Chapter Three: Going Deeper

Casey awoke to the gentle bobbing of being carried. The memories from before sleep had overtaken him came rushing back. As he took in his surroundings, he saw light flickering from the cave walls.

“Jamen, when did you find a torch?” he asked.

In response, Casey was dropped to the ground. Again.

"If you fucking drop me one more time, I…" His vow went limp before it left his mouth. He couldn't do anything. He was an axe. He set his point of view outside his body and discovered it wasn't Jamen who had dropped him.

A young woman, maybe 19 or 20, was backing away from the axe with a torch in her right hand. Her left hand contorted into a sign, a ward against evil perhaps.

“Demon,” she hissed, then started muttering something in a language Casey didn’t recognize.

The woman had light brown skin and short-cropped hair, so black that Casey suspected it might have been dyed. Her breasts were as big as those of the strange woman they had met earlier, seeming even more so due to this woman's smaller frame. They were barely covered by two scraps of purple leather, which matched the loincloth that covered her crotch. Other than those two bits of clothing, she wore jewelry in all the usual places—multiple thick, silver bracelets decorated each wrist to the extent they might be used for protection. Rings with inset gemstones adorned her fingers, and a necklace of what had to be teeth circled her long, narrow neck. But it was her face that captivated Casey from the outset.

She had large eyes that made her look nearly like something out of an anime, which was only accentuated by her high cheekbones that quickly tapered down into a narrow, almost pointed chin. Her ears, too, seemed to have a slight point. Elfin might be a good description, but there was something in the savageness of her demeanor that belied that comparison. This was no gentle forest dweller.

As the woman continued her incantations, the hand forming the sign started glowing with a bright golden aura, and a sigil appeared, drawn in white light and floating about a foot in front of her outstretched arm. With a throwing motion, she hurled the glyph to where Casey lay on the ground, but no sooner had it left her hand than the glyph dissolved into motes of orange light, which floated upwards and died like embers rising from a campfire.

A puzzled expression came over her face. "You… you are no demon," she said softly. Despite her revelation, she did not let her guard down. Instead she took another step back.

“Don’t be afraid, I’m not going to hurt you,” Casey promised in a comforting voice. “I couldn’t even if I wanted to, which I don’t.”

The woman looked at the weapon, then lowered her arms cautiously and took a hesitant step toward where Casey lay in the dirt.

“You are no demon,” she repeated, as if reassuring herself.

“No, I’m a man. My name is Casey,” he explained. “I just…” he began, then reconsidered. “I have been cursed by a demon.” This woman seemed to have a consuming fear of demons, and Casey hoped this tactic would score him some points in the trust column.

“You… are man?” she asked, her large eyes going even wider. “There are no men in the land of Memek. They all die. Many stripes ago.”

Casey noted the similarity to Arousia Online, but filed this information away for later. He changed the subject.

“My name is Casey. What is your name?”

“I am Cahaya,” she said. She offered no further information, but continued to stare at him for a bit. Casey decided to let her make up her mind before he spoke again.

“You are no demon, but you are no man. My mother, and her mother have told me what men look like. You are no man.”

Casey sighed. If having a four-foot dick didn’t make you a man…

“I have been cursed,” he repeated, “by a demon.”

She thought for a moment longer, then a look of determination came over her face that told Casey she had decided on a course of action.

Without any further trepidation, she walked up to the axe, grabbed it by the shaft and hoisted it onto her shoulder effortlessly. This woman is stronger than she looks, Casey thought.

“If you have curse, my mother can fix. She is dukun,” she said.

With one hand resting on the axe and the other holding her torch, Cahaya set off deeper into the cave. Now that she had decided to trust Casey, or at least tolerate him, she started to ask questions.

“You are no man. Why did you say you are?”

“I am a man,” Casey insisted. “I come from very far away.”

“No matter,” she said. “All men from all lands are dead. You are no man.”

Casey was beginning to tire of arguing his manhood. “Listen, take me to your mother and she will tell you the truth. I am a man. I live in Portland.” Casey regretted that last bit as soon as he said it. How the hell would she know about Portland?

“Your land is Port? I know all places. None are called ‘Port,’” she insisted.

“It’s way, way out there,” Casey said, then decided on a bit of a gamble. “Over the ocean.”

“What is o-chin?” she asked. Oh well.

“Nevermind, just take me to your mother,” Casey said.

The questions kept coming for a while as they walked. The woman was curious. Casey answered her questions directly and honestly, for the most part.

The cave seemed to stretch on forever, and after a while Cahaya seemed to have run out of things to ask. After taking a left at the fourth fork, she stopped. I’m never going to be able to find my way back alone, he thought. Even if I could move without being carried. A memory came to Casey of the time when his father had to carry his withered grandmother to the car. She had it better than I do now, he thought. She could touch things. Eat things. Casey frowned. At least, it felt like he was frowning.

Cahaya rested Casey against the wall of the cave, and headed for a recessed area opposite where he was leaning. Facing him, she squatted, and began to piss. Casey’s instinct was to turn away, but he was an axe. He couldn’t turn away. And there was no way to tell where he was looking. Mentally shrugging, he adjusted his point of view low to the ground to get a better look. If I’m gonna be stuck like this, I might as well enjoy myself.

As he watched the golden stream trickle out of her and darken the red dirt into a deep brown, he felt a tingle run along his shaft. It felt all the world like he was getting hard, but he already was, wasn’t he? He shrugged this off too, and continued watching. After she finished, she bounced her butt a couple of times, which caused her breasts to dance. Scowling, she unceremoniously wiped herself with her left hand, which she brought to her nose and sniffed.

What an odd woman. Beautiful, but odd.

Torch still in her right hand, she picked Casey up in her left, hoisting him to her shoulder. He could feel the dampness still on her palm and fingers. He could smell it. He was never one for golden showers, but for some reason, with this exotic, dark-skinned woman, here in this torchlit cave, the thought excited him.

They continued the march. The cave wound upwards as they proceeded, but Cahaya seemed to handle the change in elevation effortlessly. He was glad she had no more questions for him. Casey passed the time altering his viewpoint, getting glimpses of this woman’s dark flesh from all angles. He was thoroughly horny now, and for the first time a thought occurred to him—his four-foot demonic member sliding into this woman. The thought, while arousing, was also a bit ludicrous—when he pictured this woman on her hands and knees with a battle axe protruding from her perfectly toned posterior, he chuckled.

“What is funny, no-man?” she asked. For the sake of his masculinity, Casey hoped the term ‘no-man’ wouldn’t stick. It proved to be a little bit of a boner killer.

“Nothing, Cahaya,” he said. “Is it much further?”

"No," she said quietly.

True to her word, as they rounded the next corner, the passage began to glow with its own light and began to widen. Then another woman appeared, carrying a deadly-looking spear.

This woman’s hair was dark as well, but not the jet black of Cahaya’s. It was long and tied into two braids, which fell from the back of her neck and over her shoulders, meeting and disappearing into cleavage which made Cahaya’s seem average. What was it with these women? Casey thought. She was dressed similarly, as well. The purple leather-like fabric covered maybe a tenth of this new woman’s assets, if that. She was a couple of years older than Cahaya, if Casey had to guess, and in addition to the jewelry, the woman wore a headband of reflective green metal. The woman's expression brightened when she saw Cahaya, but darkened when she saw what she was holding.

“Where did you find that?” the woman hissed.

“Hello,” Casey said chirpily. “I’m Casey. She found me by…”

The woman went for a wicked-looking obsidian knife at her waist.

“No, Daun! He is no demon,” Cahaya explained. “He is no-man.”

Dammit.

“It is demon! Look at the color, like our garments. It is demon!” Daun said, her dark skin tightening alluringly as her muscles flexed in anticipation of an attack.

Casey hadn’t noticed before, but the shade of purple on their—clothes seemed too strong of a word—was identical to that on his haft. Demon skin? he wondered.

“He is no demon,” Cahaya insisted.

Daun didn’t appear to be mollified by Cahaya’s assurances.

“I am taking him to mother. She will know,” Cahaya said. This seemed to appease the new woman, who nodded curtly. Daun sheathed her dagger, hefted her spear and torch, and began to walk the way we had come.

“Will you come to my bed tonight?” Cahaya turned and asked the woman. Daun swiveled around and a hint of a smile formed on her full lips. “Yes. But, this time, your tongue goes first.” Daun turned back around. Like Cahaya, the woman wore only a loincloth and boots below the waist, and Casey admired the view as she walked away.

Cahaya continued onward, and soon they were in a vast cavern, with the ceiling over a hundred feet above their heads. Massive stalactites hung down, meeting their counterparts shooting up from the floor of the cavern. The expanse was brightly lit. Instead of torches, white luminescent orbs were scattered everywhere—along the floor, on the walls, even attached to the ceiling high overhead. Richly colored carpets covered the floor here, and different sections of the enormous expanse had been designated for different purposes. With his enhanced sight, Casey could make out a kitchen, a smithy, and a tannery at first glance.

He could also make out the figures of hundreds of people, and as he looked around, Cahaya’s assertions were confirmed. Every one of them was a woman.

They all shared the same dark skin, black hair, and the propensity for enormous chests. Even the older ladies, the more matronly types with silver streaking their black, still possessed endowments that would make porn stars beg for their secrets. The smallest pair he could see were at least a D-cup, and no one in the room appeared any younger than the woman that was currently carrying him.

“Stay silent, no-man,” Cahaya instructed him, and looking around, he found it best not to argue with her.

Cahaya headed towards an enclosure at the far side of the cavern, which was still a good 50 yards away. As they walked, Casey saw heads turn toward them, some gasping, some pointing, and others producing that damned sigil. It appeared they might all share that power.

“What is that sigil?” Casey asked in a whisper.

“It is called Sevel,” she whispered back. “It is protection against demons, but only small protection.”

“Can you all do it?”

"Not all, but many. We can join it too. To make great protection. But it doesn't last long," she explained.

They reached the enclosure, and Cahaya lifted the curtain that gave it privacy from the cavern, stepping through and letting it fall to the ground behind her. The enclosure was dark and smelled of incense. A woman, Cahaya’s mother, Casey assumed, was facing away from them, kneeling prostrate in front of a statue of a man. As Casey looked at the statue, an eerie sensation crept over him, and he shivered. As much as an axe can shiver, anyway. The statue looked uncannily like him, in his human form. What the hell is going on here? This is all some VR practical joke, isn’t it. As Casey cursed Jamen silently, the woman slowly straightened, then rose from her knees. Without turning, she said, “May the seed bless you, my daughter.”

“And you, my mother,” Cahaya replied. The woman still hadn’t turned around, but from behind looked every bit as voluptuous as her daughter. Casey could already see the curves of the woman’s ample breasts protruding from the outline of her torso without her even having to turn around. A moment later, she did just that, and Casey got the full view.

“Hello,” Casey said. “Um, nice place you got here.” Casey winced internally. Breasts always had a way of making him act stupidly. If he spent much longer here, these people were going to think he was a moron. Nothing for it, he supposed.

No sooner had the greeting left his mouth, however, than the woman’s hand sprang outward as if on a piston. Her hand formed the sign and the glyph appeared, but this time, larger, brighter and stronger than it had been from the other times he had seen it. The woman didn’t pull it back.

“Kontol!” she shouted, and hurled the glyph at his ornate double-bladed head. Cahaya tried to protest, but her mother was too quick, and the glyph hit him square in the balls… well, the axe head. The instant it touched him a familiar sensation coursed through him. Not of pain, but of intense pleasure, the building crescendo of climax. He tried extending the feeling, holding on to it and reveling in it, but the sensation left him as quickly as it had come.

“Do that again,” Casey panted. Both women scowled at him—it was apparent neither one had expected this reaction.

“What is this, Cahaya? Where did you find it?” her mother asked.

“At the second mouth,” her daughter replied. “He was with a true man, but I left him with a trade.”

“There is no true man,” her mother admonished her. “Again with your stories, girl. You are a woman now, you must behave like a woman. If there were a man, no true woman would leave him. He would be everything. He would need to seed us all." Her mother's scornful look softened at the thought of this. "Babies," she whispered, as if it were a word that had not been uttered in a long while.

“I know this, mother. I gave him shootshadow in his water. He will sleep heavy, and we can bring him back,” Cahaya said.

“Perhaps my daughter is smarter than I know,” the mother said, her grimace turning into a smile. “We will go for him later. But for now, we must find the truth of this weapon.”

“He is not a weapon. He is a no-man.”

“Another?” her mother asked. She contemplated for a moment. “We have lost our first no-man. Rhoma has given us another.” At this, she made a sign on her forehead, as if drawing something, then turned and gave a deep bow to the statue she had been worshipping earlier, to significant effect from Casey’s viewpoint. Turning back to her daughter, she held out her arms, and Cahaya passed the axe to her.

The older woman was every bit as beautiful as her daughter, with the same large eyes and complexion. Lines had not begun to mark her skin yet, but her body possessed a more natural curvature that made the woman’s breasts look more proportional. Her long raven hair hung unbound and spilled in long shiny locks over one shoulder. The woman could star in shampoo commercials.

The woman took him from her daughter reverently, cradling Casey to her chest. He could feel the soft skin of her breasts press against him as her eyes examined him from blades to knob. Then, she took the haft in both hands and turned the blade downward, resting it against the ground. The woman looked at the rounded end of Casey’s handle, which was now nearly at eye-level, and laughed. Both hands squeezed a little tighter.

“What are you doing? My name’s Casey by the way, we were never formally introduced. I’m from Portland. I’m kind of new here, and…oh sweet Jeebus!”

The woman’s hands glowed with the same golden-white light of the sigils he’d seen everywhere, sending magnified pulses of intense, unfathomable pleasure throughout every ounce of Casey’s being. The orgasm came on instantly, and so powerfully it invaded every aspect of his consciousness. The woman’s hands weren’t moving, just pulsing with the white light, which reflected in Cahaya’s eyes. Then, Cahaya summoned her power, wrapping her glowing hands around Casey’s shaft as well, above and below her mother’s. Both mother and daughter smiled as the axe began to vibrate. Casey didn’t know where he was, or what was happening. This was his life now, the pleasure of this one moment. Nothing else would ever matter again.

Then, Casey erupted.

Thick streams of Casey’s seed gushed from him as he shook in the hands of the women. Casey came harder and longer than he ever had in his life, and jet after jet of his seed shot into the air. The women arched their heads back, smiling, opening their mouths to the deluge as if it were the first spring rain after a twenty-year drought. Which in many ways, was exactly what it was.

As the fountain subsided, Cahaya’s mother scooped a bit of the fluid that covered her daughter’s face with her finger, then put it in her mouth, tasting it. Casey was starting to regain his senses—and it appeared to him that her purpose was more clinical, judgemental, like tasting the soup to see if it needed more salt. Casey was too exhausted to say anything.

“It is good seed,” the mother said. “No demon. All human. We are saved. But we still must bring the other man. The real man. He can do things the no-man cannot.”

Cahaya nodded, smiling with her mother, both their hair matted to their wet, white faces. This was almost the last thing Casey saw before he fell asleep, but just before the waves of slumber overtook him, grey lettering appeared in the top of his field of vision.

+200 SP (maxed)

Odd, Casey thought, then drifted off.

Jamen sat on the rock he had left Casey on, trying to make up his mind what to do next. He ate the last of the meat strip and drank deep from the water jug, making sure to save some for later. He stared at his feet for a bit. He had his torch, he could explore deeper, but he had no means to defend himself from whoever or whatever took it. Nothing for it, he thought. I have to go after Casey.

He willed his legs to stand up, but for some reason they didn’t respond. Nor did his arms for that matter. He scowled. Why can’t I move my arms? Not me too, he thought, but there was not much else he was capable of thinking at that moment. He couldn’t remember his name.

His neck still worked, which was nice, and his ears. He heard a sound coming from the entrance to the cave, and saw three flickering…what were they called… torches. He had one too, and he rolled his head heavily to one side where it lay on the ground, sputtering. He looked back to the three new ones.

“This is my cave,” he said, his words drawn out and slurred. “Go find your own.” These were the last words he said, as his body could no longer hold him on the rock. He slid down to the ground, staring up at the ceiling of the cave. Then the heads of three red-haired women appeared in his quickly-fading vision, smiling down at him. Pretty, Jamen thought, and closed his eyes.