forever…” Her tongue lashes out greedily, cradling a ball and drawing it into her mouth with a lewd wet slurp. Her tongue pokes and prods around the skin, kneading a nut before moving on to the other, lifting and rolling it around in her mouth with her tongue all while her hands work his length above.

His breath hitches in his throat, struggling to push past the heart hammering up in it. The swirling about his sensitive head and the tightness around his base as she worships his balls overwhelms him with pleasure that makes anything else he’d experienced prior to this pale in comparison. She plants her plump lips against his sensitive skin in a wet kiss and in his heightened sensitivity, he calls to mind her previous words. She is warm inside, the stark coldness of her soft lips mixing in with the heat of her lavishing tongue and wanton mouth, kicking up a swirling tempest of pleasure, each heightened by the converse.

Her toying, sucking lashings only make him harder as she divides her attentions between expertly stroking his throbbing, juice soaked shaft and lavishing whorish worship on his balls. Andros leans back and groans weakly, fingers clutching the sheets as she relinquishes his sack with a lewd, wet pop and unhands his member. His hips thrust forth to no avail, shaft grinding along her cheek while his balls press against her lips, making her moan in want yet her attentions don’t return.

His manhood’s left there for a moment, drenched with spit and milk and precum running down the throbbing veins along his length, painfully abandoned all of a sudden and left out in the biting cold. He looks back down, in askance of the lack of sensation just in time to see Iris rising up to rest on her haunches. She lifts her breasts to her dusky plump lips once more, cheeks filling out as the takes in another mouthful, jaw working as she swishes it around in her mouth. Then, eyes gleaming in hunger, she lifts her hefty, fat bosom and plops it down on his crotch, immediately sinking his cock into her cool cleavage as small rivulets of milk spurt from her nipples and run down his chest. Little wonder given her impressive endowments, she utterly envelops his cock so much so that only the very swollen tip pokes through, even that vanishing when she presses her breasts together, forming a tighter grip as she starts to move them up and down.

She pauses for a moment and lets her breasts sit heavy in his lap, revealing the tip of his cock once more. With a needy moan, she rolls her tongue out and opens her mouth, a milky mess of saliva pouring out in thick waterfalls with lewd viscosity down over the tip of his member. She dips her head lower as her mouthful drools the last of itself off the soft, slippery funnel of her curled up tongue.

Her dark lips descend on the tip of his raging erection and without any care for the milk, spit and precum slathered mess that pools in the basin of her mountainous breasts, she plants her face into her own pale white cleavage, taking him as deep as she can before even her impossibly soft breasts present a cushy, cool barrier. Not that it remains so cool, the heat radiating off his member and the warmth of her own breast milk and saliva heating her cool skin up to something approaching lukewarm.

Andros groans, his fingers clutching the sheets, opening and closing as her tongue swirls around the rim of his glans. She looks up at him, gentle almost docile eyes conveying – perhaps all the better for her glassy, indistinct stare – the desire to be used. His hands shoot out to either side her head, trapping her large floppy ears between thumb and forefinger, absently stroking them as he assists her face’s efforts to barge through the valley of flesh and take his cock deeper into her throat. Alas, his sensitive, swollen tip butting and grinding up against the back of her throat is all he’ll get for now, though the breasts she paws at, holds tight around the base of his cock more than make up for it.

He guides her head up and down, pacing himself, relishing in the feel of her mouth around his tip all while she jerks and envelops his length with her breasts. It doesn’t take long at all to coax him towards climax, with the devoted licks of her tongue and the soft, lubrication drenched passage of her cleavage on top of the earlier coaxing her of throat. Groaning softly, he moves his hands from her head, fingers instead curling around her dual-toned horns. She stops licking and quivers as he grips her, but he doesn’t notice, lost in his own bliss, thrusting up through her breasts and into her mouth as he pulls her head down by the horns, bed shaking beneath him as he grits his teeth and grunts.

He makes a dozen quick, erratic thrusts, before ramming himself as deep at he can, cock bending to plunge down her throat as his balls clench and he unloads thick ropes of cum down her gullet, cum-vein distending as his throbbing shaft jets his thick seed down her avaricious gullet. He holds her there as his loins pump their load and his cumming prick twitches, mashing his hips against her breasts, causing great streams of milk to flow from where her solid, stiff nipples dig into the skin of his stomach, long since left their inverted internment.

Half done with his climax, he pushes back against her horns and pulls out of her cleavage, leaving his hand around one, while gripping his dick with the other and shooting the last few ropes in her mouth and then over her face and tits. The white, drooping smears stand out with lewd distinction over the dark contrast around her eyes and lips.

Iris’ thighs quiver together as she moans, wet splats on the floor as her cum-stained tongue lolls out of her mouth and her eyes cross. “H-Haaah… Hushband’s cum,” Her hanging tongue curls up and in as she swallows her mouthful without missing a drop. She shudders again, as if another climax rips through her. She gives a low sultry whisper drenched in a carnal kind of catharsis. “At last…”

With a little post nut clarity seeping in, Andros idly starts to stroke the horn in his hand with his thumb in small circles. She shudders again, twitching a little as another spattering of her girlcum erupts down onto the wooden floor. “L-uh-leh… g-goh…pleess.”

“Oh, uh.” He unhands her. “Sorry?”

“N-no… I’m s-sorry…” She weakly waves a hand dismissively, panting for breath before she eventually starts to clean herself, scooping cum up and licking it off her hand, “Would that I didn’t have a Tribe to worry over.” She lets out a genuinely forlorn sigh and puts on a pitiful face, “I’m sorry husband, that we can’t have a honeymoon. That you can’t just grab my sensitive horns and turn me into you silly cum-drunk slut for days and days and days on end.” Her voice grows thick with the purest carnal yearning. “But I can’t just go and get addicted, forget all about my purpose outside of worshipping your cock. Not yet, anyway.”

“…Oh..I see.” He blushes, manhood twitching as he looks back from his hand to her horn and recalls her near orgasmic reaction. He clears his throat, at once appreciative of and put on the back foot over her frank confessions. He distracts himself from this conflict with an idle quip. “I guess that’s why they say not to grab the bullgirl by the horns?”

Iris just smiles as she licks the last of the cum off her hand, “Well, to make it up to you, I guess all I can do is make the first night as good for you as I can. That was a good start, but…” She casts an eye to the throbbing cock still jutting angrily into the air, momentarily forgotten by him in his horny revelations, though it never strayed too far from her mind. “You can clearly go another round. As your wife it’s my solemn duty to ensure you can’t. So…” She looks up at him, horny smile on her lips, an indiscriminate lust in her eyes, “How do you want me?”

Andros grins and reaches a hand down to help pull her up, though she only makes it to half-standing when he grasps the outside of her thigh with his other and relinquishes her hand, reaching around to her large, plump ass to pull her up onto his lap. Her deliriously soft, pale flesh ripples with the impact as she settles with her legs spread over his lap and she grins, hands reaching for his face. She cups it as she leans up for a kiss while her lower half settles into a more comfortable straddle, knees sinking into the bed either side of him, while her drenched pussy rubs up against his slick shaft, pressing it between his belly and hers.

Her lust drooling slit grinds along his rock hard length, while she pushes herself into the kiss, plump lips near pressed flat against his own as her tongue plunges into his mouth and hungrily devours all resistance from his supplicating organ. That is, until he grasps her fat ass with a loud clap, fingers digging in. Groping and squeezing, he spreads and kneads her ass like he owns it while surrendering to her the battle on the northern front. Down south, with his rough fingers sinking deep into giving flesh, he lifts her off his lap, enough for his cock to separate from his now lust-smeared stomach and point upwards at a bit more of an angle.

He lowers her down slightly and finagles with the tip of his cock, legs tensing against the bedframe as he uses it for leverage. He makes small thrusts, tip mashing along her slit, flicking low and hotdogging along the underside of her ass – making her moan low and lustily, giving her hips a little rotation – or flicking up and butting into her sensitive clit – making her cry aloud and gasp his name in between kisses. Eventually he finds his mark, settling into and parting her sopping pale pink folds with his insistent, battering head. That’s all the purchase he needs to slam her down, impaling her over-soaked passage with his smouldering girth.

She cries out into the kiss, forced to become quickly accustomed to the hot iron rod jammed up her twat. His length fills her insides like a punch to her lungs, causing her to tip her head back and gasp, eyes eyes melting with lust. She then slowly gathers herself as her tunnel grows accustomed to being rudely and abruptly crammed open by the pulsing intruder. Perhaps expressing the petulance of a misused wife, she leans down, aside of the kiss and gives his ear a reproaching nip. Andros just chuckles as he gropes the two great, soft orbs of her ass in each hand, until he feels the ticklish brush of her large fluffy tail-tip against his thighs, while the thinner furred length of it displays more prehensility than he’d given it credit for as it coils about his scrotum. Perhaps insurance against more misbehaviour. He gives her ass an exploratory smack and it tightens, causing his cock to grow harder inside her, stimulating her folds as they writhe about his girth, making her tail’s grasp loosen as she fails to coordinate.

Perhaps the traditional Bonewalker tribe ‘submission’ she spoke of is just dominance in an overwhelmingly soft form. Or, perhaps simply to smother further reproach, she wraps her arms around his head and forces his face into her breast, the pressure alone already causing her once-inverted nipples to spurt. It doesn’t take any encouragement at all for his lips to find the stiff bud, his arms rising along her back to support her. Meanwhile, she begins to gasp and moan, move and buck her hips against him, riding while her inner muscles cooperate to wring and milk his cock, as his lips now milk her. “Yes, yes, yes. Ahhn~ you’re so mmf~ hot and hard inside me, dear.”

It’s a near feverous sensation, the utter chill of her flesh against his, at stark odds to her boiling insides, her softness envelops him as does the sweet scent of milk and love – not to mention the thick creamy taste filling his mouth as her warm bounty fills his stomach with a certain vigour that heads straight to his loins. Left with little other recourse, he just tightens his arms around her and holds on as her squeezable soft, jiggly body rides and bounces, letting her set the tone and tempo, the cacophony of wet milky slurps, wet milky slaps and wet milky drips her symphony to conduct. All he knows is there’s an idle apology flitting about deep in the back of his mind to whoever has to clean this up once they leave tomorrow.

“Yes, yes~ Good husband, good husband~” She lovingly coos, stroking his hair and back, transferring his mouth from one breast to the other all while she squirms under the hands groping at her needily and desperately, fanning the flames of pleasure and passion across her as the rigid shaft pummels its way past her slurping folds and hammers her cervix in small bursts of carnal ecstasy. She fights the blistering white of climax, doing her best to concentrate and coordinate for him, rhythmically clenching around his over-full, fit-to-burst balls with her tail. Her insides ripple and roil with the contractions of a soaked silken vice all while his glans scrapes at her sensitive walls and his head pounds her cervix.

Her soft, puffy lips mash against his crotch over and over as she alternates from bouncing to grinding, causing lewd slurps to echo through the room as her hot lust is dredged out her gushy gash and runs in rivers down his balls to drip onto the sheets.

Having more than slaked his thirst of her breasts, he relinquishes the nipple with a parting kiss and buries his face in her enormous bosom – an act she shows swift and ample approval of, as she hugs him to her and rests her cheek against the crown of his head, her wide brood-cow hips redoubling their pace to thrust and bounce. Her long luscious white hair, a tangled bouncing mess by now and beads of sweat gleam on her deathly pale skin like small diamonds. Despite her smaller size, the immensity of her bust around his head, the comforting heat settling in his stomach, the warmth creeping into his heart, the wet hole to fuck his libido into atrophied oblivion gives an overwhelming sensation of being consumed, enveloped and inundated with her supple love.

She whispers and moans softly, barely reaching his ears, muffled as they are though growing in passion and volume as she goes. “Yes! Ahn, yes! Come, come for me dear husband. Cum inside me, cum for your wife. Fill me, pump my womb full of your cum, it’s okay. Do it. Fill me!”

Her cry trails out, joining with his as he clenches his arms round her with near crushing force, though carrying around what she carries around all day must grant an inhuman fortitude to her spine, so though she squirms in his embrace, it’s to hold him tighter more than anything else. His sack constricts, nearly slipping free of the loop of cow tail encasing them, as his loins boil over once more. Thick seed churns and bubbles up his shaft, as her big pale holstaur ass flattens against his thighs one last time, burying his length to the hilt inside her passage, womb descending in a slurping kiss around the head of his cock, leaving it free to spurt hot cum deep and direct into her carnal chambers.

His hips make weak, almost helpless thrusts into her, as she rests her not entirely inconsiderable weight on his legs, more muscular spasms than coordinated movements. Spurts of holstaur-milk-spurred seed spills out of her clenching tight passage, even as her climactic contractions clench up and down the length and around the girth of his swollen, spurting shaft. She writhes against him, undulating and moaning as she rides out her climax, thighs shuddering as they both cling to each other to weather out the waves of ecstasy.

The dense pall of afterglow descends upon them and with a drained sigh Andros leans back, bringing Iris down with him to cuddle as he relishes in her weight over him, almost like a big squishy blanket. For her part, she buries her face into this bed of muscle and nuzzles, pussy still idly milking the softening cock inside her. “Was that good, dear? Was I everything you’d hoped?”

Despite the milk still coating his throat, his voice comes back low, satisfies and a little rough. “Amazing. And more.”

Her dusky lips curl, as she cranes her neck up for a kiss. “I’m glad.” He reaches a hand up to stroke her silky white hair as he sinks into her lips.

* * * *

The vague impression of sinking into a pinkish white and hot cloud of miasma lingers in his head as he awakens to a face full of ass and a dick well throated, while a pair of cool hands knead a near empty sac – pre-drained before he had awoken it would seem. Explains the sudden shift in his dreamscape. Her ass wasn’t directly in his face, as if by some design. Rather, as he recalls her nuzzling into his side before they both drifted off after another few rounds, it seems more like that’s just where her ass ended up as she climbed around under the sheets like a cock seeking cow. The milking throat around his shaft is already enough to have his eyes flutter closed again. Bliss rips rapturously through him, but he decides to repay the efforts in some manner.

Wrapping his arms around her hips from behind, he sits up, turning her upside down while she remains hilted with her lips around the base of his cock, gagging out a gasp as she finds herself forcibly deepthroated by gravity. He looks down at the ass just below him now and buries his face in it, tongue plunging into the already soaking folds of her pussy, the smell and musky taste of her lust only making him harder inside her neck. He eats her out, tongue delving and flicking through the folds of her tunnel, swirling and searching for the more sensitive points that make her whorish hole tighten around his dextrous plunderer. He alternates every few rounds, trying his best to catch her up on his own climax, by sucking and nibbling and flicking his tongue about her small but thick clit. Though, with the sensitivity of her reactions, she seems to have already climaxed a few times in the course of rousing him to the morning’s glory.

Her pussy spurts its glee all over his face as she swirls her tongue around the base of his prick, her climax coming first by but a hair as he dumps a relatively weak load down her gullet, a subtle ache in his balls leaving him feeling more than drained. He lays back down and lets her go and she rolls off him to the side with a contented sigh, lazily taking her face off his cock, leaving it spit-shined in the process. Equally as languished, she turns around and climbs back up to snuggle into his side. “Good morning.”

“Great morning.” Andros grins, satisfaction from last night and the morning’s greeting, all too perfect for his first night in the evidently aptly named High Cloud Mesa. Already, he starts to feel an indefatigable lust build within as he looks over the excessively soft and curvy form of Iris and scantly believes his luck, from the great bust to the slim waist, squishy soft belly, wide hips and fat ass to the thick thighs. He starts to grow hard again, as his memories of the night prior overlap the woman before him, hands beginning to roam her curves.

Iris smiles, chuckling to herself. “Husband, please. We really must go. For all I know my tribe could be teetering on the-ah!” She squirms against him as his fingers grope her breast and she sighs, draping a furred white and thick thigh’d leg over his hips, straddling him as she lifts her self over, breasts dragging across his chest, inverted nipples already leaving a slick white trail. “One more round before we go…”

* * * *

Andros looks at the woman happily and contentedly drifting away like a spectre with a faint smile of bemusement. He felt guilt at first for so deeply indulging himself so deeply inside her, but for all her worry for her tribe, her impressing upon him the timeliness of the situation, this is the fifth time she’s gone off to collect something completely random and been incapable of offering an answer as to why, other than proudly stating that she’d been born with these impulses. She floats back, large cloak covering her so fully she gives off the impression of gliding rather than walking. There must be pockets on the inside of it, he saw her dress, he’d like to know where all the crap she keeps picking up goes otherwise.

He scratches his beard and looks over to the small copse of stunted pines growing not far from the river they were walking along. “What is it this time?” As he asks, she withdraws a handful of half rotted pine cones. He stares at them a moment, blinking in befuddlement. “Why..? – Never mind.” He sighs, no man of magic. Her explanations of her compulsions made absolutely no sense to him the first time around, there was no need for a second. They continue along their way under a fairly overcast sky, the heat from the day prior seeming like a distant thing. Fast moving clouds threaten a later afternoon downpour, perhaps. The wind certainly smelled of rain.

Still, having restocked on his supplies before he left and ostensibly having fulfilled his purpose for coming so far, he’s happy to take whatever pace she feels like, which isn’t an especially hasty one despite infrequent reminders as to her tribe’s imminent demise. It makes her consistent decline of every offer to hitch a ride with the frequent caravans that traverse down the road strange. He was coming to find that while perhaps there was half genuine concern in her, the other half fixation for things dying, dead or about to die, extending as far as her own tribe, apparently. There’s much demise in the plains, the cycle of life and death wind-blasted, sun baked and bared for all to see, bones protruding from the grasses, with the errant circles of scavenger birds flying in the distance to squawk over one predator’s recent kill or another beast’s exhaustion.

He isn’t bored on his journey. A small smile tugs at his lips as he walks with her hand in his, enjoying the light and eerie tunes she hums as they walk along. In fact, he finds that being by her side instils him in a kind of calm placidity, somewhat foreign to his restless blood. It’s not a bad feeling, he thinks to himself, as he reaches an arm out to rest around Iris’ shoulders and enjoy the cool breeze blowing. The moment only lasts until he jolts, and feels her grope his ass with a low chuckle. A playful teasing he’s not quite known what to do about, ever since they left the mesas together and she began with these coy contacts, her miens ever growing bolder. She probably wants it, definitely wants it, but he can’t fathom how long their journey would be if they stopped every few minutes to bang.

The sunbaked roofs of tents gleam white in the near yonder, as a small forest and settlement come up in the distance, parted by the river that feeds into a great lake like a long gash in the earth, glimmering with clear mountain-fed waters. Ma’phe village is the name of both this one before them and the one on the other side of the lake, both connected via innumerable ferries. North Ma’phe and South Ma’phe respectively. It’s their first stop along the way back to Iris’ tribe. They could go around, but trudging through the grass plains is more perilous if you don’t keep to the roads, which are already bad enough with bandits.

A half hour later, the path finally splits from their idyllic walk along the grass-thick riverbank. The wide road leads them into South Ma’phe, the village’s utter lack of defences granting something of a two faced atmosphere. One of mild placidity, not unalike the great beasts dozing out in the open sun, yet boasting a quiet confidence in swift and brutal reprisal if tested.

The people of Ma’phe – mostly minotaurs and holstaurs, though boasting a little more diversity than the near mesas – take their bounty from equal parts the plains and the lake. Iris and Andros arrive into the village as a hunting party pulls in a cart laden with their achievements, while countless other small canoes dot the lake waters, idling or travelling back and forth.

The wide road they’re on ends in the village centre just before the lake harbour, cloistered about by large tents that loom over the square, some large merchant houses, one a longhouse for the village chief, another that serves as guildhall for adventurers and general wayward vagrants. From the square the road spreads out in a less defined spider web of paths between tent structures great and small. The whole settlement hums with activity, as crates are loaded into carts off the harbour and sent trundling towards the distant mountains. Or vise versa, clear lake waters splashing as boats are loaded with cargo destined deeper into the plains or further beyond.

The couple wander about, taking in the sights and avoiding as best they can the busy masses. They eventually come to a stall nestled along one of the sides of the square and Andros takes a moment to patronise the humble looking thing, taking a perch on one of the stools provided out the front. His nose drew him over, lured by the scents of cooked up, fresh caught lake fish.

Skewer in hand, he takes a bite as he passes over a couple coins, the flesh steaming hot, bursting with flavour and practically melting in his mouth. As he hands a second over to Iris, his attentions are brought to a minotaur delivering a fresh batch of fish to the stall owner, whose already shooting the darkly clothed, pale woman beside him some funny looks. Iris reaches a slender finger out as she munches, pointing to a fish sitting in the box, so fresh as to look alive.

Her quiet voice is near inaudible, yet still has that queer quality of cutting through the background noise. “I want the eyes of that one.”

The store owner, a comely and tall holstaur blinks. “Excuse me?”

Iris pulls out a fist of river pebbles and lays them down on the counter. “I want that fish’s eyes.” She looks up at the woman and lifts her hood up far enough, parting some hair to show the woman her eye.

“Oh, uh… right away.” Perplexed, but obviously having figured something out, she turns and takes a none too sharp blade and scoops out the fish’s eyes while being careful not to damage them. She hands the small, squishy things over, also being careful to not touch Iris’ own hand. Andros watches the whole exchange with confusion before a satisfied Iris leads him away down towards the harbour. He glances over his shoulder just in time to see the woman shake her head in equal befuddlement. She reaches out to collect the stones on her counter, but manages to fumble one of them. She steps forward and bends over to pick it up only to jump out of her skin as a ripped package slams down into the ground where she was standing, a profusely apologetic harpy swooping down from the sky above, some of the tattered package still in her talons.

He looks back at Iris but she’s already moved on to intimidating a fee ride out of one of the ferrywomen. Still, he shrugs – a nonchalance taking him – his curiosity isn’t quite enough to bother asking given the unfathomable nature of the woman. He’s not sure he’ll even get a sensible answer. His attentions are quickly captured by the pleasant ride over the calm lake waters. Not to mention how nice it is just sitting with Iris beside him and watching the various boat-women do their thing. The ferry draws up alongside the shore of the northern settlement and with no particular reason to dally in North Ma’phe, they strike out.

***

She leans against him, the picture of a demure and faithful woman walking by her man, hooded head resting against his arm as a pleasant breeze blows around them in the bright midday glow. Just as there’s two slits for her arms to pop in and our of her large, all consuming cloak, there appears to be a third for her tail to poke through. Understandably, as getting it caught up inside the cloak would be uncomfortable. Regrettably that leads to the long white, fluffy thing wrapping around Andros’ leg, the head brushing softly over his trousers where the head of his half hard prick lay, demolishing the chaste image of the pair to any with keen enough attention to detail.

With grim determination, Andros does his best to ignore this latest escalation of Iris’ incessant teasing. For her own good even, much as she goes on about the urgency of their trek… he closes his eyes as he lets out a disgusted sigh of utter defeat. Her hand’s joined the fray now, worming its way into his pants to curl their graceful length around the girth of his rod. He reaches for the hood bobbing under his chin as they walk and he pulls it back as far as it’ll go given how it’s tied about her horns. He can just make out through the hair covering her features that she’s looking straight ahead with a dull expression on her face, bar the ghost of a smile upon her lips, pretending like nothing’s happening.

She looks up at him in askance, “Is there an issue husband?” Her cheeks are flushed and her eyes, glassy tough they are feel as through they keep staring at his hair. Her cloak sways subtly as if her thighs were rubbing together and her hands are gods knows where.

Still disgusted at her blatancy he pushes her hood back down over her head and keeps walking for as long as his forbearance will allow him. Which isn’t long. He casts furtive glances up and down the road and growls at her, “That’s enough.”

Eyes shifting up and down the road a last time, he grasps her by her cloaked shoulder and pulls her off the path and into the grass. Silent, face grim. though heart pounding hot blood into the rock solid cock within her grasp, he puts a hand on the back of her neck and bends her over, while reaching down to gather her cloak and the dress beneath it in a fistful. He throws it over her upturned ass, revealing her already drenched pussy and the gleaming stream of anticipation running down her milky white thighs.

He grunts. “Pants.”

“Yes, husband.” Deftly, worryingly deftly given how she isn’t even looking – still bent over and faced ahead – she undoes his trousers and frees his cock. Wasting no time, unceremoniously he aligns with her pussy and with a single powerful flex of his thighs he rams his cock down to the hilt with a loud fleshy clap, giving carnal voice to his righteous anger. She gives a long, loud cry in response that trails on the winds, almost cumming around his cock on penetration alone, soppy pale snatch tightening around his girth.

His free hand darts forwards to block her mouth, two fingers slipping in, though she parts them with a thrust of her soft tongue before he can take initiative. Glowering, he pulls her up a little closer as he leans down with a growl. “Is it fun working me up?”

“Yesh, hushband.” She drools and garbles around his fingers.

Smirking, he takes them out. “Keep quiet. We don’t want to be disturbed do we?” She shakes her head no, white lock tussling. He grasps her horns with both hands and without any ado, fucks her hard from behind. Her tail thrashes through the air as he claps her cheeks, her legs stretched taught as she raises her ass as much as she can for the deepest angle. She instantly starts moaning from the first collision, so temporarily and swiftly freeing a hand, he grasps her tail and shoves the ball in her mouth, muffling her cries. Her tunnel tightens around him, but she’s easily wet enough for him to pierce through anyway. She tenses, jolts and jerks as his fingers wrap around her horns, cunt growing even wetter around his shaft, her lust running down his thighs now too. He grunts as he roughly slams into his dark pale lady’s upturned ass. “Is this what you wanted?”

She cries out, muffled and garbled around her tail. “MmMmMmM, y-yesss husband…” He looks her over, studies her greedily as he thrusts his cock into her depths, ignores the twinging as her manifolds rub and kiss along the rim of his glans. It’s a shame he can’t see her breasts bounce from here. He hopes her tribe has something like a full body mirror. Maybe he should have found a stream to do this over instead.

As relentlessly hard and teased as he had been, she seems to have been worse off. She’d evidently been working up her own anticipation, with her hands hidden beneath her cloak. When her climax comes careening around the corner and causes her constricting contractions to crush around his cock, his own is quick to follow. Another deluge of cum splashes into and sloshes about her womb. Each successive one since he’d met her growing larger, he’s found, with the more of her milk he partakes in.

He sighs, relieved and he gets the feeling from the way her passage lovingly milks the last load out of him that that’s what she was after. Hopefully that should sate her for the moment and hopefully that moment won’t be too fleeting. He lets her horns go and her weak legs buckle. Andros starts as she crashes down to her knees and reaches a hand our to her shoulder. “Iris! Are you okay?”

“Y-yeah…” She puts a hand out and braces herself on the ground, breathing heavily as she gathers strength. She turns weakly, shuffling around on her knees and looks up, a dumb grin on her face. “So that’s all it takes to get you to bend me over and use me, is it?”

He raises his eyebrows as she reaches up to his half hard, dripping manhood and plops her tongue out, stroking the remnants onto it before she takes his prick into her mouth, cleaning it and then working down the shaft. “You only have to ask” he runs a hand over her head – careful to avoid her sensitive horns – and rubs her ear, “You do this well and often enough I don’t really have to take charge.” He shrugs.

“Should I stop?” Member cleaned, she sets about tucking it back into his trousers.

“Gods no. But, aren’t we kind of in a little bit of a hurry? That’s why I’ve been more or less trying to put up with it.”

She sighs as she pulls his trousers back up, “Oh yes, I suppose we are.” Her reluctant admission that perhaps the supposed peril facing her tribe barely ekes out over a day of pure lust and hedonism really makes Andros lost for words. Perhaps his excitable, brash personality was slowly being tempered by the sheer outlandishness of hers, reluctantly forced into the role of rationality and reason. He extends and arm down to her and she takes it, rising to her hoofs and beginning to walk away, but not before causing him to jolt as she gives his balls a goodbye grope though his pants.

Andros shakes his head and follows. Balls drained and cock cleaned they get back on the road, though not making it overly far, only a half hours walk. His senses were perhaps dulled a little in the post coitus bliss. Iris stiffening is the first sign he gets, before his own instincts finally kick in and his head is tugged left and right, scanning the long rolling plains. “Tch.”

A distant grunt of annoyance is carried over on the wind and a band of figures emerge from the grasses, of mixed species, cat girls wolf girls, human looking women, a lesser succubus, an orc, your rather ragtag bunch of bandits. The leader is a large mountain lioness, sporting torn ears and a number of scars. She thrusts out a shoddy looking spear as the succubus stiffens, staring at Iris.

“Your money and your husband. Slip pickings for stragglers lately. My girls need to work out some frustration. Especially…” She sniffs the wind and her eyes flick from Iris’ crotch to Andros’. “Especially since its you two polluting our fine air with the stench of sex. You can take responsibility for riling my girls up.”

Andros readies his shield and axe, feeling a lot less charitable than his first run in with bandits – especially now with some one to protect. Still, most his attention is on the robed, bookish looking succubus currently slinking away. Iris on the other hand, merely smiles faintly, face obscured by her hair, making it hard to gauge her expression.

With a movement he almost misses, she tosses out a handful of half rotted pine cones along with the fish eyes and a mostly burnt candle. She mutters something under her breath, the latter sputtering to life with an eerie black flame as she throws it. The fire just as quickly dies, all the reagents seemingly corroding into dust mid air. Except for the succubus who’s made her distance from the group, it spreads over all those gathered, at once seemingly slow and listless, but somehow touching them all before they can react – bar a few superstitious cries at the strangeness of it all.

Yet the strangeness has just started, as Andros gawks, watching the bandits age and decompose into so much dust on the breeze before his eyes, along with a portion of their armour. The thick silence that follows isn’t quite grim as much as it is… desolate. Iris points to the lone, shaking lesser succubus, her soft quiet voice breaking the silence, tone brooking no argument. “Take the valuables and follow us. Or I’ll curse you.”

The pale-faced, speechless succubus nods rapidly then scrabbles on practically all fours to the piles of dust, sifting through them and cramming her pack with leftover items. Andros, meanwhile, just stares at Iris, the actions of the succubus oddly reminiscent to those of the others before. What dread they felt. Was she famous? Or was it just her tribe? The riddle of why the people in Ma’phe were willing to make their small concessions seems solved.

As if reading his mind, she shrugs. “It’s mostly a Bonewalker thing.” He shakes his head and they continue to venture onwards, now plus one for the time being. They aren’t targeted a second time along this stretch of road and between the bandit attack and merging onto the main highway that bisects the Great Plains, the only notable event is Iris taking him behind a tree for some oral relief while their prisoner rests on the other side and desperately tries to pretend she isn’t acutely aware of what’s going on.

The rains didn’t fall in the end, the sun dipping below the horizon as a dark cloud smeared sky holds above their heads. Andros is fit and disciplined enough to march all day and night if needs be, not to mention the more relaxed pace, the lighter load and the semi frequent relief stops mostly due to Iris’ incessant teasing.

She seems to become even more active as the sun falls, a quirk of her tribe’s circumstances as she explains. Though perhaps there is some filial care in her, as her gaze flicks to the distance with more regularity, because the severity of her churning of his libido eases as the night falls and she hastens. The succubus is the only one of them that meekly suggests not continuing to travel through the night, but a look from Iris is all it takes for rekindle her motivation.

They’re not the only group to have this idea, though those that brave the roads at night are significantly more alert and cagey around one another. Thankfully, the larger groups are easy to spy coming, great lanterns spilling light over the dark grasses and illuminating the night. Even if you were blind, you’d hear the thumping of hooves and the trundling of carriage wheels. They pass with something of a regularity, if accounting for the variance on how far the trio get before the next passes them by. He finds himself pondering on the fate of his one-time friend Calais. Did he get his girl too?

They follow the road for a short while, a few hours at most, before wading into the deep grasses, traversing directly over the hills of the plains. Now it’s their turn to be more alert, even Iris’ mischievous wandering hands stilling entirely. After a few more hours of near blind wandering deep into the night and under the dim moonlight with no rest, they make it through the plains unmolested in most senses of the word.

Suddenly, Iris draws him up short, slender hand gripping at his clothes. A stiff breeze blows, pushing apart the grasses to reveal a wide yawning maw cut into the earth, not even a metre away from him. They begin to skirt around the great abyssal opening, only for Andros to note a pair of footsteps missing. He turns back to the succubus, visible shaking, torn between looking at Iris and the void.

The holstaur thinks a moment and hods her hand out. “Your stuff.”

The succubus near collapses in relief. “Thank you! Thank you so much! I promise, you’ll never see me again!” She practically throws her pack – part loot part her own personal belongings – into Andros’ arms and makes a run for it, vanishing into the plains, only rarely shooting a fearful glance behind her, unknown if it’s directed to Iris or the location behind them. Shouldering the pack alongside his own, they make their way around the gaping, foul crevasse.

No sooner had they circumvented it then do they hear the sounds of battle carried on the night wind, causing Iris to gasp. “Oh! They might be dying! Let’s hurry!” She sounds a little too excited.

Andros arms himself with his axe and shield and sets off at a loping jog before Iris, following his senses for how little the moonlight seems shine over these darkened lands in particular, Her pale silver glow dying the deeper they get.

They come before a far more immense abyss, plainly visible, so great its size as opposed to the last, a long thin gash in the earth. There’s a wide perimeter of cliff that drops straight into nothingness. The only place that isn’t a sheer drop is a corridor of descending pale blue flames, burning in piles of bones and highlighting the descent. In the far distance he can make out the dim campfires of another settlement, each an island surrounded in darkness. Darkness they’d have to wade through, as the only way to reach them seems to be via the ghost-lined bone path heading down into the abyss.

At least this one has a path, unlike the other which was just a collapsed maw of unfathomable depth. The path down is long and steep and they both have to take careful steps. Andros in particular advances with half his attentions behind to catch Iris should she slip, but true to her clan’s name, she navigates with preternatural grace. The deeper down they go, the more shattered, split bones lay perilously upon the path from beasts throwing themselves down to great depths, shattering themselves into the abyss.

The sounds of battle only grow louder as do the sounds of hellish chattering, snarls of unearthly quality, war cries, ghastly bellowing and the bursting of magic energies. The ghost lights don’t reach very far, but they’re numerous, until they flicker out and reappear elsewhere, which they do with alarming regularity. He finally lays eyes on the distant battle field, a party of minotaurs and mostly holstaur, none too physically imposing or impressive, doing battle with a horde of skeletal beings, more yet rising from the depths around them and more importantly – standing between Andros, Iris and the distant party. The lights of the Bonewalker fighters are ones produced by a few torch bearers and grisly bone maces, with skull heads blazing ghost fire, small rafts in the ocean of darkness. They crack the skulls of the other skeletons, while their wielders are protected from the bone shards and spears via simple looking hide shields.

What he does see in the shifting darkness that gives him pause is narrow, rickety bone bridges dangling over perilous depths – at least, until the flickering ghost fires vanish, leaving the way obscured in darkness. As he slows down, Iris bends over behind him and scoops up a skull, cramming its eye sockets with peppers and pushing a fistful of feathers into its cranium. She lobs it high into the air and it ignites, skull animating and cackling with glee as it hangs in the void, eyes spitting fire beams than gush light all over the blackness, calling the attention of all beings to them, the distant party and the horde surrounding them, not to mention numerous other bone abominations below.

Andros gives out a roar, Bloodhorn rage boiling within him as he charges along the bridges, shaking and quaking under him as he bounds over small islands and bone peninsulas, booting the skulls off creatures clawing up the sides. He eventually reaches the group and launches himself into the fray, shattering bones with each swing of his axe, utterly sweeping through the flimsier more humanoid forms and taking scarcely longer to dispatch hulking bone beasts reanimated from a patchwork skeleton of the countless other beasts that had fallen here. His fury is infectious, spurring the party he now finds himself in the midst of to greater heights.

He leans aside to let a bolt of death energy scream past him, Iris joining the fray with her powers and blasting apart another skeleton, but he quickly comes to understand the plight of the Bonewalker tribe. The girls are soft, small. There’s one that beats him out in stature and wields a great axe, but the majority of them augment themselves with weird abilities, strange regents tossed out left and right to little effect – the most useful boosting their own brute strength for a time. Even Iris, the most effective among them apparently, is largely helpless. Their curses and death magic has little to no power here, the other, larger minotaur with the great axe having shouldered the brunt of the work, half the magic goes to directly reinforcing her abilities, but by the composition, women like this appear to be rare.

The breath of fresh air that is Andros is felt immediately, as like a bull in a glass house he rampages, axe singing as he shatters bone. In short order, the group surrounding the girls is dealt with, allowing Iris to rejoin whereby she is immediately surrounded by their protection. But there’s scarcely time for words, as an omnipresent rattling and snarling and screeching surrounds them. Iris points with a finger to the cackling skull shining high in the air and points to a large bulk of the skeletal mass approaching. It cackles even louder, burns even brighter as it plummets down like a meteor into a fiery explosion so fierce Andros has to raise his shield, wood plinking with a few scattered bits of bone shrapnel. But it barely dented the charging mass and Andros settles in for a gruelling bonegrinder of a battle, a soft hand on his back suffusing him with energy every now and then. Iris’.

The fight seems to last hours but for the most part, the girls of the Bonewalker tribe, deathly pale, dark eyed and lipped all – dark haired most – seem to fare alright, fighting with persistence and resilience against their own ineffectiveness. The way they shrug off the attacks of the bone creatures seems to suggest the impotence is something that goes both ways. The main peril facing them is in being overwhelmed, despite their highly effective coordination and the complete lack thereof of the horde. That worry seems to have vanished for the moment with the addition of Andros, who swings his axe up until the last skull cracks and a grim silence descends before a chorus of girlish cheers. He faints, their magics having overdrawn his abilities beyond the limit.

* * * *

He awakens to the warm and now-familiar taste of breast milk in his mouth, the cool and welcome feeling of Iris’ fingers around his cock. He also awakens, in the mid-throes of an orgasm, so it’s quite startling as he watches a torrent of black tinted cum erupt from his cock, veins bulging an angry purple so dark as to be black themselves. It spurts up high and some of it splatters over Iris’ face, though she’s deft enough to catch the majority of it in a sloshing chalice, full of more of the dark stained stuff.

He gawks at it. “W-what… what in the gods’ name is that? You, uh… look pretty with your hair tied back, by the way.”

Iris smiles, wiping the cum off her face, evidently now thankful to have found something to tie her hair back in a ponytail at some point between the fight below the village and now. “Thank you. And it’s cum, dear husband. Yours specifically.”

Andros grimaces, “I can see that, why is it black?”

“It’s the poison of death, dear. You’re dying, so I’m drawing it out.”

“Uh… I guess it’s the most fitting place to die.” He blinks, mostly confused, a little worried, but for some reason, not really feeling life endangered yet. He gathers his bearings and looks around, finding himself in a rather cozy large tent. Furs and rugs cover much of the ground and there’s a fire pit in the centre smouldering with odd blue embers. The room is roughly split into quarters around the perimeter of the large circular tent. A bed and dresser sit in one quarter as well as some other furnishings. The next has a work bench and shelves of jarred oddities and pots reeking of herbs. Another has books and fetishes and shamanistic relics all out on display. Lastly is a place to house guests, perhaps. Chairs, a dining table, cabinets, some trophies and other displays.

“Isn’t it just?”

He looks back at Iris and the bedroll laid out under him, with different containers and implements scattered around. “Is this the ritual? The thing you mentioned when we first spoke, turning death into life or something?”

She chuckles and shakes her head, white ponytail swaying. “Oh no. But.” She tips the chalice into a small basin full of the same stuff, “It’s an important reagent for the ritual. And in general. I’ll never be able to harvest this in the future, so I might as well save some now.”

He looks down expecting to see two shrivelled almonds, but is met with a fat pair of plums instead. “Uhh…”

“It’s your body going into overdrive, trying to purge the excess. If I hadn’t guided it to somewhere fun, you’d probably be bleeding through every orifice by now. You should be stable, for as long as it takes for the ritual anyway. Come. Time is of the essence. We might as well get this out of the way before you do yourself some permanent harm, dear.”

He blinks, standing shakily as Iris helps him up, “What is the ritual, exactly?”

“In the tongue of my tribe, it means roughly ‘fluid essence swapping ritual’. There will be blood, but if it makes you feel any better, you won’t feel it. Now.” She takes off her dress, this one a far more casual thing than the one last. He isn’t sad to see the nearly shapeless thing go, tenting off her impressive bust and collaring around her neck, not even showing cleavage. It’s a far cry from the much more visually interesting ensemble from before. Her cloak hangs up over on the far side of the tent.

Naked, she retrieves a large bronze looking basin from the far end of the room and sits back down, laying it upon her lap. The thing taking up the entirety of it, nestled comfortably between her thick thighs. “Husband, if you may. I’ll need your assistance to gather a large quantity of milk.”

“Uh,” he casts a sceptical eye over the basin, “How much?”

“To the rim.”

Andros gulps and walks over towards her, still feeling somewhat weak and shaky. A little heavier than he’d like he half sits, half falls down behind her, legs splayed. She shuffles back until she’s up against his chest, allowing him to curl a leg in under her knees as they sit together. “I’ve never, uh…”

She grasps his wrists and moves his hands to her breasts, giving a low sighing moan as she leans her weight back against him and relaxes, “Just do what comes naturally, dear.”

With ten fingers and two enormous breasts, there really isn’t too much trial and error. Very soon, the room resounds with the sounds of the tinking of spurting streams of warm milk hitting the bronze basin below. His hands roam over her breasts, squishing them together then massaging around them. His fingers circle her soft and sensitive, puffy areola then dip into her inverted nipples, teasing and pulling at the milk-swimming buds hidden within and making her gasp. The scent of her milk, combined with the soft, quiet noises of pleasure get to him, his cock slowly but surely stiffening, brushing against her ass as it rises, prompting her to giggle and thrust herself back, trapping his length between her cheeks though she does little else with it. She instead reaches a hand up and turns his head to her, angling her own up and to the side for a kiss. The tinkling cadence of liquid on metal fades as the basin grows heavier with milk, though it’s a slow process.

While their lips meet in an impassioned embrace, tongues coiling and swapping spit, her other hand dips down between her legs, as she starts to moan into the kiss, breath disturbed. Noting her abnormality, Andros breaks the kiss and stops milking for a moment. “Are you okay? Am I being too rough? Are you sore?”

“N-no, no and also no” She groans needily and takes the basin off her lap, laying it down just before her with a heavy slosh. She rises and settles down onto her hands and knees, large breasts dangling pendulously over the basin, “I need something in me. Please, husband” Hips swaying, she waves her ass before him, puffy lips drooling her need down thick creamy thighs, tail near fanning the scent of her lusts over him. He immediately feels himself go from an idling half hardness to rock solid in mere moments.

Rising to his knees, he settles in behind her large, shapely ass. With knees either side hers, short, soft white fur tickling, he lines himself up, his pre-beading tip rubbing along her wet slit and prodding into her delta. The heat coming from her hot little hole fairly radiates, enough for one to forget the chill of her skin around it. Slowly, he plunges his swollen head through her sopping folds, her lower lips kissing and sucking and tightening around his entrance as his glans glides past her lubricated creases. Immediately, the spattering of milk into the third-full basin resounds within the tent, alongside her courtesan, clarion cry. Yet, once his balls softly smack against her clit and he hilts himself inside her, he doesn’t start fucking immediately.

Instead he takes a moment to enjoy her soft whimpers, sink his hands into her ass, give her soft cheeks a grope and a squeeze before sliding in and up as he travels past her waist, leaning low to trail kisses along her spine, leaning his weight upon her, as his hands slide around her sides to cup her breasts. The slightest pressure from his palms pressing in makes her pussy tighten and causes milk to spurt into the basin with renewed vigour. Iris gives a sultry, plaintive whine and turns her head to meet his. She delves into a kiss and thrusts her ass back into him, pussy squishing up against his thick base. He almost doesn’t have to do anything other than massage and grope her breasts, pinch her nipples every so often, streams of warm white milk flowing over his fingers with ready abandon.

He does throw in the odd ass clapping thrust though, causing a different sound to bounce off the semi taut skins of the tent as his hips slap into the semi taut skin of her round, rippling rear. She yelps and moans, the two sounds blending into one and by the time her pleasure-maddened passage begins to quiver and constrict, by the time he feels that telltale tightness in his loins heralding that white flood, the basin had already filled up near to the brim. He slams in one last time, pressing her ass near flat against his hips, pinching at her nipples as he blows thick ropes of seed insider her milking passage, all while she cries his name, practically cumming out of both ends. Breathing heavily, he dismounts her and falls back, admiring the thin trail of cum leaking out of her pussy.

Her ass jiggles, back arching as the aftershocks of her climax leave her, before she slowly sits up, settling back on her knees, kneeling before the basin with a satisfied sigh. Andros shuffles over to her side and peers over her shoulder at the basin, “Is that enough?”

“Plenty.” She looks it over with a faint, satisfied smile and a bit of a tired sigh. She turns to him, white ponytail dangling, glassy gaze focused on his. “We’ve gathered what we need, now. We can start whenever you’re ready. How are you feeling?”

He looks over himself, “A little pale and a little tired, but over all I feel fine.”

Iris nods to herself, “Good. I’ll let mother know to prepare the ritual then. Come, I’ll introduce you. She’s seen you already while you were out, but you haven’t had a chance to say hello.” She walks over to her dress and pulls it back over her.

“What about your father?”

She shrugs as she pulls her hair out from under the dress. “Never met him. It’s not unusual for girls to venture out of the village, conceive and return. It’s also not unusual for the men they conceive with to not wish to return with them.”

Andros blinks, confused. “Hang on, not even with the ritual?”

Iris shrugs casually. “We don’t tell them.”

“Huh. Why?”

She puts on a coy smile. “I’d never have told you, if it weren’t for the bones being rather…” she blushes “explicit as to our relationship. Other girls can’t read them as well, or feel they cannot trust them as much. So imagine the heart break, if every girl brought home a man only for him to get the taste of power he wanted and then leave?”

“Uh, would that even work?”

“No.” She offers a ghastly, sadistic grin, “In fact, it would kill them.”

He blanches and takes an involuntary step back, “Hold on, do you wanna run that past me?”

She looks at him, glassy dead eyes seeming to glimmer with mirth, “What’s the matter, did you want to dine and dash?”

“N-no, of course not! But… I’d at least like to know… you know, what if I wanted to visit somewhere else?”

Iris giggles and steps forwards, resting her now-unfortunately-clothed bosom against his chest and reaching out to cup his cheeks with her hand, “I only tell you this because I trust you implicitly, dear.” She leans in for a quick peck to his lips, and he stares into her milky, indistinct gaze. “You won’t die immediately. The ritual inverts life and death. It turns death into life, and… life into death. I suppose a man wouldn’t die, should he choose to live within a graveyard for the rest of his life. But then what would be the point of leaving? Ours is the finest graveyard there is.” She shakes her head softly, “You’d be starved of life and inundated with death. A man would eventually become poisoned and die, spread death to his surroundings. So long as you have me with you, you could last a good few weeks sustaining yourself off me, and vise versa. But we’ll both soon weaken as we consume each other’s energies for our own sustenance. If you want to leave the village for anywhere in the range of a few months, we’ll have to take something with us, like one of the Old Bones at the depths of the Bone Waste, one of the dark ones, that radiate death energy.”

He breathes a sigh of relief. “Oh… so I can still leave, so long as I take you with me.”

“Of course, dear. I wouldn’t tether you here.”

“I see why you don’t tell any one, then.”

“Of course not. You know humans – no offence – would they even believe us if we were to tell them the ins and outs of the ritual? Or would they act with deceit in their hearts regardless? Worse yet, what if they discover the truth, rob our village and enslave our women? This is why we don’t tell anyone. Every man in this village – not that there are many – are truly good and devoted men, who sacrificed their lives to be with their women. Alas, a number of them are old now, or aren’t fighters, or are spread too thin, leaving us, me, in dire need of a man like you…” she strokes along his bared, ripped chest and lets out another hefty sigh.

“What is it?”

“Oh… just thinking. They’re all such good men to a fault. Singleheartedly devoted to their wives. They’d have to be, to agree to join them here forever in the first place. There’s never been an instance of crime, or rape… or even adultery. Our tribe has so many single women and no one to fuck them… The bones tell me you’re the same, but… perhaps?” She looks him over with a twinkle in her deathly eyes, hand drifting down south, to grasp as his flaccid mast, “My own mother hasn’t had a man since she conceived me. You could have her and I together.” Iris bites down on her lower lip, eyes wandering for a moment, before she blinks and softly shakes her head, letting go of his now not-so-soft cock, “I’m getting ahead of myself, you haven’t even met her yet. The ritual comes first, then I’ll let your heart decide. I’ll… do my best to keep her from you and to keep these big boys,” she gives his balls a gentle caress, “Nice and empty, so the woman doesn’t unduly influence your decisions.”

He tilts his head, “You don’t want me all for yourself then?”

“More than anything. But… I want my tribe to be happy too. Not as much as I want you, but… if you’ll give me three hundred and sixty four and three quarters of your days, I can spare sharing you for a few hours. The majority of girls won’t be interested in you, so you don’t have to worry about being swamped, but the older women like my mother who’d already ventured out and had their fateful encounters?” She snickers, “Lets just say they have interesting closets.”

“Uh..” Images flitting through his mind, his erection brushes across her stomach as it rises to full salute, beading at the tip, “I might need some help before I meet her then.”

Grinning, Iris puts her hands on his hips and sinks down to her knees.

* * * *

The tent flap closes behind them, a chill wind on the air, blowing about Andros’ robes and cutting through to his bare skin beneath. She nearly dragged him out without it, but… modesty’s kinda nice, isn’t it? It should be daytime, but the village is shrouded in shadow with the faintest hints of sunlight seeping through.

He’s not really surprised at the chilling atmosphere in hindsight. He hadn’t consciously recognised it while he was inside the tent, but here outside it’s a little hard to get past. Bones. Everything is bones. The tents are pale white skins stretched out over frames of bone, the bridges joining the broken settlement are made with bones, ropes of bound sinew. Bone totems, bone towers, bones all around him, bones inside him, bone in his pants, bones on the ground, bones in the arms and armour. Bone braziers are erected all over, burning pale blue flame weakened by the persistent hints of sunlight, but no doubt shedding an eerie glow over the village at night. There are three portions to the village, three mesas so to speak, even if they’re inverted, being ground level while everything around them descends into darkness. He supposes it’s all perspective.

Iris takes him out across the bridge, a chalice in her hand and the basin in his arms, he treads carefully as to not spill it, although having to extract it all again wouldn’t be the end of the world. He sees a number of figures going about their day. The mesa he just left has a number of tents and buildings, some mix of residences and smoke huts or storage areas emitting dense herbal scents. The other, smaller mesa hosts a smithy also made of bone, tongues of blue flame sputtering out the chimney as the smith works inside. There’s a bit of a training area, with some younger cowgirls at work there. All along the way they pass a number of silent, morose looking women that nonetheless smile pleasantly at him as he passes, even if they do look like they just finished crying.

Across the bridge and into the largest of the three mesas, there’s a great tent, marked with countless trophies – most bones, and a woman exiting it from between two other ceremonial looking cow women guarding outside, although they’re so relaxed, Andros reckons the whole village could count the number of times their services were required upon a single hand in all its long history. The woman in the middle carries herself with a sense of grandeur that the two guards defer to and Andros briefly wonders if Bonewalker tribe chieftains are decided based on size.

The woman is enormous. Taller even than Ciara, although nowhere near as muscled. There’s still a decent bit of it below all the softness – of which there is admittedly far more. She’s ten foot of matronly curves, breasts twice as large as Iris’, milky white thick thighs, hips broader than your shoulders and a toned belly. Andros can’t help but gawk, Iris’ earlier words running through his head as he ponders upon the sheer insanity of the man who would pass up an eternity with a woman such as this.

She’s evidently a minotaur, by her overall size and the large sweeping horns, though one can’t be too sure if it’s a life of leisure, or some environmental factor influencing her overall softness. Iris places her goblet aside and rushes towards her mother. A little discomfort and envy squirms in his gut as he’s nearly bowled over by the ocean of love emitting from the woman as she beams, spreads her arms wide and lifts her daughter up into a crushing hug – evidently mothering a ‘runt’ of a daughter of utterly no concern to her. Nor, thinking about it, had he ever heard of such a phenomenon amongst the cow-women at all. Ciara gushed over the ones in her family, he now recalls. Yet in his own clan… He shakes his head, putting it behind him and following Iris’ example, gently placing the basin aside.

She’s as dark as she is immense, the same pale white almost ghostly complexion, but her hooves and the fur on her legs, her hair, her ears, her horns, all the pitch black of night, as are her nails, lips, and the rims of her eyes, though he can see where Iris inherited hers from. She bears the same almost-blank gaze of dead, milky white eyes.

She wears a sheer gown, just barely dense enough to make it a chore to see if those are her pale nipples he’s spying or if he’s imagining things. The thick black crown of bush atop her mound is clear enough, as are her pale white fat lower lips by contrast, though one has to stare hard to make anything out, even if she’s tall enough for him to have a good angle at it. He’s wary Iris’ words, however and does his best not to let his thoughts wander lest lust overtake his heart and mind.

The women break their wordless hug, the deep emotions flowing between them without the need for words. The bigger woman stoops and Iris lands back on the ground. “Mother, this is Andros, Andros, this is my Mother Arnessa.”

“Oh, but that’s Mother to you young man! What a handsome boy my Iris has brought over!” Practically gushing, she kneels down before him with a near ground shaking – and a definitely tit shaking – thud and pulls him into a hug, “You must be this husband she’s been raving about!” His head is firmly implanted between her breasts as her large hand rests upon the back of his head and her arm crosses his back, both squishing him up against her cool, soft skin.

Andros blinks, unaware of where to put his hands exactly, but immensely thankful that they’re trapped by his side anyway. “She has?” When’s she had the chance to do that? Surely not during the time he was out.

“Oh yes! On and on for weeks. It was enough to dull an old woman’s ears,” She pulls back and smiles wryly as she studies him, “Curse the bones for giving her visions she couldn’t act out for another few months, she was awfully upset.”

Iris blushes, “Muuuum…”

The big, dark cow woman chuckles lowly and rises to her immense height, such that Andros wouldn’t have to stoop far at all to have a faceful of that unconcealed motherly muff. Her eyes flicker to the cup Iris had placed aside. “I assume you’re ready then?”

Iris nods, seriousness overtaking her and Arnessa nods in return, turning to one of the guards, “Nissa, be a dear please, sound the ritual drums.” That guard nods and heads off, while Arnessa leans low, great bust swaying as she picks up the cup of cum and takes a small sip, grinning at them both, a bewildered he and a glaring Iris before heading off around the side of her huge tent. Blushing faintly, Andros carefully picks up the basin and follows after.

He only gets a step though, when the ground shakes under him and a deep boom rings out, stirring his guts, nearly making him stumble. Then another. These low, almost quiet booms ring through him and all around him a ghastly raucous begins as all the bones in the village begin to rattle. The booms begin to take form in a rhythm, like drumming – no doubt what Arnessa just alluded to, but a drum this loud and low… must be huge. The bones continue to judder and shake and the milk in the basin ripples inward, little beads of milk being ejected up from the centre before splashing back down.

They follow the huge woman around the chieftess’ tent and see a path about two or three metres wide heading to a small rise with a great stone altar at the precarious end of a sudden, unfathomably deep drop. To look down below, one would see the very darkness seethe, boil and ripple in time with the drums.

There are a few stones jutting out before the cliff, with pits carved in them. Heading over and following Iris’ gesture, he places the basin upon one of them and looks around. The edge of this cliff is lined in unlit braziers and more surround the stone. Mother and daughter both turn and wait by the altar, leaving Andros nothing to do but the same and be rocked with the deep drumming that decreases in frequency, although it takes the bones some time to settle down from their infernal rattling and the swirling darkness below never settles.

A figure approaches, hooded and densely robed, hunched somewhat though long silvery grey hair hangs down from the hood and a cracked pair of horns jut out of it, signifying an old holstaur, given her size and the immensity of her bust. Both other women smile.

“Granny Rela, thank you.”

The old woman cackles and produces a wicked curving bone dagger and a bundle of what look to be dried herbs. “Kyahahaha, no, thank you, Chieftess. Your daughter’s given these old bones the pleasure of witnessing one last,” She utters an indecipherable word, the one Iris had translated for him earlier, “before I go… Can’t wait Kyahahaha,” Andros suddenly shivers, feeling her eyes on him from under the robe. He thinks he sees her tongue flick out across her wrinkled lips.

More and more figures emerge, as Iris sets about finely chopping the herbs upon one of the smaller nearby stones. By the time she mixes it into both the goblet and the basin, a crowd of what seems to be most of the village had formed in a semi circle surrounding the altar, though standing a good few dozen metres away. Another figure pushes past, taller than most – though not the tallest – wearing scant but a leather apron, sweat running down her skin.

“Here you are, Iris,” She produces a cracked bone, the tip of it alight in blue flame, intense blue light gleaming from the splintered fractures and hands it over. “Fresh from the forge. Hope I wasn’t too late.”

Iris smiles, “Thank you aunt Celia.”

The smith-woman grins and looks to Andros. “You must be the new husband. Congratulations! Come to me later to get measured up and I’ll make you something to celebrate!” Nodding to the chieftess, she backs off into the crowd, Iris’ mother following suit, to stop just within the edge of the monstergirl wall. Countless sets of eyes waiting patiently, more smiling than not, which is astonishing given the usual atmosphere of the place.

Andros looks around, awkward and confused, but Iris ignores him temporarily, walking around with the bone and lighting each brazier. Every one sputters to life with a gout of blue flame, but each emits a dark, heavy smoke that doesn’t… quite smell like smoke. By the time she gets to the last, the air is so thick with this viscous, grounded black miasma that he can barely make her out, let alone the gathered crowd down below.

At this moment, a loud, droning chanting arises and Iris disrobes. “There we are. Now, husband. Take your robe off and lay upon the altar.” He looks at her and then the alter and then the knife in her hands. She merely grins, “It won’t hurt. I promise. Don’t fret.”

He frets a lot. Shaking his head, letting out a sigh of trepidation as his heart pounds in his chest, he throws caution to the wind and takes a leap of faith that he’s not about to become a cautionary tale about trusting strange monstergirls. She did warn him beforehand that there would be blood. Sighing, he strips and settles himself down on the table, little fellow just as anxious as he is, evidently, given its shrivelled state.

It’s a little hard to see from a standing angle, but once he lays upon the alter he comes to know that there are grooves making him want to naturally spread his arms and legs. He settles in, about as vulnerable as he’s going to get. Gulping, he takes in a lungful of the strange smoke, his head swimming as the ceaseless chanting resounds and echoes off the depths of the abyss. He watches the hazy visage of Iris head over to the goblet. She doesn’t even hesitate to down it, before spitting a single mouthful of cum back in. She gasps, shuddering and dropping the knife as her thighs clench together. Andros calls out, but his voice can’t rise above the din chorus.

Regardless, she gathers herself and stoops down to pick up the knife, visage clearing as she passes through the smoke, pale inverted nipples leaking streams of almost glowing milk. “I’m alright darling. It just had… a bit of a kick.” She steps up to the altar and places the cup and wicked bone knife aside. The altar sits at her hip’s level and she bends over it, breasts dangling above his face and drooling milk. With a soft, soothing hand through his hair, she guides a nipple to his lips. “Drink, dear. Drink and let your strength and feeling fade away. You won’t be needing it for now.” She leers, “Except for a certain place.”

He does, swallowing, drinking endless mouthfuls of the thick, creamy stuff. She switches over to her other nipple and he keeps swallowing until he can’t swallow anymore. She stops immediately, the last of his mouthful slowly dribbling down his now inert throat. Any more and he might have choked on it. Strength and sensation leaves him, as she said. His arms first feel like logs, then feel like they’re floating as the sensation of the altar beneath him slips away. Now, his limbs are relegated to mere phantom sensations, ghost reminders. Even his heart slows, until he can’t feel it beat anymore. He worries for a moment, but figures it’s probably still beating and he just can’t feel it. Hopefully. He thinks.

At least he thinks, mind still operating with clarity even if his body seems to have died, ears still heeding the raucous chanting. About the only thing that he can still feel is a burning heat in his stomach, her milk sending a flood of vigorous warmth to his loins, which he can also very much feel – the cold air, the swirling smoke, almost stroking his throbbing shaft. He’s hyper sensitive, as if the sensations of his limbs hadn’t died, but been relocated and concentrated.

Now, Iris raises the knife and brings it to his hand. She unrolls his fist and flattens the fingers out, spreading them and gently twisting his arm to lie flat, palm up. He watches intently, flinching – at least mentally – as the blade sinks into the finger, drawing the laziest bead of blood he’d ever seen. She slices down his hand, shallow cuts, enough for blood to well, but somehow not spill. Five cuts for five fingers, heading down his wrists. Here, he grows gravely concerned, so focused he seems to hear the his flesh part around the edge of the blade, forgetting for now the chanting from afar. Yet despite where she slices him, blood only wells up just enough to fill the wound, but never bleed over. Even as she cuts all the way along to his chest. She moves, doing the same for every extremity, every limb, each line heading down his chest, not joining until his lower abdomen. Here, she first uses the blade to shave his pubic scruff away, the swiftness and ease with which she manages to do so telling him all he needs to know of the blade’s immeasurable sharpness, if the gliding motion with which she laid him open wasn’t enough.

Then, she carves into his flesh an elaborate, mystic circle. He has no clue what it means, but he’s nearly so carved up that the entire thing looks red, hair thin lines of bare skin between the welling incisions. When he looks at it though, he gets the sensation that it’s… wrong. Inverted, some how, yet he has no rational behind this instinct of his. Once she’s happy with the circle, she begins to cut into her own belly, right above her womb, the exact same circle, only mirrored, more ‘right’. She also doesn’t bleed, though ample blood wells up on her skin. At times she winces, at times the bites into her bottom lip and half strangles an orgiastic moan as the blade works at her flesh, both their bodies mired in alchemical influence. Through it all, her hand doesn’t waver. Circle and the innumerable designs within complete, she starts carving around it, three branches from the circle, two either side, branching up and curving down like horns, ending in two smaller circles, while the third descends down, a bloody corridor to her womanhood’s entrance. With that finally complete, she takes a deep breath and visibly lets go of the tension she was holding.

Unwittingly, he does too, the sharp yet melodious chanting returning in a wave. She places the knife down, and places a hand over her womb and a hand upon the fist sized circle just above his manhood. They both come back covered with blood and she swaps hands and places the one smeared with her blood upon him, his blood upon hers, mingling their sanguine fluids. With that done, she holds her bloodied hands over a brazier, the liquid evaporating into a red haze within moments, tinging the smoke cloud veiling them from the eyes of the chanting crowd below a dark, velvety pink.

She smiles at him, apologetic and lifts the basin of milk. “I’m sorry, dear. I promise that’s the worst of it, you’ll never have to go through anything like this again…” she tilts her head, considering. “Unless you want to I suppose, it’s not unheard of for the ritual to awaken some men to a new fetish.” She shoots his hard, swollen cock a glance, “I’ll ask when you don’t have my milk running through your system.”

Gently, she lifts the basin over him and begins to pout it out in a stream. He still doesn’t feel anything, doesn’t feel the milk splash against his chest, doesn’t feel the queer way it separates into streams of its own volition, pouring down the slits in his arms, legs and chest and vanishing, leaving cleared skin behind and the faintest markings of what had transpired. She then reaches for the goblet and pours the last of it over the wound carved into her otherwise perfect pale flesh. It too heals before his eyes, nearly vanishing in the ghostly white of her skin.

With that done, she places the blade, the goblet and the basin aside and her dusky lips split into a wide grin as she mounts the alter and mounts him. Some how, the crowd below seem to know, for in this moment, as her wet drooling pussy meets with the underside of his swollen shaft, the chanting changes in cadence, grows more frantic. The drumming starts up again in the distance and the already agitated darkness down below begins to riot.

Iris lets out a moan that stirs the smoke, causing it to carry the scent of her unbridled lust over to him, making a bead of his pre-cum smear against the marked skin above her womb, causing a faint flicker of black light. She rubs herself along his length, soaking it, though the precum drooling down his length throughout the entire ritual did most of the work. She brings her hands up to her breasts, cups them and sinks two of her delicate fingers into a nipple each, pinching at the hidden bud before her hands travel further up, gliding along her neck. She opens her mouth is a breathless moan as she settles her lips down on the crown of his cock with a lewd, squelchy squish.

Her need drools down his length adding to the pool of fuck juices puddling about his base, just barely brushing the circle carved into his own flesh, causing faint flickers of white brilliance. As her fingers glide up her neck, she pulls her hair free of the hair tie as she lowers her hips, taking him to the hilt with one smooth, flesh crashing motion and an orgasmic cry.

At this moment a tidal wave of darkness crests the cliff, washing over them and into them, the first sensation he feels since drinking from her breast, asides from the burning need in his loins. Hair free and floating in the smoke and amidst the deathly surge of magic, twin beams of light near explode into existence, both their circles, white and black, begin moving in opposing rotations. An icyness seems to grip his core, but the heat of her pussy bearing down on him, the sensation of her tight clinging walls caressing his shaft seems to stoke a fire inside the circle above his crotch, causing it to start radiating heat. Her moaning cries, each time she calls his name into the darkness, is like warm breath against his heart.

His climax comes startlingly quick, almost embarrassingly so had he taken a moment to ponder it, rather than just gasp in rapture at the feel of his manhood growing harder, swelling even larger, veins bulging. His balls clench and he dumps his load deep inside her pussy, head brushing against her cervix as her hips crash down against his with wet, meaty smacks.

She rides through his orgasm, her own building but not there yet. Twin beacons blare their light in tandem, like gears working some unfathomable force, he feels his body invaded by the inky blackness. It oozes in through his fingers and toes, aches like ice being crammed through distended veins, widening them, forever it feels. It courses and joins in the circle, a fistful of black ice, pure death, churning about in the myriad passageways and bludgeoning its way through his manhood, cum-vein distending with this deathly load.

It half spurts, half lodges in her womb, pushing past her cervix and melting therein, suffusing her under the power of her black sigil. What he gets in return is an intoxicating sensation of strength. Life. Despite currently being incapable of wielding such power at the moment, power radiating out from the circle as his skin grows paler, more deathly – each cell within his body seems to burn with all the fury of the sun.

She keeps riding him, her own orgasm building, yet she shows no signs of halting. His own, marked in the ebb and flow of the dark tide. It recedes as her constricting cunt milks his cock with carnal want, drenched folded walls caressing each bulging vein, quivering with each scrape of his near flared glans, as every inch of his mast swells with firmness. Then it courses back in, the sensations too much, ripping through the channels carved in his skin, easier this time, churning around in his blazing white sigil with greater efficiency, joining his white load in time. His cock fills again, causing Iris to voice a wailing, orgiastic cry into the darkness as his maddened head plunges through the tight ring of her cervix, penetrating her womb and flooding it with his paradoxically virile deathly seed.

Her cunt quivers around his girth as she quails, the bouncing of her fat ass on his thighs finally disturbed, thick thighs shaking like a leaf in the wind as she struggles to coordinate the cock-riding that came to her so naturally before. Her spasming cowpussy spurts out her girl cum over the base of his cock, gouts of milk jet from her nipples, as hard and swollen as his cock now and poking out of their puffy prison. It arcs high but seems to vanish into the smoke, tinging its previous colour with white, lightening pink haze, carrying the scent of their lovemaking upon it.

Her cervix kisses, sucks around the glans of his member, a sensation of almost electricity in her womb as her circle converts the dark mass inside her into pure power, flooding most of it back into him. He feels now, as through he could split rock with a single thrust… of his fist. The sensations assailing him only double and redouble, however, the next surge comes faster than the others.

It’s not within the next down-thrust after Iris gathers herself, hair already tossed and wild from the previous ride, breasts beginning to bounce again with the motion. It’s not within the third nor seventh either, but quick regardless the tide courses in. His manhood grows, the tip of his cock poking an angry fist sized bulge out her soft, giving stomach, right beneath her glowing sigil, fanning the beaming light out into a cone. As her skin goes from soft to cock head convex.

She gasps hand brushing the bulge in her stomach, fingers fluttering as she slams her hips down and feels him inside her, in the palm of her hand. Her belly swells with seed, as much as the last two combined, the darkness flooding him, flooding her and backwashing as pure life force, though his potency and virility seems to be finally surpassing the sigil’s capacity to instantly consume.

She rides him, invigorated each time he dumps his load into her milking pussy, slowed down only by her gravid belly, in a constant cycle of being cumflated, the cock inside her growing, bulging her stomach out, then loosing that definition in the next torrent of seed. By the time the braziers burn out and the darkness recedes back into the abyss, the altar is flooded and draining down the cliffside in small streams. Lost in their own worlds, neither notices the chanting cease. Iris’ eyes practically glow with love, a hand over her belly and a smile on her lips as feeling returns to Andros’ limbs and he pulls her in for a hug, cock still embedded deep within her.

* * * *

Andros wraps his hand around her swollen – with child – belly protectively, giving off a boisterous laugh as he swings his immense bone axe at the near crowd of risen dead. “See little one? Is your father not the greatest?! Ahahahaha!” He only catches one or two bone beasts, smiting them to dust on the tip of his axe. His amour glimmers in the sinister dark, of identical make to his previous, but made entirely of the bones of this place and bleached white, matching the pallor of his skin, highlighting further the crimson mane that flows down his back. A great black wave of pressure from the axe blasts the rest of the bone legion back into the abyss. His effectiveness in obliterating these creatures is now such that he only strolls down casually and infrequently, as to not completely shelter the current generation of Bonewalker women testing themselves against the relentless, infinite flood night after night.

He’d tried assisting them in other manners, such as in training using some of his old Clan’s methods, but none of them took to it over well, even the most physically imposing members of their tribe, the rare few minotaurs that overcome the enfeebling atmosphere of the place in their birth. Just too soft. An entire unit of ancillary support witches trying to fill every role and doing so clumsily at best. Unfortunately there was no alternative. It would be an unnaturally long while yet, from what Iris tells him, but he will some day pass on. And if he leaves too great a vacuum in his absence, this delicate balance the tribe’s maintained for as far back as any can tell might be broken. If there’s any consolation to this particular predicament, Arnessa says that the girl in Iris’ belly possess a strength of vigour unmatched in the tribe. Perhaps this is how they’ve continued on through the ages, waxing and waning in strength as men of the tribe come and go – merely venturing out to conceive of a child not good enough apparently.

A gaggle of otherwise solemn girls gawk and cheer at his prowess, causing a dumb smug grin to grace his lips, until Iris scoffs and tugs him away, headed to the long spiralling stairs about one of the stout pillars reaching out of the murky abyss. Though he tries to let them toil and grow themselves, there’s no doubt as they scatter among the ruined skeletons and scavenge, that his presence has resulted in a glut of harvest. Girls are being re-equipped every day with finer and finer equipment. If the smith Celia had been happy to meet him before, she probably curses his name nightly now. Some times when he thinks of the small Clan skirmishes and the distant news of the woes coming from the demon legions down south, his heart itches with the desire to witness the decaying devastation that these girls, armed and armoured, could wreak on their enemy. Alas all their enfeebling prowess is wasted on the endless bone horde, leaving them to crudely and helplessly cudgel skulls in with minor support here and there.

They make it half way up the mesa, one of three, the first he awoke upon, in Iris’ tent. Here, a guarded alcove has been cut into the side and a bridge fastened that rises up to the largest, easternmost mesa, where the Chieftess’ tent sits.

The two women here are of that elite caste of what passes for guards in the village. The two strongest, of what Andros gathers to be the only four that actively do anything, counting the two protecting Iris’ mother. These two – evidently powerful minotaur in their own right, shucking the usual trends of the tribe – wield immense great shields of bones and wailing skulls, alongside great dual pronged pole weapons. The immense mound built around the base of this mesa is perhaps indicative that rather than defend this pass via conventional methods, the odd skeletal beast that wanders its way up the aged stairs is simply barged or tossed over the edge, to become one with the shattered bone floor once more.

The pairs nod to one another, the two guards eyeing Iris’ belly warmly. By the time they take the bridge up to the settlement, Arnessa is already pacing worriedly, immediately heading over as she spies the two, equal parts relief and consternation on her face. “Iris!” She chides, “What have I told you about doing this? If anything happens to my baby girl, so help me I’ll toss you into the abyss myself!” She kneels, hands gingerly on her daughter’s belly, half torn between obsessing over the little life within and glaring at her daughter.

Iris sighs, “Relax mother, I’m fine. She’s fine. I wanted a little walk, I can’t just sit inside and rest all day, and I brought Andros here for a reason, he’s not doing the tribe any good sitting by my side fretting.”

“Then let him go, what does it have to do with you?!”

“Alone?” She scoffs, “Besides, look how much more tamed the abyss is with him here. We’ve been able to sent parties down into the lower depths for the first time in decades, they’re already bringing back treasures and bones of great power, our tribe grows stronger by the day.”

Arnessa murmurs, pinching her temples as if remembering some half forgotten headache, “About that, could you stop? I can’t bear any more of Celia’s complaints.”

Shaking his head and smiling softly, Andros turns his ear from the back and forth between mother and daughter and squints against the setting sun, gazing as far as he can over the golden plains to the distant western sea, glimmering on the horizon. One of the boons of his transformation while here, the darkness of the abyss around him no longer an obstacle, but a second skin. He wonders if his one time friend managed to find his own place to call home, as he did. He wonders if he’ll ever see that axe again.