The maralith is a six-armed human female from the waist up below is a snake longer than twice the height of a man. They are often sextuple wielders of weapons though this makes it difficult to have more than a few patterns within their attacks.

Some have dropped two of their weapons in favor of having magic constantly being cast as they chop up their foes. They are very skilled in necromancy and evocation.

There are rumors of male maralith existing but this has never been confirmed. – Common Monsters

Adrian

I open my eyes and find that it is just after dawn, I must have fallen asleep after the binding the wolf back to me.

I search through my mind and I can feel where the wolf is. It is calmer than before and I think I could have it manifest physically outside of my body.

I am still not as I was, greed is still not there in my mind. I have pride and confidence again but they are a bit different than before. My anger seems weaker too.

I inhale the morning air and one scent means so much more to me than before. My morning wood stiffens, Moonlight Runner/K is in heat, or at least something like it.

I'm not going to have sex like this though, I may like the ascetics of a wolf more now but I am not going to fuck one.

I place my hand on her head and whisper “Are you awake Moonlight Runner?”

The following noise and facial features that she makes answer me and somehow, I can tell what they mean now.

“Yes, my mate.”

I smile as I really want to do just what that title means. I shouldn’t, she could definitely get pregnant right now but I really want to do it; I feel like I need to.

I press myself against her side and whisper the question I want to know.

“Can you take human form?”

Her body trembles and begins to shrink and twist, her hair ungrowing over the body as the hair on her head grows longer. Soon it is my K lying on her side nude before me, no, her eyes are still than of Moonlight Runner.

SC

I take a step forward and give my mate a kiss as my morning wood threatens to break the cotton pantaloons I scavenged yesterday.

Her hands immediately move to the cloth that is not a part of me and tares it away. She can smell my arousal as I can now hers.

I push her down towards the ground just as she removes the pantaloons from me.

I want to talk to K, make sure that they are the same; like me and dragon-me apparently were but I can’t pull myself away from her. I just can't pull my mind away from sex.

Her lower lips feel damp as I slide across them to line my tip up to pierce her.

Moonlight Runner tries to roll us over, she wants to be the dominant one in our paring. Normally I might have let her, but something inside me is telling me I have to dominate her.

It’s the wolf I bound, it is telling me a female wolf wants to be dominated during sex.

I don’t know why, but I follow that advice. I push Moonlight Runner back to the ground as I slide myself into her. I feel her entrance stretch to accommodate me as I pass through it.

Her struggles against me leading cease after the first few thrusts and she is now gripping tightly to me.

As soon as she does I pick her up without exiting, and frown at the marks the asphalt had started to make.

My instincts are screaming to just keep plowing her but I’m not an animal and I don’t want to look at road burn on her later.

She starts to struggle again but I bite her; she soon becomes submissive and tightens around my cock.

I walk into the nearest house and with some difficulty pull her off of me and toss her onto the first bed I see.

Face down on the bed she swings her hips and I can’t pull my eyes off her ass. The motions were the same as one of the actions she took showing off last night.

This time I know what they mean and grab her hips spreading her legs further before mounting her from behind.

Unlike K, Moonlight Runner does not shout and cheer me on in a language I do not understand but moans and pants under me.

I lick the back of her ear and she lets out a small howl as she convulses around my manhood milking it for the seed it will soon spill out.

I don’t know why I am focusing so much with her ears but she certainly likes it.

Reaching the limit of how long I can hold it in, I thrust as hard and deep into her as I can and bite her ear as I finally let out a week's worth of semen.

I hold her under me until I fall out of her having gone flaccid, I soon catch my breath and smile as I roll her onto the bed, some of my seed dripping out of her.

She pulls me down on top of her and into a kiss. I can smell the deed we just did and that she wants more.

I’m a male, so I always want more and soon find my hardening shaft pressed against her slit as we have a battle with our tongues.

One I don’t know the winner of that battle, but I know it ended when I backed away to claim her insides as my own again.

. . .

Our lusts finally sated I roll off of my mate, we catch our breaths.

Why did I think the word mate? An effect of the bound wolf probably. I am still not right, but I am better.

I turn to look at Moonlight Runner but see K in her eyes. When did they switch back? I open my mouth to apologize for cheating on her with herself but am interrupted with a kiss.

“I’m sorry for driving you away. I was just worried the other you wasn’t you.”

Wait what? Does she mean rejecting dragon-me? Well I think that is why he left and in hindsight it would have been better if she did sleep with him, I like that she didn’t. She loves me and not one of the voices in my head.

I give her a light kiss, “its okay. I’m not mad about that and I’m not on speaking terms with dragon-me right now.”

“What? Why? Isn’t he part of you?”

“He was, but he left.”

There is confusion in her eyes and she opens her mouth to speak but I answer the question I know is coming.

“I don’t know but I want that part of me back.

Can you or Moonlight Runner find me a dragon to hunt?”

There is a fire that ignites in her eyes when I mention wanting to hunt down a dragon. It would certainly be large and powerful prey but I can probably kill one without dying.

I need it’s blood or maybe flesh to drag dragon-me back to the surface. I don’t think he could have left my body as a disembodied spirit does not last long.

I want to be whole again, dragon-me can either go back to being like me-but-not-me or I will just chain him like I did the wolf.

I should name him at some point.

“You know that if you hunt down a dragon, you won’t be able to stop us from wanting to mate even more.”

“No devolving into murder hobos. I don’t want it to be I kill things to get you excited.”

She gives me a kiss, “it isn’t the killing, its that you’re showing off how fit you are to mate and lead a pack.”

That doesn’t actually make it any different but I feel slightly better.

“Can you find one?”

K shakes her head, “sister can once dusk comes.”

I nod to her response, works for me. I don’t think a few hours will make a difference.

“So why is Alttânin gone and what does hunting a dragon have to do with it?”

Is Alttânin the name he gave himself? Sounds silly to me.

“I think he threw a hissy fit over being rejected and separated himself from me.

A spirit without a body to shelter it is pretty much defenseless so I think he is still in me somewhere. The dragon or rather it’s blood I want to use as a focus to pull him back to me.”

K nods, and there is a bit of concern in her eyes at the implication that I am currently missing a piece of myself.

“Don’t worry. I’m going to be okay, I just need some help.”

Should I bring up sleeping with her other self? Probably, but not now. Deal with the other problems first, she probably knows anyways. . .

Bryan

I look over our makeshift camp for the second night without our de facto leader. I hope he didn’t leave and abandon everyone after arguing with his girlfriends.

I don’t think that he would but he has had a lot more stress than anyone else, especially lately.

With a sigh, I wipe away a tear from the morning that I do for Tomas and my parents when no one is looking. A flash of light a few dozen feet away tells me that the other sentry for this shift of the watch saw something.

A pair of birds flying counterclockwise, I smile as the same use of Dancing Lights Adrian always used in our games actually works. Sending coded messages.

A group of something is circling the camp counterclockwise. My smile turns to a frown, Adrian is the strongest and after that would be Kythia; both of which have gone missing. Talia knows something but doesn’t want to answer as to why she, Kythia, left.

I don’t feel any undead so whatever it is that is circling around us is alive or maybe an elemental or golem. We haven’t encountered any of those yet, but I am going to assume they exist if demons do.

As I draw the rusted pipe from my back I can’t help but wonder if Adrian even knows what those that stay behind do when he goes off to exterminate threats. With a silent prayer to the god who has yet to give me his name my shirt becomes harder than steel.

I need some sort of vision abilities, I can barely see anything.

Should I get darkvision or Infravision? Should I go out on a limb and try to get Lifesense and its Undeath variant? I have to diversify my skillset but stay specialized so as to maximize combat potential, always a hard line to walk.

I glance over to the tent I share with Abagail. She just finished a shift at watching for enemies, I hope she can safely sleep through this. I launch a flurry of blue lights into the air the shape of a dragon. A joke from Abagail when we made the signals up, like our leader I’ll go and fight this alone.

The funniest part is that if someone wants to be reinforcements they’ll send up a wolf, just like how Kythia always ends up going to help Adrian. She even came up with that part.

I circle around clockwise around the camp to run into whatever it is that Lysan though up the warning about.

I find them soon enough a pack of goblins, nine of them. Too many for Lysan to fight on her own, but Talia could have. Adrian is the only mage I’ve seen so far that can take as much punishment as the warriors are thematically supposed to.

I whisper another prayer to my unnamed lord and a translucent shield forms, I need a spell for a weapon. I think Talia has one, I’ll try to get her to explain that tomorrow. I don’t even try to hide from the short little bastards, my glowing shirt and shield would give me away even if I did manage to stay out of their direct sight.

I sidestep the first of their clumsy lunges and bash its head in in a single strike. My shield stops one of their crude arrows and the two other little fuckers don’t have the balls to press their attack.

These little things used to make me fight life and death against them. If I had the strength I do now, Tomas wouldn’t have died. I wouldn’t have been able to save mom or dad but I wouldn’t have lost one of my few friends.

The rusted pipe breaks together with the skull of the fifth goblin. I don’t have another of those, and there isn’t anything else sturdy left to fight with in the rubble of the two buildings Adrian broke.

“Fucking bastards.”

I swear as I grab ahold of the only archer in their group. Vampiric Touch, the life begins to drain out of its eyes as the few bruises I did take from the others mend from the life stolen from this creature.

I almost feel sick at just how their life feels. It is tainted with something, something I made sure not to take in as I ripped it out to heal myself. I let the last three of the goblins flee unhindered, I don’t have a fucking weapon anymore.

I couldn’t kill all three if I tried now, and I don’t have that much mana left. . .

Walking back to my post I send up the image of bees fleeing from a falling tree. Good news and bad, enemy is gone but I can’t stop them again.

I sigh again and look to the east, it is only a few hours till dawn. There is food for three or four more days, how long are you going to be gone my friend? My only friend still alive, none of the others would have lasted much past a few waves of goblins.

I frown as I approach the camp to see Adrian’s little brother’s stacking stones up like some sort of oven.

“What are you doing?”

The two look up at me but only one answers, like the elven twins I can’t tell them apart. I think it might be the same one who always responds or that they just always phrase things in the same way.

“Making something we need, a place to melt and shape metal.”

A bit of anger surges up, they think they know how to forge metal? I don’t lash out though and just smile. I need a break, I need to have some time to myself or maybe just me and Abagail . . .

Adrian

The sun sets and the full moon rises as I sit and wait and plan for how to defeat different kinds of dragons, at least assuming they follow the rules that I think they should on the abilities they have.

I smile at K, or is it Moonlight Runner again as she begins to shift into the wolf-woman that I saw four weeks ago. I take a deep breath and smile at the ruined bedroom around us.

Moonlight Runner looks at me in confusion, she knows I have been infected with lycanthropy many many times today, last night and over the past weeks. Yet here I stand under the full moon in front of her, I am not sure how well she will take me basically enslaving the wolf spirit so it wouldn’t be able to cause harm to me as me-but-not-me implied that it would.

I shrug my shoulders in front of her and say the words she would like to hear more than an explanation as to why I did not turn, “let’s go hunting, where is the nearest dragon?”

Her tail starts wagging as I pull myself onto her back. I was not joking when I told K I wanted her to carry me around like this at least once. I don’t think that this very often as this is not a very comfortable location but we need to move fast.

Moonlight Runner sniffs the air as I move fully into my piggyback position before she runs westwards at a speed where I can barely keep my grip.