Swords, Sorcery, and Sex in the World of Greyhawk - Chapter 4 - Part 2

Chapter 4: Transformations - Part 2

The next morning, Casmir was gone when she woke. Slipping into her clothes and crawling out of the lean-to, she only saw Erica and Ashley, bending over the hearthstone getting breakfast started.

"Good morning." Maria said cheerfully as she joined them.

Both of looked them looked sleeply, and Ashley glared at her without responding.

"Well, look who's little Miss Cheerful this morning." Erica growled.

"Oh, you mean me?" Maria asked, pretending to be nonchalant. "I guess you could say that. I feel great this morning. Well, a little tender...you know...he was..."

"No shit. We could hear you two all night." Ashley grumbled.

"So how was he?" Erica asked, thinking about how much she'd wanted to finger herself as she listened last night. She'd lost track of time, but it had to have been at least a month since she'd gotten laid. No more late night booty calls, no more going home with guys that revved her up dancing.

"Well...you know what's funny?" Maria asked.

"I'm sure you're going to tell us, whether we want to hear or not." Ashley said, reaching for the sack of knobbies they'd collected the cycle before.

"Oh hush, Ashley." Erica shushed her.

"It tastes different." Maria whispered.

"It?"

"You know." Maria giggled like a little girl. "Not so salty, more...well, I'm not sure what."

"You swallowed?" Ashley asked scornfully. She'd done it a couple of times for her first boyfriend, but not since.

"I had this mexican boyfriend once." Maria said to Erica, ignoring Ashley. "He was, I don't know, spicy. Like he had a little extra flavor." Erica nodded, acutely conscious that she wasn't wearing anything under her skirt.

"Caz isn't like that. His cum is...I don't know how to describe it. I guess I'll just have to gather more samples for research." She giggled again.

"Maybe it's that moss we're eating." Erica ventured.

"Huh." Maria cocked her head in thought. She opened her mouth to reply, but it was lost as Wenzel and Piotr appeared for breakfast.

Everyone in the camp had heard Maria and Casmir, and the men ate with a steady stream of ribald comments. Maria blushed, smiling proudly when she didn't think anyone was looking. Everyone in camp was jealous of her - the guys wanted her and the girls wanted what she had. If only she could take a hot shower everything would be perfect. Well, not everything, some new clothes would be nice, and a softer bed, and...she lost her train of thought when Casmir looked at her and smiled, sparking a warm glow in her abdomen.

Maria saved her announcement until the cleaning was done the girls prepared to head out scavenging for fungi. As the days passed they had been forced to go farther and farther into unexplored caves to find enough food for everyone.

"I'm afraid you girls will have to go without me today." She simpered.

"Huh?" Ashley said.

"Caz wants me to keep working on the logbooks. Sorry, but he's the boss, you know."

"You whore." Ashley hissed, her earlier curiosity forgotten. "Is that what happened last night? You decided to do your work horizontal, huh?"

"No! That's not..." Maria stopped, nose held high. "Fine. Think whatever you want, but you better get going." She taunted, turning her back on the other girls.

"Hey Ashley, you know how a bowling ball and a Phi Mu girl are alike?" Erica remembered seeing her during Greek Week.

"No, Erica, tell me about bowling balls and Phi Mu girls." Ashley said, loud enough that Maria was sure to hear.

"You can pick them up, stick your fingers in them, and throw them in the gutter and they always come back for more." Erica sneered at Maria's back. As Maria slipped into the tent she continued in a loud voice. "Did I tell you how to get a Phi Mu girl in bed? Grease her hips so she'll fit through the door and throw a Twinkie on the bed."

"Puta!" Came a muffled cry from inside the lean-to. Erica and Ashley gave a mocking laugh.

Mickey looked uncomfortable at the taunting, but she didn't have the courage to oppose either of the two other girls, much less them both together. Mute, she dutifully followed them into the caves to gather mushrooms.

"Who cares what those dumb-asses think. They're just jealous." Maria lay grumbling on her bedroll, staring at an empty page. She tried to tell herself that she didn't care what those stuck-up cunts thought. Closing her eyes, she imagined retorts she should have used on those bitches.

After taking what little satisfaction she could from that, Maria forced herself to try and get some work done. She was trying to reconcile last season's sales with their expenses, but Casmir's cryptic notations didn't give her much to categorize them with. If she knew what they were for, she could create the appropriate accounts and get a handle on where the money was going, but the journals she'd been able to read last night just looked like chicken scratches today.

Frustrated, she crawled out of the lean-to for a snack. Maria knew that her habit of using food to deal with stress made her fat, but she rationalized that she wouldn't get any work done without something to take her mind off Ashley and Erica. Still complaining to herself about how badly they had treated her, she didn't see the creature rummaging through their supplies until it was too late.

Its fanged mouth opened in a hiss of surprise and stared up at her with ebony eyes, set on either side of a long, narrow skull. The creature was humanoid, no more than four feet tall with long claws on its hands and feet. Blood-red splotches marred its green skin, like an advanced case of leprosy.

"Ahhhh!" Maria screamed at the apparition. She turned to run as it leapt for her, and its claws left bloody tracks down her back as she scrambled away.

"Ahhh-urk!" A thin cord around her neck cut Maria's scream off abruptly. Panicking, she couldn't think, she couldn't react, she couldn't breathe. Desperate, she stumbled on, the creature weighing heavily on her back. She tried to scream, but she couldn't; she tried to run, but she couldn't do that, either. The creature was stronger than it looked, pulling her head back like a horseman at the reins. She tottered a few steps towards the tents, then collapsed. Part of her mind gibbered, knowing that the creature would kill her, but totally unable to do anything about it. Her bladder released, urine pooling between her legs.

Her initial screams had reached the face, though, shocking the men there. Peter and Wenzel were closest, and they broke into a sprint to see what was the matter.

"Mrena!" Casmir yelled, hefting his pick and following them.

When Peter arrived, he found Maria laying face down on the cave floor and the creature perched on her back. He saw her pale face and vacant eyes and a red haze dropped over his vision. What happened next he had to reconstruct afterwards, because rational thought receded as adrenaline flooded in. With a roar, he rushed forward, dropping his pick.

The creature looked up and hissed, annoyed at the interruption. Seeing Peter, it dropped the cord it held around Maria's neck and turned to flee. It scampered over the rocks, making for a side tunnel where it knew there were small cracks Peter couldn't enter.

Peter was already moving at full speed, though, and the creature wasn't quick enough. He caught it a yard shy of the tunnel, wrapping one giant hand around its arm and yanking it off its feet.

Unharmed, the creature sank its fangs into his forearm, sending drops of blood flying as he shook it wildly.

"Arrrh!" Peter yelled, swiveling his hips and hurling the creature a full twenty feet into a stalactite.

The creature twisted to lessen the impact, but it slammed against the rock and crumpled, one shoulder bent at an impossible angle. As the other diggers came upon the scene, Peter pounced again. Picking it up by the neck, he slammed its face down on the rock, leaving a black smear where skin and bone broke from the ferocious impact.

The others had arrived by then, Casmir going to Maria and the others stopping at the sight of Peter's rage. Behind them, the stiletto in Cheven's hand disappeared into the folds of his clothing.

"Arrrh!" Roaring, Peter wielded the creature's head like a hammer, smashing it against the stone until the front half of its skull was shattered fragments. Taking the reflexive twitching of its limbs for signs of life, he stood up again, throwing the corpse into a cave wall, where it struck limply, leaving a trail of black liquid as it dropped to the floor and lay still.

He stood over the wreckage, panting, as the haze lifted and consciousness returned. Blood still ran down his arm from where the creature had bitten him, and when he paid attention, he could feel the individual punctures. It didn't hurt - not like he'd had Novocain, it just...didn't hurt. He stared at his arm, trying to understand why.

"Holy crap, Peter." Steve came up behind him, gaping at the carnage. Unlike Peter, he had never let go of his pick.

"I...um..." Peter didn't know what to say.

"Well, so far we've got Peter: two, Bad Guys: zero, huh?"

"Yeah, I guess." Peter said, still shocked by what he had done. He'd gotten in brawls growing up in small town North Carolina, who hadn't? In all those fights, though, he'd never...brutalized anyone like this.

"Mrena!" Casmir's urgent calls snapped Peter out of his reverie. He and Steve turned to see Casmir kneeling beside her, clenching his holy symbol. With his other hand he was shaking her shoulder.

"Is she okay?" Peter asked, hurrying over.

Casmir's symbol was giving off a shimmering light that seeped between his clenched fingers and flowed down his arm to Maria's body. "Lord Jascar, look upon us with eyes of mercy." Casmir said urgently. "Give unto this woman that strength and wholeness that is your very nature."

"Come on, Maria." Peter muttered as the men huddled around her still form.

The glow spread across her, glowing brightest at the welt around her throat where the creature had garroted her.

"Come on..."

Maria's bosom heaved as she forced out a raw sounding cough. Her eyes went round with fear, staring up at them.

"Mrena! It's okay. You're safe now." Casmir said.

"No, no!" She started shaking.

"It's gone now, Mrena. You're safe." He repeated, trying to console her without success.

"Oh god, I...I thought-" Maria's voice caught, and she wrapped her arms around Casmir's waist, sobbing uncontrollably.

"Now, now, girl. You'll be fine. Peter killed the thing before it was too late." Casmir said, patting her gently. Sure that she was okay, Cheven's supercilious grin returned at the sight of Casmir's helplessness.

The others left Casmir with her and returned to the body.

"It's a meazel." Cheven said, kicking it. "Nasty little devil."

"Devil? You mean, like, this thing came from Hell?"

"Huh?!" Cheven replied, taken aback by his ignorance.

"No. They're earthly creatures. Live in tunnels like this." Wenzel said patiently.

"Can we track it back and kill the others before they come back?" Steve asked.

"Not worth it. Might have a few valuables in its lair, but meazels tend to live alone. If we're in this one's territory, we're probably safe for the rest of the season. Couldn't get there, anyway. Too big." He eyed Steve thoughtfully. "Well, maybe you could."

"I suppose we should get rid of it. Don't need any more scavengers coming around, that's for sure." Cheven said. "Hey big guy, you bring the body and I'll help you find a place."

"Okay." Peter said, grabbing one leg and dragging the meazel's corpse behind him as he followed Cheven into the tunnels. They walked for at least a quarter-hour, stopping at jumble of rocks that sloped down into unlit darkness.

"Toss it down there and the water will wash it away eventually." Cheven motioned down-slope.

"Why is it dark?" Peter asked, having come to take the fungal light for granted.

"During the Wet Season that's all underwater. Foxfire needs water in the air, but it gets washed away when the rivers come, see?"

"Wet Season?"

"When the snow melts in the spring and the rains come, all that water has to go somewhere, right?" Cheven said patiently. "A lot of it comes down here. It filters through cracks, and down rivers like the one we found you on. When there's more water, the water level rises, and it fills up some tunnels like this one."

"The river that carried us down here?"

"Yes, water from above makes the water level rise."

"Hm. That's why the river was dark. Like down there!" Peter exclaimed.

"Exactly!" Cheven said enthusiastically, like he was praising a small child.

Peter didn't take offense at his tone - far from it, in fact. Sometimes the others' conversation confused him, especially when Steve talked to Wenzel or Casmir about rock faults or stress lines, or when Mickey used fancy words for the things that lived down here. It felt good to understand Cheven's explanation, and he was proud that he'd made the connection with the river's darkness by himself.

Cheven was a good guy, he decided, and he knew lots of good dirty jokes, too. Peter knew he was no Romeo, but he'd found plenty of girls to climb in the back of his pickup with. This trip was turning out to be the longest he'd gone without hooking up in years, and sometimes Cheven's jokes made him want to find a private tunnel and take care of things. He did have his eye on one of the girls in camp, but he figured he'd be stuck with Rosy Palm and her sisters for a while.

"Chuck it on down." Cheven interrupted his thoughts.

Peter wound up and heaved the corpse as far as he could down-slope, where it bounced once with a squishing sound, then lay still. It must have gone fifty feet, he thought proudly.

"Nice work." Cheven patted him on one muscular shoulder, and Peter grinned.

They ambled back to camp, Peter entirely missing the way Cheven rolled his eyes at his dim-witted conversation.

Continued in 4: Transformations - Part 3

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