Richard woke with the taste of himself in his mouth. It was thick, salty, a phantom weight on his tongue that made his stomach clench. He spat onto the cave floor, the sound loud in the stunned silence. “I’m going to use the bond,” he muttered, not looking at any of them. “Get the lay of the land.” He stood, his movements stiff, and walked toward the cave’s entrance without another word.
Hilda was the first to break. She scrubbed her mouth with the back of her hand, glaring at Zena who was calmly re-braiding her hair. “A warning would have been nice. Waking up tasting a man’s spend is a hell of a way to start the day.” Lillian, her elegant features pinched with distaste, simply stared at the wall, swallowing compulsively. Hilda’s glare sharpened. “Especially without getting the courtesy of the cock that made it.”
Zena’s hands stilled. Her dark eyes flicked to Richard’s retreating back, then to the others. “I wasn’t the only one who had him in my mouth last night.” The words hung there, simple and devastating. Lys, who had been quietly observing, his head tilted, let out a sudden, bright laugh. It echoed off the stone.
“Oh, you wicked thing,” Lys said, his silver eyes dancing. “Did you aim for his mouth, or did you snowball him? You must tell me the technique.” The crude question, delivered with fae-like curiosity, made Lillian blush and Hilda bark out a shocked laugh of her own.
Richard’s voice cut from the tunnel mouth, tight with embarrassment. “I’m going to find water.” Hilda pushed herself up, her chainmail rustling. “I’ll go. You need a bath, farm boy. A proper one. Moon-shade flower dew, maybe. Nothing less will scrub that kind of dirty off.” Lys nodded sagely, a grin playing on his lips. “He’d need the entire stock of a whorehouse, I’d wager. For a start.”
Richard kept his head down, his ears burning as he shouldered past the damp stone into the outer tunnel. Hilda fell into step beside him, her heavy boots crunching on the gravel. “Moon-shade dew,” she mused, her voice a low, amused rumble. “Expensive. Might be cheaper to just cut out your tongue, farm boy. Solve the taste and the talking both.” She nudged him with her elbow, a gesture that was almost companionable if not for the wicked grin on her face.
He didn’t answer, focusing on the cool air, the distant drip of water. The phantom salt was still on his tongue, but beneath it, humming in his veins, was the bond. He could feel Hilda’s amusement like a warm stone in his gut, and from the chamber behind, a cocktail of sharper emotions—Lys’s delighted curiosity, Lillian’s flustered irritation, Zena’s smug, quiet satisfaction. He spat again, the sound harsh. “Just get the water,” he muttered, more to himself than to her.
“Oh, I’ll get it,” Hilda said, stopping him with a hand on his chest. Her palm was broad, callused, the heat of it bleeding through his tunic. “But you’re bathing first. I can smell last night on you. And not just the sweat.” Her eyes, a fierce blue in the gloom, dropped pointedly to his trousers. “Or are you planning to walk around all day with a guilty conscience and a sticky cock?”
He flushed, the heat traveling down his neck. “It’s not—”
“It is,” she cut him off, her grin fading into something more serious. “And the bond’s humming like a plucked string because of it. We all feel it. Your embarrassment. Her… triumph.” She leaned closer, her voice dropping. “So here’s the negotiation. You strip. You wash in that pool over there. I stand guard. You get clean, the bond settles, we get water. Or I tell Zena you’re pouting and let her deal with you.”
"All of you are evil," Richard said, the words a low, defeated exhale. He didn't look at her. His fingers went to the laces of his tunic, fumbling at the knots. "But you're right." The damp linen peeled away from his skin, the cave air cool on his chest. He dropped it to the gravel, the sound too loud. His trousers followed, shoved down over his hips with a stiff, graceless motion. He stood there, naked in the gloom, the water-dappled light from the pool playing over the lean muscle of his back, the tense line of his shoulders. He kept his back to her, a silent plea for a shred of dignity.
Hilda didn’t speak. She leaned her warhammer against the wall, the metal scraping stone, and crossed her arms. Her gaze was a physical weight on his skin—not hungry like Zena’s, but assessing. Clinical. He waded into the pool, the water shockingly cold. It lapped at his thighs, his cock, making him suck in a sharp breath. He sank down, scrubbing at his arms, his face, the salt on his tongue replaced by the mineral tang of the cave water. He could feel her watching the line of his spine, the way his muscles jumped under his skin. The bond hummed between them, a low-frequency transmission of his raw exposure and her unwavering, practical focus.
"Scrub harder, farm boy," she said, her voice echoing softly. "It's in your hair." He dunked his head under, the cold a blunt shock. When he surfaced, gasping, water streaming down his face, she was closer. She’d moved without a sound. She stood at the pool's edge, looking down at him. "Your guilt is pointless. We're bound. What one feels, we all taste. You don't get to be ashamed privately anymore." She crouched, her chainmail creaking. "Turn around."
It wasn't a request. He turned, the water swirling around his waist. Her eyes didn't shy from him. They tracked over his chest, the old scars from farm work, the newer pink lines from canyon rock, down to where the water obscured his hips. Her expression was unreadable. "Zena marked you," she stated. "Not with teeth or nails. With this." She gestured vaguely at the air between them. "The bond feels… claimed. It's why we woke up with the taste of you. She didn't just take you. She fed you back to us." Hilda’s own mouth twisted, not in disgust, but in a kind of grim understanding. "It's a power play. And you let her."
Richard stood very still, the cold water doing nothing to douse the heat in his cheeks. "I didn't—"
"You did," Hilda interrupted, her voice flat. "You came in her mouth. And you kissed her after. We all felt the transfer. The… completion." She finally looked away, back toward the tunnel. "Lys finds it hilarious. Lillian is mortified. I find it inefficient." She stood, offering him a hand. It was rough, scarred, capable of crushing stone. "But it's done. You're clean. The bond is quieter. Now get out. We have water to fetch."
He looked at her offered hand, then up at her face—all practicality and blunt assessment. The cold water was a shock against his skin, but the heat of her judgment was worse. Without a word, he grabbed her wrist, not her hand, and pulled. Hard. Hilda’s eyes went wide with surprise, her balance compromised by the crouch and the weight of her armor. She tipped forward with a grunt, chainmail scraping, and crashed into the pool beside him in a violent splash.
The water was only waist-deep for him. For her, it swallowed her whole as she flailed, heavy metal dragging her down. He didn’t help. He stood over her, watching the bubbles rise, feeling the bond flood with her shock, her sudden struggle for air—a raw, physical panic that was nothing like her controlled demeanor. After a three-count, he hooked his hands under her arms and hauled her up. She broke the surface gasping, hair plastered to her face, sputtering curses lost in the coughs.
“Inefficient,” Richard said, his voice low and steady, echoing her own word back at her. Water streamed from her braids, her nose, her scowling lips. Her chainmail was a dead weight, and she clutched at his shoulders to stay upright, her fingers digging into his bare skin. The bond sang with the reversal—his deliberate action, her disarmed vulnerability. He felt the chill of the water on her, the frantic beat of her heart against his chest, the way her body, solid and powerful, was now entirely dependent on his grip to keep her head above the surface.
“You bastard,” she choked out, but the fight was leaching from her, replaced by the sheer, exhausting effort of not drowning in her own armor. Her blue eyes, wide and furious, locked on his. He didn’t look away. He adjusted his hold, one arm banding around her back, the other working at the heavy clasps at her shoulder. “What are you—?”
He felt the memory before she spoke—a cold, black pressure in his own lungs, a child’s terror so profound it had crystallized into a permanent flaw. His hands stilled on the clasps of her armor. “Tell me,” he said, the command softened by the shared dread humming through the bond.
“The Under-River,” Hilda gasped, her voice hollow. Her eyes were fixed on the cave wall, seeing a different darkness. “I was eight. A training exercise in the flooded lower mines. My boot caught in a crack. The current took my lamp first. Then the air.” Her fingers clenched on his shoulders, not in anger now, but in the ghost of that old panic. “They found me three minutes later. My father pulled me out. The water… it doesn’t let go. It stays in your ears. In your dreams.” She finally looked at him, her defiance a thin veneer over the raw confession. “I can fight a giant. I cannot swim.”
He didn’t offer pity. He worked the final clasp free, and the heavy chainmail hauberk slid from her shoulders with a deep, metallic sigh, sinking to the pool floor. Freed from its weight, she rose higher in the water, her linen undershirt plastered transparent to the heavy curve of her breasts, the solid plane of her stomach. The vulnerability was staggering. She was all power rendered helpless by a memory. Richard’s arm around her back was the only thing keeping her afloat, and they both knew it. The bond thrummed with the intimacy of it—her shame, his unwanted stewardship.
“Inefficient,” he murmured again, but the edge was gone. He began moving them toward the shallower edge, her body pressed flush against his. Every shift of her thighs against his, the brush of her nipples through the wet linen against his chest, was amplified by the bond’s raw feedback. Her fear of the water was a sharp, sour note, but beneath it, a warmer, darker current was rising—the physical reality of his nakedness, her near-nakedness, the primal fact of his strength holding her safe. Her breath hitched. It wasn’t a gasp of fear.
At the pool’s edge, he turned her, bracing her back against the smooth stone. The water lapped at her waist. Her eyes were wide, the blue gone dark. “You can stand here,” he said, his voice rough. He didn’t let go. His hands settled on her hips, fingers splaying over the wet linen of her trousers. The bond screamed with the tension—her residual terror of the deep, the shocking heat of his grip, the unmistakable, hardening length of him pressing against her thigh. She didn’t push him away. She stared at his mouth. The taste from the morning—his taste—was still there, a phantom salt on both their tongues.
“Richard,” she breathed, and it wasn’t a protest. It was a testing of the word, of the man, of the line they were dissolving. Her own hands came up, not to shove, but to rest on his chest, feeling the frantic beat of his heart under her palms. The water dripped from their chins, each drop a countdown. He leaned in, and she didn’t turn. The bond held them suspended, a feedback loop of want and memory and the terrifying, exhilarating truth that nothing was private anymore.
He kissed her hard. It wasn't gentle. It was a claiming, a silencing, a deliberate dive into the feedback loop of the bond. His mouth crushed against hers, and the connection between them ignited. He didn't just feel her surprise, her sharp inhale—he tasted it, the cool cave air and the lingering ghost of his own salt on her tongue. The bond consumed the sensation, amplified it, and sent it roaring back: the slick heat of her mouth, the desperate clutch of her hands on his chest, the way her body arched against him, seeking friction against the stone. Her fear of the water vanished, drowned under a wave of pure, undiluted want.
Her tongue met his, not in surrender, but in challenge. The bond made it a conversation without words. He felt the exact moment her hips rolled forward, grinding against the hard line of his cock, and the answering jolt of pleasure-pain that shot through her echoed in his own groin. His hands left her hips, sliding up under her soaked linen shirt, palms scraping over the tight peaks of her nipples. She gasped into his mouth, and the sound vibrated through him, a physical thing. He could feel her skin flushing, could feel the ache building low in her belly as if it were his own. There was no separation, no private thought—only the shared, visceral truth of her wetness and his throbbing need.
He broke the kiss, breathing ragged. Water dripped from his chin onto her collarbone. Her eyes were glazed, her lips swollen. Without a word, he hooked his fingers in the waist of her trousers and smallclothes, dragging them down her thick thighs. She helped, kicking them away, the fabric sinking into the dark pool. He lifted her, her back against the smooth stone, her legs wrapping around his waist. The head of his cock pressed against her, and through the bond, he felt her inner muscles clench in anticipation, a hot, slick pulse of welcome. He didn't ask. He pushed inside.
The stretch was exquisite, a shared, blinding sensation. He felt her fullness, the delicious, burning ache of being taken so completely. She felt his desperate, shaking relief, the perfect, tight heat of her body milking him. He buried his face in the crook of her neck, biting down on the cord of muscle there as he began to move. Each thrust was a shared event: the slap of their skin, the wet sound of their joining, the groan torn from his throat that she felt in her own. Her nails raked down his back, and the sharp sting was a bright, perfect counterpoint to the deep, rolling pleasure. He fucked her with a slow, relentless intensity, the bond ensuring every sensation was doubled, reflected, amplified until neither knew where one ended and the other began.
He could feel her climbing, the tension coiling at the base of her spine, a gathering storm he experienced as a pressure behind his own eyes. "Look at me," he growled against her skin. Her blue eyes, dark and wild, locked on his. He saw his own desperation mirrored there. He drove into her, deeper, harder, and the storm broke. Her orgasm ripped through her, a convulsing, pulsing wave, and through the bond, it ripped through him too. It wasn't empathy—it was theft. Her climax became his, his release triggering hers again in a loop of shared, catastrophic pleasure. He came with a shattered groan, spilling into her, the hot pulses echoing the clenching of her cunt around him. For a long moment, they were just sensation: the aftershocks, the sweat, the heavy, shared breath, the taste of salt and musk thick in the air between them.
He let her slide down, her legs trembling. She leaned against the stone, spent, water lapping at her thighs. Richard stepped back, the cool air a shock on his wet skin. He spat into the pool, the taste of her, of them, still coating his tongue. "I'm going to use the bond," he said, his voice gravel. "Get the lay of the land." He turned and walked toward the chamber entrance, leaving her there, bare and dripping. From across the cavern, three pairs of eyes watched him go, each mouth holding the same phantom, lingering salt.
He ignored the weight of their stares And the shared, metallic taste in his own mouth. Closing his eyes, he leaned a shoulder against the rough cave wall, focusing inward on the tangled web of the bond. It wasn't sight, but a visceral, directional awareness—a pull. He felt Lillian's coiled tension by the pool's edge, a hummingbird's heartbeat wrapped in steel. He felt Zena's smug, satisfied exhaustion, a warm, languid pool of senùsation. He felt Hilda, a low, throbbing drumbeat of restless energy and unresolved want. And Lys… Lys was a cool, observing ripple, a mirror held up to the room. Richard pushed past them, extending the bond's threads out through the stone, feeling for the emptiness of passages, the distant, cold trickle of water, the faint, foul echo of orc-stench from the tunnel they'd sealed. The mental map unfolded, crude but clear: a network of caverns, one leading to a larger chamber with the sound of falling water
The awareness came through the bond not as a sound, but as a pressure—a vast, cold hunger moving through the stone, swallowing the faint orc-echoes whole. It was in the passage ahead, the one that led to the water. Richard’s eyes snapped open. “Hilda, move. Now.” He didn’t shout. The command was a whip-crack of shared panic through the link. He was already running, bare feet slapping on wet stone.
It took her two seconds. She saw it in his sprint, felt the icy dread bleeding through the bond. She abandoned her warhammer, her armor, everything, turning to flee just as a soundless wave of absolute cold poured from the tunnel mouth behind them. She ran with everything her dwarven legs had, her naked body a pale flash in the gloom, the cold licking at her heels. She dove through the entrance to the inner chamber a half-step ahead of the pursuing chill, rolling onto the stone floor, gasping, utterly exposed.
Back in the main cavern, Lillian’s head jerked up from cleaning a blade. Zena, lounging by the pool, went rigid. Lys simply went very still. The bond flooded with Hilda’s raw, animal terror and the crushing, alien weight of the thing outside. Richard skidded to a halt beside Hilda, his chest heaving. “It’s at the entrance,” he breathed, the words for the others. “It doesn’t… it doesn’t have a scent. Just cold.”
Hilda pushed herself up on trembling arms. “My war Hammer is out there,” she snarled, the fury a thin veil over her shame. She was kneeling, naked, unarmed, while the others were clothed. Zena’s eyes raked over her, and a slow, wicked smile touched her lips. “Complaining you didn’t get to suck his cock, and now you’re the one on your knees without a stitch.” Hilda flushed a deep, furious red. Lillian sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Must we? I can still taste it. We all can”
“I’ll be nice,” Zena purred, stretching like a cat, her eyes still on Hilda’s naked, kneeling form. “I’ll fetch your gear.” She took a languid step toward the tunnel entrance.
“Don’t.” The word came from Lys, sharp and clear. He hadn’t moved from his spot against the wall, his silver hair a faint glow in the dim light. His head was tilted, listening to something only the bond could convey. “It’s not lingering. It’s waiting. And I’m fairly certain it wasn’t after Hilda.” He looked at Zena, a slow, knowing smile touching his lips. “It was after you.”
The cavern went still. The only sound was the drip of water from the pool. Zena’s smugness evaporated, replaced by a cold, predatory focus. She looked at the dark tunnel mouth, then back at Lys. “Explain.”
Lys’s smile was a razor in the dim light. “You were unconscious, darling. Dying. The bond was a frayed rope, and we were all holding on, but you were slipping. Zena here,” he gestured with a flourish, “decided the best way to anchor a soul wasn’t with magic or prayer, but with biology. She crawled into the gullet of a giant cave centipede that was about to make a meal of you. Didn’t just kill it. She made it her sheath. Ripped it apart from the inside out with her teeth and nails. Its blood, its venom, its essence… she bathed in it. She wore its death like a second skin. And that, my dear Richard, is a scent. A very specific, very potent scent of violation that something old and hungry in these deep places would remember. It’s not hunting prey. It’s hunting the thing that killed its kin in the most profane way possible.”
Richard stared at Zena. She wouldn’t meet his eyes, her jaw tight, her arms crossed over her chest. The image bloomed in his mind, violent and intimate: Zena, covered in ichor, fighting in the dark, a protector turned monster. The bond carried the ghost-sensation of chitin scraping her skin, the coppery taste of alien blood. “You did that?” he asked, his voice low.
“She’s gone,” Hilda grunted, nodding toward the tunnel. While Lys had been performing, Zena had melted into the shadows of the cavern, a silent retreat toward the entrance. “Going for my gear. Stubborn brat.”
“She’s drawing it away,” Lillian said, the first words she’d spoken in what felt like hours. Her voice was a cool stream cutting through the tension. She was already moving, gathering her scimitars. “The creature’s focus will be on her scent. It will follow, leaving the entrance clear. It’s a tactic.”
Richard was already moving, snatching up his discarded tunic. “It’s a suicide tactic. Hilda, with me. Lys, Lillian, watch the pool exit. If that thing circles around…” He didn’t finish. He just ran, Hilda’s naked form falling into step beside him, her bare feet slapping the stone with a determined rhythm. The cold from the tunnel mouth washed over them, but the crushing, hungry presence was gone, pulled away into the deeper dark, following a trail of centipede blood and defiance.
“You knew she slipped out,” Richard snarled, rounding on Hilda the moment they were clear of the cavern. The cold water of the stream soaked his trousers, but the heat in his chest was all fury. “You saw her go and you didn’t say a gods-damned word.” Hilda, still naked and dripping, met his glare with a bared-teeth grin that didn’t reach her eyes. “She’s drawing the thing off. It’s a good play. You’d have tried to stop her.” He didn’t argue. He just pointed a finger back the way they’d come. “The watering hole. Get your gear. Then get back to Lys and Lillian.” Hilda’s grin vanished. “My armor’s at the bottom, boy. I can’t swim.” Richard swore, a raw, farmyard curse that echoed off the wet walls. He didn’t pause. He just turned and dove into the black pool, the water swallowing his form whole.
The world became pressure and cold silence. He kicked down, hands scraping along the smooth stone bottom, fingers searching in the absolute dark. His lungs began to burn. He found the first piece—a heavy pauldron—and shoved it toward the surface. He dove again. The burn became an ache. His fingertips brushed chainmail, tangled in something slick. He hauled it up, broke the surface gasping, threw the mass of metal onto the bank, and went down a third time. The ache turned to fire. His vision spotted. His hand closed on the leather-wrapped haft of her warhammer. He kicked off the bottom, hammer in hand, and exploded from the water with a ragged, sucking breath.
He dumped the sopping gear at Hilda’s feet. “Go. Now.” She stood there, water sheeting off her muscular body, her expression unreadable. “I’m coming with you to find her.” He didn’t shout. He closed his eyes. He reached down the bond, past the ever-present hum of their shared presence, and found the raw, stubborn cord of Hilda’s will. He didn’t push. He pulled. He yanked on the shared instinct to protect, the primal agreement that had saved them in the canyon, and twisted it into a single, silent, undeniable command: *now is not the time* It wasn’t a request. Hilda’s breath hitched, when the feeling of what would happen to Richard if he lost any of them. Her knees buckled, just slightly. A wave of cold compliance—foreign and shocking—washed through the bond, felt by all of them back in the cavern. Richard opened his eyes. “Go,” he said, his voice quiet. Hilda, her face pale, nodded once, gathered her dripping armor, and turned without another word.
Alone, Richard leaned against the cave wall, his forehead pressed to the cool stone. He let the bond expand. He wasn’t looking for pain or fear. He was looking for *her*. The bond was a tangled skein of sensations: Lillian’s watchful calm by the pool, Lys’s sharp, analytical focus, Hilda’s simmering, shame-tinged anger as she retreated. And then, a thread, thin and fierce and moving away—a taste of iron and chitin, a vibration of silent, predatory grace. Zena. He followed it, a ghost-sensation leading him deeper into the side tunnel, away from the water, into air that grew colder and smelled of old, dry stone.
He found her in a narrow cleft, a natural arrow-slit in the mountain’s flesh. Moonlight from the world above shafted down, painting her in silver and shadow. She had Hilda’s necklace, but she wasn’t holding it ready. It lay at her feet. She was perfectly still, her back to him, her head tilted, listening to the deep dark beyond the cleft. The scent Lys had described—centipede blood, venom, profane death—clung to her like a second skin. It was faint to his nose, but in the bond, it screamed. He didn’t speak. He just moved to stand beside her, his shoulder nearly touching hers. Together, they stared out into the black where something old and patient waited, drawn by the perfume of her violence.
“What, do you think I’m a child as well?” Zena’s voice was a low hiss, her eyes fixed on the dark beyond the cleft. She didn’t turn to look at him.
“No,” Richard said, his shoulder still pressed to the cool stone beside her. “I hope not. Not after the things we’ve done.” He let the silence hang for a breath, the memory of her taste—and his—ghosting across his tongue. “Where did that come from?”
“The daughter of a king is always looked down on,” she spat, the words bitter. “Even when set on a higher shelf than the rest. A symbol. A peace treaty with tits. Never given a chance to prove I’m more than a political fuck.” She finally glanced at him, her dark eyes glinting in the shaft of moonlight. “I thought it would be different with you.”
“You never have to prove anything to me,” Richard said, the truth of it simple and solid as stone. “I just want everyone safe.”
“I know,” Zena whispered, her defiance softening. “I felt it. In the bond.” She looked back into the abyss. “My plan was to kill the monster. Bring its head back. A token.” She swallowed. “Of love.”
Richard didn’t answer with words. He reached out, his calloused fingers finding hers in the dark. He laced them together, squeezing once. Her hand was small, but her grip was iron. Through the bond, he didn’t send a feeling or a thought. He just opened himself, letting her feel the raw, unshaped weight of his trust—a foundation, not a cage. Her breath caught. A single, hot tear traced a path through the dried centipede ichor on her cheek. Then she nodded, once, and let go. She bent, picked up Hilda’s necklace, and slipped it over her head. The iron settled between her breasts. “It’s close,” she breathed. “It’s waiting for me to come to it.”
“Let’s go back to the group and attack it together,” Richard said, his voice low and steady in the dark. He squeezed her hand once more before letting go. “And if you want to give me a token of love… I can think of a different kind of head I’d prefer.”
Zena let out a sharp, surprised laugh that echoed off the narrow stone walls, a bright, brash sound in the silent dark. It was the moment the thing had been waiting for. The blackness beyond the cleft erupted. A segmented, chitinous leg, thick as a tree trunk and glistening with slime, speared through the opening, shattering rock where they’d stood a heartbeat before. Richard shoved Zena back down the tunnel with all his strength. The ledge beneath his boots crumbled away into nothing. He fell, his stomach lurching, hands scrabbling wildly at the air before they caught a jagged lip of rock. He hung there, suspended over a drop into absolute black, the sound of the monster’s mandibles clicking hungrily from above.
He began to climb, muscles in his shoulders and back screaming, fingers bleeding as they dug into crevices. Above, he heard Zena’s panicked scream—not of fear for herself, but for him—cut short by the wet, heavy sound of impact and a furious snarl. The bond flooded with a cocktail of her terror, her rage, and a sharp, blooming pain in her side. He climbed faster. A shower of loose stone and foul-smelling ichor rained down on him. He heard her warhammer connect with a sound like a bell cracking, followed by her guttural cry of effort.
He hauled himself over the ledge, rolling onto his back, gasping. The scene was a blur of violence. Zena was a whirlwind in the shaft of moonlight, Hilda’s iron necklace flashing as she danced between two massive, probing legs. One of the creature’s appendages was bent at a sickening angle, oozing black fluid. But another had caught her across the ribs, and the bond echoed with the hot, sharp ache of cracked bone. She was fighting to survive, not to win, every dodge desperate, every swing a bid for one more breath. Richard pushed to his feet, his own body humming with her borrowed pain, and saw the monster’s blind, armored head beginning to force its way into the cleft, mandibles wide enough to shear them both in half.
Richard bit back the shout, his throat tight. Calling out would be a death sentence for her. He scanned the cavern, his farmer’s eyes picking out details in the fractured moonlight: a higher ledge, ten feet up and to the left, and below it, a patch on the monster’s bulbous head where the chitin looked softer, weathered, like bark on a dying tree. A plan crystallized, cold and clear. He’d need to get up there and drive something—anything—into that weak spot. But his muscles were lead, his fingers slick with blood. He needed force he didn’t have. He closed his eyes, shutting out Zena’s desperate dance, and dove inward, into the humming, painful web of the bond. He found Lys’s thread—a strand of cool, silver amusement—and pulled, sending a single, focused thought along it: *The high ledge. I need a boost. Now.*
The response was immediate, a ripple of wicked delight. From the tunnel mouth, a shimmering, translucent platform of force materialized just below the target ledge, glowing faintly in the dark. It was an invitation, and a test. Richard didn’t hesitate. He pushed off the wall, sprinting three hard steps through the slime and rubble, and launched himself. His boots hit the magical construct not with solidity, but with a resilient, spring-like give. It absorbed his momentum and then threw it back, catapulting him upward. He soared, the cavern tilting, and his hands slapped onto the rough ledge. He hauled himself over, rolling to his knees in time to see the platform wink out. Below, Lys gave him a faint, cocky salute from the shadows, his expression one of lurid enjoyment.
On the ledge, there was no weapon. Only a long, sharp stalactite that had fallen and wedged itself in a crack. It was heavier than it looked, a spear of solid stone. He wrapped his hands around its cold, rough length and braced his feet. Zena was tiring. He felt it in the bond—a fiery stitch in her side, the tremble in her legs, her breath coming in ragged, wet gasps. The monster’s head was fully in the cleft now, mandibles snapping a hair’s breadth from her face. Richard hefted the stone spear, aimed for that soft, dark patch, and poured everything—his fear for her, his own aching exhaustion, the shared pain humming in his veins—into his arms. He drove the point down.
The impact traveled up his arms like a clap of thunder. The stone tip punched through the chitin with a sickening, wet crunch. Black, foul-smelling ichor geysered. The creature let out a sound that wasn’t a sound—a high-frequency shriek of pure agony that vibrated in their teeth and bones. Its massive body convulsed, legs flailing wildly. One caught Zena across the back, sending her sprawling. The bond screamed with her new pain, a white-hot brand across Richard’s own spine. The monster thrashed, trying to retreat, but the stone spear held it pinned. Its death throes were violent, shaking the cavern, raining dust and stone. Then, with a final, shuddering tremble, it went still. The silence that followed was deafening, broken only by the drip of ichor and Zena’s pained, ragged breathing.
Richard slid down from the ledge, landing in the muck. He stumbled to Zena, who was pushing herself up onto her elbows, her face pale. “Token delivered,” he grunted, offering a hand. She took it, her grip still fierce, and let him pull her to her feet. She leaned into him, her body trembling not with fear, but with spent adrenaline. Through the bond, he felt her rage cooling, replaced by a deep, shuddering relief, and beneath that, a flicker of something warmer, something that belonged only to him. She looked up at the dead monster, then at him, and a slow, bloody smile spread across her face. “Next time,” she whispered, her voice hoarse, “ask for the head you actually want.”
Richard collapsed against the cavern wall, then slid down into the muck, holding his sides. Laughter tore out of him, raw and gasping, tears streaming through the grime on his face. He couldn’t catch his breath, his whole body shaking with it. “Take… care… wounds,” he managed to wheeze between convulsive bursts, waving a weak hand toward Zena. She was already pressing a palm to her own ribs, a soft golden light emanating from her fingers as the cracked bone knitted itself back together. She finished long before his laughter subsided into choked, helpless giggles. She stared down at him, her bloody smile gone, replaced by genuine bewilderment. “I think I broke him,” she said aloud to the empty cavern.
Back in the inner chamber, the sensation hit the others like a wave. Lillian, who was meticulously cleaning her scimitars, froze. A foreign, bubbling joy flooded her senses, so bright it was painful. Hilda, sharpening a piece of chitin against the stone, dropped it with a clatter as a grin split her face unbidden. Lys, lounging against the wall, let out a low, delighted chuckle. “Oh, someone’s having a moment,” he purred. The shared feeling was unmistakable—Richard’s laughter, echoing through the bond not as sound, but as pure, unfiltered sensation. Without a word, all three moved toward the tunnel, drawn by the bizarre, infectious pulse.
Hilda was the first to round the bend, her warhammer held low and ready. She took in the scene—the dead monster, the ichor, Zena standing over a collapsed Richard who was still wheezing with helpless laughter—and her brow furrowed. “What in the deep halls happened? Did the thing tickle him to death?”
“Since this whole wretched affair began,” Lys said, sliding past Hilda with an elegant step to avoid the muck, his silver hair catching the faint light, “this is the first time our dear farmer has laughed. You could always feel it, tucked behind the stubbornness and the pain—a light-hearted boy. It was all bottled up. This…” He gestured with a flourish at Richard, who was now clutching his stomach, tears cutting clean tracks through the grime on his cheeks. “…is the inevitable release.”
“What should we do now” Lillian’s question hung in the damp air, met with exhausted silence. Hilda solved it. She strode over, bent, and hauled Richard up and over her shoulder like a sack of grain. “We move,” she grunted, nodding toward the slender crack of moonlight high on the far wall. “That way’s out. Or closer to it.” As she adjusted his weight, Zena stepped close. She held out the dwarven clan symbol, the etched stone warm from her own skin. “Here,” she said, her voice uncharacteristically soft. “I know what a clan symbol means.” Hilda’s eyes, hard as flint, flickered. She took the necklace, her thick fingers closing around it with a reverence that contradicted everything else about her. She gave a single, sharp nod, then looped it back over her head, tucking it beneath her tunic.
"Put me down," Richard wheezed, the last of his laughter dying in his throat as Hilda's shoulder dug into his stomach. "I can walk."
"No," Hilda grunted, adjusting her grip as she navigated the uneven floor toward the distant crack of light. Her hand, large and calloused, squeezed his ass firmly through his trousers, a possessive, practical gesture. "We're exiting this cave before sunrise, and I never thought I'd say it, but I will be so gods-damned happy to leave a cave. You make too many detours." She squeezed again, harder. "You stay put."
"What about your necklace?" he asked, the stone of the clan symbol pressing into his side through her tunic.
Her stride hitched for a single step. "It's where it belongs," she said, her voice losing its gravelly edge for a breath. "Now shut up. The exit's a climb." They reached the base of the wall where the moonlight filtered down. She finally let him slide down her body, his back against the cool stone.
Hilda leaned her warhammer against the wall, the metal scraping stone. "Short break. Then we climb." Richard, still propped against the cool rock, reached out and caught her hand before she could pull away. His fingers traced the lump of the clan symbol beneath the rough fabric of her tunic. "What happened to them?" he asked, his voice low in the damp quiet. "Your clan."
Her hand went rigid in his. Through the bond, he didn't feel anger. He felt a hollow, cold space, vast and echoing, like an abandoned hall. She looked at their joined hands, then at his face, her flinty eyes searching for mockery and finding none. "They're dead," she said, the words flat and final. "The elder I killed had sold our forge-rights to a human consortium. Poisoned the clan council's wine during the ratification feast. I was on perimeter watch. Came back to silence." She pulled her hand free, but slowly, as if the memory weighed it down. "I found him gloating in the mead hall, the scroll in his hand. My father, my brothers... they were still in their chairs. Blue in the face." She shrugged, a massive, weary motion. "So I took his head. And my name."
The silence that followed was thick, broken only by the distant drip of water. Then Lys, who had been listening while polishing a dagger with a scrap of silk, let out a soft sigh. "And thus, the most fearsome beardling in the twelve lands was born from treachery and a single, perfect cut. It's almost poetic." He didn't look up. "The bond is a curious thing. We now hold your grief in our chests, Hilda Ironbrow. A weight we did not earn."
Hilda’s jaw tightened, her hand curling into a fist against the stone. The cold, hollow grief in the bond was being slowly filled—not with pity, but with a sharp, metallic anger from Zena, a cold, calculating fury from Lys, and from Lillian, a silent, focused rage as palpable as a drawn blade. She felt Richard’s own stubborn fire, a mirror to her own, refusing to let the memory be a quiet, shameful thing. She looked at their faces, shadowed in the faint light, and the words, locked away for years, broke free. “He wasn’t just gloating,” she said, her voice a low rumble. “He was counting coin. My family’s blood wasn’t even dry on the table. I walked in, and he smiled at me. Told me I could have a cut of the consortium’s first shipment if I kept my mouth shut.” She spat on the cave floor. “My warhammer was still in my hand from watch. I didn’t even swing it. I just… stepped forward and brought the spike down through the top of his skull. It went through the scroll, the table, everything. The sound.” She looked at her own palm. “The clan law said exile for killing an elder without a council verdict. So they gave me my name and an hour to leave the mountains. I took his head with me. Buried it at the first crossroads.”
The cave held its breath. Richard was the one who broke the silence, his voice rough. “Good.”
Hilda blinked, the single word cutting through the memory’s fog. She looked at him, this filthy, stubborn boy propped against the wall, and a laugh burst from her—a short, sharp bark that held no humor, only a savage kind of recognition. “Yeah,” she grunted. “It was.” She pushed off the wall, the moment of vulnerability passing like a shadow. “Enight. We’ve got a climb.” She turned to the wall, gauging the handholds in the dim light.
Zena moved first, a blur of black hair and fierce motion. She crashed into Hilda, wrapping her arms around the dwarf’s broad shoulders in a tight, impulsive hug. “I’ll help you kill every last one of them,” she whispered fiercely into Hilda’s neck. “You just have to ask.”
Lys, leaning against the wall with a faint, knowing smile, fanned himself with a scrap of silk. “That’s a significant offer, coming from a chaos-drunk goblin princess. I, for one, wouldn’t be opposed to lending a hand. Or a blade. Or a particularly clever poison.”
Lillian didn’t speak. She simply stepped forward, her movement silent and precise, and placed a hand on Hilda’s armored shoulder. Her grip was firm, her grey eyes steady. “You can count on me,” she said, the words a quiet vow.
Hilda stood rigid for a moment, then her shoulders slumped. She let out a shaky breath, fighting back the hot sting in her eyes. She shoved Zena back gently, clearing her throat. “Right. So it’s the Fellowship of the Cocksuckers, then.” She looked past them to Richard, who was already testing a handhold on the rock face. “You got anything else to add, farm boy?”
Richard hauled himself up onto the first ledge, his muscles coiling with the effort. He didn’t look back. “Just that it looks like after I overthrow a criminal slaving organization,” he grunted, finding his footing, “I’ve got a dwarven consortium to collapse.” He began to climb in earnest, the sound of his breathing and the scrape of his boots on stone filling the silence he left behind.