Godsforsaken

Chapter 5: Yume

I came to. That was a better development than I'd expected. Could have done without the pain in my legs though. Other than that I was warm and there was a soft weight against my side, so my situation was much better than I'd had any right to expect.

I was leaning against a rock wall in a small cave with a view of a river. The soft weight against my side turned out to be Yume, the cute fox girl who looked about an order of magnitude cuter now that she was sleeping and didn't have that weary expression on her face. Next to us was a small campfire and as I looked over to it I finally found out why my legs were hurting so bad. They were bent in places legs just weren't supposed to bend. Surprisingly my clothes weren't wet, though. Neither were Yume's. Maybe she'd used that alleged fire magic of hers to dry us off?

I wanted to just drink a healing potion to get my legs taken care of but I was going to need Yume's help to set them first or they'd heal crooked. The healing potion had a bone setting effect built in but it wasn't strong enough to deal with damage this severe. Unfortunately my bag of holding was lying just outside of my reach, along with all my other gear.

With nothing better to do I just sat there and listened to Yume's breathing as she slept. From my surroundings it was pretty clear she'd taken care of me until she'd fallen asleep.

Finally, she woke up, rubbing her eyes, and then realization hit her and she turned to me.

“Hi”, I said.

“Oh. Oh!”, she said, surprised that I was up. “You're awake. Good. Ah, please don't get up.”

“Yeah, I noticed”, I said. “Thank you for taking care of me.”

“It was the least I could do after you saved my life.” And then she got all indignant on me. “Which was stupid of you, by the way. Without your priestess friend we would have both died.”

“Believe me, I am well aware of how blessed I am. So, what happened? I guess you didn't fall unconscious.”

She nodded. “Yes. That sphere of air protected us not only from the impact but also from drowning. We fell all the way down to the riverbed, bounced off, bounced against the cliff wall, then the sphere broke and we landed on the ground. I was left unscathed because you were holding me so tightly but you landed badly and broke your legs, which was apparently painful enough to knock you out.”

“Oh, so that's why our clothes aren't soaking wet, then?”, I asked.

She stared at me. “THAT is the first thing you ask about?”

I shrugged. “Broken legs and wet pants are a horrible combination. Speaking of, mind helping me get my legs fixed?”

She looked at me. “What do you need?”

“First I need my bag of holding.”

“Bag of what?”

I cocked my head to the side and looked at her, then said slowly, certain she just hadn't heard me correctly: “My bag of holding. You know, that thing over there?” I pointed at the unassuming jute bag and she walked over to grab it for me.

“If there was a healing potion in there I'm sure the vial broke during our fall”, she said, handing it to me.

“I doubt it. It's a bag of holding after all.”

“What does that mean?”, she finally asked, a little annoyed.

“You've never seen a bag of holding before?”, I asked, baffled.

She shook her head.

I blinked at her and opened the bag. “It has a spatial enchantment on it, meant for storage”, I said and to demonstrate I pulled out a halberd so big it couldn't possibly have fit in that bag.

Her eyes widened and she said: “Oh, that makes so much more sense.”

“Do you seriously not have bags of holding where you come from? How do you people carry stuff around?”, I asked.

“We don't use bags. We use spatial rings. Simple rings adorned with a gem. The gem has a spatial enchantment on it. But now I finally know why nobody is wearing spatial rings in this land and why everyone is carrying such tiny little bags around.”

“Huh, those sound useful. Much harder for a pickpocket to steal a ring than a bag.”

“Sure”, she said. “In exchange people lose fingers to bandits all the time.”

I winced and rummaged in my bag until I found the healing potion I'd been looking for. “There. Now, I need your help with something distasteful”, I said.

“That being?”, she asked.

“I need you to help me set my legs”, I explained. “I don't want them to heal crooked so we need to align the bones before I drink this potion. I'm going to bite down on a strip of rawhide and lean back as you pull on my legs to put them back into shape.”

She frowned. “You know that's going to hurt like crazy, right?”

I gave her a smirk. “That's what the rawhide is for. So I don't bite my tongue off from the pain. But if your illusion magic could shut off the pain I wouldn't mind you casting a spell on me.”

She considered. “What you have planned will be such a monstrous amount of pain that I won't be able to shut it off completely. But I can dull it for you.”

“I'll take what I can get”, I said and pulled a strip of rawhide from my bag, put it between my teeth and said with my mouth full: “Whenever you're ready.”

A light blue haze wrapped around me and suddenly I could no longer feel my legs. Then she grabbed hold of my foot, eliciting a mere twinge of pain, and looked me in the eyes. I leaned back, then nodded.

Yume had been right about being able to dull the pain. Unfortunately, dulling pain intense enough to make you wish someone would amputate your legs already still resulted in pain bad enough to make grown men cry. I did not sob, I did not bawl. But I did bite down on that strip of rawhide until I'd nearly given myself a cramp and tears were streaking down my cheeks by the time we were done.

“Thank you”, I said breathlessly before drinking the healing potion. I could feel it going to work immediately.

“You're welcome, though I'd prefer it if you didn't ask me to do that again”, she said.

“I'll make sure to try not to break my legs again”, I promised her, eliciting a small smile from her before she asked:

“So, how long will this take to work?”

“It should be mended by tonight”, I said. “By tomorrow morning I should be able to run again.”

“Good, then I guess we leave in the morning?”

I nodded, then grabbed for my bag of holding again and pulled out a weirdly shaped stone.

“What is that?”, Yume asked.

“Thrumming stone”, I explained. “They're made in matching sets of two. Squeeze one and the other vibrates. I gave the other one to Alisha a while back and we've trained a couple signals on them. Just letting her know that I survived and am fine.”

“Clever”, Yume said.

I gave the stone three short squeezes, gave it a minute and then gave it another three short squeezes again. Three squeezes meant that everything was fine and I repeated it in case she hadn't had her own thrumming stone ready. A minute later the stone gave three short vibrations in response, letting me know that she got my message and was fine as well. I let out a sigh of relief. Between the three of them they should have had no issue killing the hydra but I'd still been worried.

I was pulled out of my musings by Yume's stomach growling. She blushed scarlet, her cheeks even redder than her hair.

“You... wouldn't happen to have something edible in that bag?”, she asked.

I smiled and began rummaging in my bag of holding. “Do you want a small snack or do you want to cook a proper meal?”, I asked.

“If we're stuck here for a while we might as well cook. But you'll have to instruct me. All the ingredients here are weird to me.”

For the next two hours Yume and I cooked a fish stew over the campfire she'd built. She'd managed to catch a few fish from the river and I had some onions, garlic, white wine, potatoes and cream to contribute. While we worked I got her to talk about the cuisine of her homeland and while our cuisine seemed weird to her I thought the same of hers. Raw fish, dried seaweed, the runoff from fermented bean paste... it all sounded a lot less appetizing than what I was used to but, then again, she probably thought the same of what we considered normal.

But dinner was still enjoyable and even though our cuisine seemed weird to her she ended up enjoying the stew well enough.

When we were done with our food my legs no longer felt like two handfuls of gravel wrapped in fleshy stockings so I pulled my bedroll from my bag of holding and laid it out for us, then scooted onto it alongside Yume.

We just sat there for a while, leaning against each other, when I felt her turn to face me. I looked at her and she was looking up at me, an almost desperate look on her. I wanted to ask her what was wrong when she pressed herself against me and kissed me. Her lips felt much fuller than they looked and they expertly moved against mine. She was so short she had to lean up to kiss me so she was kissing my top lip more than my bottom lip and as I leaned into the kiss she snaked her arms around my neck to pull herself up a little. She was warm, warmer than any woman I'd ever been with, and I suspected it had something to do with her being part fox – canines of all stripes felt warm to the touch.

Soon enough I felt her tongue probing against my lips and I let her in, our tongues dancing as she scooted over and straddled me. I placed my hands on her butt and pulled her closer and I felt her tails wagging in response, swishing over my legs. When she leaned back and took a deep breath her eyes were lidded and her face flush. Her lips looked swollen and were glistening from our saliva and she licked over them as she loosened her odd garment a little. That's when I noticed that she wasn't wearing any undergarments as I could feel my pants getting wet where her crotch was pressed to mine.

I slipped my hand between us and, sure enough, I could feel her soaking wet pussy and rubbed along her slit.

“I want you...”, she moaned quietly.

I bit my lip and said: “Let me taste you first.”

Her breathing hitched and she looked into my eyes. “Are you sure?”, she asked.

“Of course.”

I scooted lower until I was wholly lying on the ground and no longer leaned against a rock. With my legs still messed up I couldn't kneel between her legs so instead she helped me take my tunic off before kneeling down over my face, her pussy just inches from my mouth. She was hairless, so smooth that I suspected that she couldn't grow any hair down there, same as Alisha. Her labia were swollen and hot and already so wet. I licked my lips at the sight and I heard her swallowing when she saw it.

“No man has ever wanted to do that to me”, she said. “They only did it when I asked them to.”

“Relax and let me get to work”, I told her before grabbing hold of her hips and pulling her down. She tasted like cinnamon and sweet plums, her juices almost like those of ripe fruit they were so sweet. To say that Yume was wet would have been an understatement. She was positively gushing, her juices running down my chin because I couldn't lap up everything she was giving me. I massaged her puffy outer lips with my lips and gently nibbled on them, eliciting a squeal from Yume as two of her tails started tickling my hands on her hips and the third one rubbed over my upper body. I went even deeper, gently sucking on her inner lips before licking all around her rock hard pearl, careful to only touch it briefly.

Soon she was rocking against me, trying to push her clit into my mouth, but I kept pushing her away to tease her, listening to her breathing getting more and more ragged until I finally decided I'd let her teeter on the edge enough. Without warning I wrapped my lips around her clit and swirled my tongue around it. She screamed out in pleasure and I took my hands off her hips so she could grind against my face as hard as she wanted.

She bucked and moaned and twitched on top of me as she came, her tails flailing around then going rigid and then she just collapsed, her whole body including her tails going slack, only the rock wall behind me keeping her from flopping over.

It took her a moment to catch her breath before she slid down and placed kisses all over my face, cleaning her juices off of me.

“Any man who doesn't want to eat you out is a moron”, I told her when she was done. She smiled and bit her lips as she slipped her hand in my pants and felt around, then her eyes widened when she felt me.

She swallowed but then shook it off and asked: “You think I can take your pants off?”

I tried lifting my legs and there was no pain, so I nodded.

She gently, almost gingerly, slid off my pants and underpants and then bit her lips again as she saw how hard I was for her.

“Everything alright?”, I asked at her reaction.

“Yes, it's just...” She blushed. “I've never seen one this big before. Just wondering how it'll feel.”

“I'll be gentle”, I told her. “If you want me to be.”

She licked her upper lip. “At first, maybe”, she said before she slid down.

She pulled my foreskin back and placed a kiss on the tip, then took me deeper inside her. She'd only barely made it past the head when she struggled to fit more in, it already stretching her jaw. But instead of forcing herself, she did what she could, licking me with her lips wrapped around the tip. Her tongue was a little rougher than that of a human and it felt amazing. During our kiss it had been barely noticeable but on this much more sensitive skin it was quite obvious, though not unpleasant as her saliva was thick and clung to me, a layer of lubrication between her rough tongue and the delicate skin of my dick.

Once she had gotten used to the shape she slid back up, hiked up her odd garment and squatted over me, her pussy lips just a hair's breadth away from my dick.

“Why?”, I finally asked.

“Because I don't have to”, she replied before she impaled herself on me. She got halfway down before she had to pause, her expression an odd mix of shock and arousal, as if she couldn't believe how much I was filling her out but wanted to see how much more she could take. She pulled herself back up and then pushed back down, this time taking three quarters.

“Don't push yourself”, I said and pulled her down into a kiss. I placed my hands on her butt to assist her movements and she rocked up and down on me while I pushed inside her from below. She was incredibly tight and hot and just as wet as when she'd sat on my face. It was running down my balls and down my sides and soon enough the entire cave smelled like cinnamon.

Through our rocking she'd finally managed to take all of me inside her and she was panting like a dog into our kiss. Seeing the utter abandon on the face of a woman who normally seemed so composed was incredibly arousing and I thought I wouldn't be able to last much longer, not with her riding me like that, but then I felt her squeeze down on me and she came on top of me.

“Yes, just like that, I need more, yes, oh kami-sama!” She threw her head back and screamed her pleasure out for all to hear, an odd sound that went on and on and that vaguely resembled the cry of a fox.

It took her a few seconds to catch her breath before she could keep going but then we heard a growl. Yume's ears twisted back and she jumped off me and as she did I got a good look at what had made the sound. A wolf. Except not a wolf. It was easily twice as big as a normal wolf, its eyes red and its fur midnight black.

“Fuck”, I said.

“What is this?”, she asked. “I've never seen a wolf like this.”

“It's a dire wolf”, I said. “They're immune to magic. You can't hurt them with spells.”

Dire wolves were sort of the opposite of barghests. Where barghests were immune to physical attacks most of the times but susceptible to any form of magic, dire wolves were wholly tangible though of course much stronger and tougher than the average wolf, but also immune to magic. It just slid off their fur like water off a duck's feathers.

I looked around desperately for my bag of holding but it was just out of reach. I couldn't stand up yet to attack it with a sword, but a good crossbow bolt to the eye would take it out.

“So they're immune to magic. Do they hunt in packs?”, she asked.

“No, they're lone wolves. Please, I need my crossbow.”

“Relax”, she said. “I've got this.”

Then I noticed that the dire wolf was not attacking her. It was growling at her, like a predator sizing up another and considering whether attacking was worth the risk. The dire wolf made a tentative step forward, apparently having decided it could take Yume, and Yume made an odd motion with her arms.

She held her arms stretched out, the right up in the air and the left pointing at the ground, then she twisted her arms clockwise until they were both parallel with the ground. At this point her hands were beginning to glow with a pure white light. She pulled her forearms in to her right as her hands twisted into claws, her posture almost looking as if she were holding a ball in her hands and then she thrust her hands forward, palms out though her fingers were still curled inward.

At that moment a beam of pure white light, half a foot thick, blasted out from between her arms, caught the dire wolf right in the head and tore a deep furrow through its skull where the brain had been. The dire wolf's dead body tried to take another step and then collapsed to the ground.

I had a hundred questions, but much more urgently I felt the unmistakable pain of blue balls between my legs. We'd stopped at the precise worst moment and my body was punishing me for the frustration.

Syr appeared next to me, her eyes bulging, and she dropped to her knees, hands pressed between her thighs as if that could stop the pain.

“Odin's dick cheese!”, she howled. “What is this?” A part of me wanted to chuckle that Syr of all people would start swearing like this but the rest of me was too busy with the pain. The feeling of blue balls was indescribable, a pain that was at once a dull throb and a sharp stab, a cramp in a place where cramps really didn't belong.

“It's called blue balls”, I told her quietly. “A cramp from lack of release.”

Syr was twitching on the floor when Yume turned around to face me and I was worried she'd just noticed me talking to Syr, which to outsiders appeared a whole lot like talking to myself, but before she could say anything about it I asked:

“What was that? They're supposed to be immune to magic.”

She shook her head. “Later. Right now, you're in pain. So, 'blue balls' is what you call it in this language, is it?”, she asked, confirming that she'd heard at least a bit of what I'd said to Syr.

“Yes.”

She reached between my legs but I caught her hand, not wanting her to make it worse. Pleasuring someone suffering from this would not help.

“Please just leave it be. I'll be alright soon.”

She rolled her eyes. “You aren't the first man I've helped deal with this. I know what I'm doing”, she said, then asked: “Trust me?”

I looked into her shockingly blue eyes.

There were different layers of trust. Trusting someone to not screw you over, trusting someone in a fight... Trusting someone enough to let them handle your balls? That one ranked pretty high on the trust scale. I'd barely met her, but...

I nodded.

She spread my legs a bit and then began gently massaging me. Not my ball sack, but the area right above it, where my balls had clenched up. She gently prodded the cramped muscles and bit by bit they relaxed.

Despite the fact that she had both hands between my legs this wasn't particularly titillating. I was limp and stayed like that, the pain enough to counteract any arousal, but as she kept working the pain lessened and the lack of pain felt as good as actual pleasure would have. And while the situation wasn't arousing it certainly was intimate. She kept eye contact with me but it wasn't out of dominance or embarrassment, she was just trying to see if she was hurting me or not.

When the pain finally stopped, muscles I hadn't even known I'd tensed up relaxed.

“Better?”, she asked.

“Yes, thank you”, I said.

She sat up and away from me, so I covered myself with the blanket of my bedroll.

“But now I have a few questions”, I said.

“Go ahead”, she said. “I think I have a few now, too.”

I nodded. “What was that? Dire wolves are supposed to be immune to magic.”

She shrugged. “So you said. But that wasn't magic. It was” and then she said a word I heard as 'key'.

“Key?”, I asked, miming turning a key in a lock.

She frowned, then seemed to get it. “Oh! No no no, Qi. Q, I.”

“Qi?”, I asked, feeling the word out. “What's that?”

“How long have you been an adventurer?”, she asked.

I frowned. “Six years. Nine if you want to get technical. What's that got to do with anything?”, I asked.

She thought about it for a while, then said: “Well that settles it. During my whole time in this land I've yet to see anyone here using Qi. You not being able to use it I could understand but if you haven't even heard of it in most of a decade I must assume people here don't know how to use it at all.”

“I can honestly say I've never heard about it. What is it? Some different kind of magic?”

She shook her head. “No, Qi is... alright, so there are two primal forces that mortals can manipulate. The first one is Chi, the force of the universe, I believe you people call it 'mana'. Not everyone has a talent for it and those who lack that talent can't gain it.”

“Right. I'm one of those. I can't touch mana, though I can at least see it.”

She nodded. “Now, Qi is something different. Chi comes from outside your body, but Qi comes from the inside. I guess in your tongue you would call it 'life force'. Anything with a heartbeat produces Qi. And anything sentient that produces Qi can use it.”

My eyes widened. “So does that mean I could learn to do that?”, I asked, referring to that beam of light.

“Maybe not quite that one”, she hedged. “It requires a lot of Qi and kitsune have more Qi to work with than the average mortal, but in general you could learn these techniques, yes.”

I swallowed. “Would you teach me?”, I asked.

She bit her lip. “I don't know whether I would make a good teacher”, she said.

“You looked pretty competent there.”

She chuckled. “I am not being humble. I am good at this. I've practiced these techniques for decades.” Decades? She looked to be barely at the age of majority. “But I've never actually taught anyone. Then again, my sensei did say that at a certain level of skill the only way to grow stronger would be to train others...” She trailed off and considered. “Alright, I will teach you, but only until we meet up with the rest of the group. There is a reason I haven't been using this. I don't want my Master”, she practically spat the word, “to force me to teach him.”

“Thank you”, I said, as seriously as I could. “But now I have to ask. Why do you travel with him?”

Her eyes narrowed. “He is my Master”, she said, in a monotone.

“But do you like him?”, I asked.

“He is my Master”, she said again, in the same monotone.

I frowned. “Does he control you with that collar?”, I asked.

Her eyes widened a bit and she replied, again in a monotone: “I am not allowed to discuss the properties of my collar.” She emphasized the word 'discuss' ever so slightly as if trying to give me a hint.

I thought about it, then got it. “Ah. Alright, so you aren't allowed to discuss it”, I said, putting emphasis on the word as well. “So blink once for yes and twice for no.”

Her eyes widened before her lips curled into a small smile.

“Do you stay with him because you like him?”

Blink blink.

“Does he control you with that collar?”

Blink.

“Was he the one who put that collar on you?”

Blink blink.

I thought about that for a while. “Were you given to him when he became a Chosen One?”

Blink.

I felt my bile rise. She had been treated like any other piece of legendary gear a Chosen One received when they were chosen. “Alright, so I'm guessing you can't remove that collar on your own or you would have done so already. Could I take that collar off?”

Her eyes widened in worry. Blink blink.

“Something bad happens if I do.”

Blink.

“It hurts you?”

Blink blink.

I thought about that for a while, then got it. “He ordered you to attack anyone who tries to tamper with it, right?”

She relaxed. Blink.

“Shit. Now, for a different question. If you weren't wearing that collar, what would you do?”

Finally she spoke up: “I would murder him for what he did to me.” There was no hesitation in her voice.

“And then?”

“I have no idea. It's not as though I belong anywhere.” What did that mean? “I would want to enjoy my freedom, I suppose. Maybe I'd hunt down those who captured me.”

I thought about it for a while, then came to a decision. “Alright, do you know what tier of item your collar is?”, I asked.

“Tier?”, she asked.

“Ah, shit. They probably grade magic items differently where you're from. We classify magic items as lesser, medium and high tier, then comes legendary and finally mythic, with legendary being stuff like the sword the Chosen One wields and mythic being the stuff the gods themselves use. Do you know if your collar is mythic tier?”

She thought about it. “By this classification, no, certainly not. I'm not sure whether it would qualify as legendary or high tier, though.”

I nodded, then pulled something from my bag of holding. It was a small, very thin knife tapered to a fine point. I held it out to her. “This is a dispelling stiletto. It can be used once a day. If used on lesser and medium tier magic items it will disable the magic permanently. On mythic gear it doesn't work at all, but on high and legendary tier items it will disrupt the effect temporarily. Long enough to, say, take a collar off.”

Her eyes widened but she held herself back. “What do you want for this?”, she asked.

I frowned. “Nothing. I want you to have this.”

Now it was her turn to frown. “There is no way you'll just give me something this valuable for free. What do you want? An oath of fealty, making me follow you out of obligation and honor rather than compulsion?”

I chuckled. “Gods, you're cynical. No, you can have this free of charge. I only want to give you some food for thought.”

“Here it comes”, she muttered.

“Do you have Dark Lords where you come from?”, I asked.

“What's that got to do with anything?”

“Humor me.”

She sighed. “We have something similar, yes. We call them Maou, which roughly translates to Devil King or Demon Lord.”

My eyes widened a bit at the name but I continued. “Did you know they have different classes, just like adventurers?”

She thought about it. “I guess that's what my Master's comment about a beast master was about?”

“Yes”, I said. “Thing is, there is one class that is neither physically strong nor magically powerful but that can only be killed by a Chosen One. Anyone else can't even pierce their skin.”

Her eyes widened.

“So if you use this now, either the Chosen One notices that you're no longer under his thrall and runs before you can kill him or you do manage to kill him. Either way, there would be no Chosen One left to fight that Dark Lord. And while all evidence points towards the Dark Lord being a beast master, he might still be this invulnerable type and I'd rather not have to babysit his broken and battered body for however long it takes the gods to send another Chosen One to put the finishing blow on him.”

She frowned. “So you want me to wait.”

“I won't dictate your actions to you either way. But there is something else to consider”, I told her, my voice taking on a conspiratorial tone.

“Namely?”, she asked.

“Alisha, Selene, and I were hired to keep the Chosen One safe until such time as he completes his quest. If you attack him until then we would be duty-bound to protect him. If, however, you wait until our contract has ended, not only would we no longer need to protect him from you, we would be free to help you instead.”

She considered that for a while, biting her lower lip in thought. “I see the wisdom in your proposal. I will consider waiting under one condition.”

“Name it.”

Her voice was sad as she said: “I do not wish to be used by him again. I want you to help make sure he doesn't anymore.” I smiled.

“You want me to cockblock him? I can do that.”

She smiled too, though a lot more wryly. “Then I will wait. However”, she said and looked me right in the eyes. “I still cannot accept this without proper compensation.”

“I already told you...” I began but she cut me off.

“Let me give you food for thought as well, Felix. I do not age like you humans do. I can outlive any human. I was prepared to stay with my Master until he died of old age and then take my freedom back. Give it, say, fifty to sixty years until that happened. That means this gift”, she said, indicating the stiletto I still held out for her, “is worth sixty years of freedom for me. I cannot accept that without giving you something in return. My honor would not allow that.” She hesitated, then added: “But I believe you when you say that you don't want to enslave me.” She looked me in the eyes again and said: “So how about this, then. It took me decades of training to learn the Qi manipulation techniques I know. In exchange for this stiletto I will teach you and your companions all you'd care to learn about it.”

I swallowed and considered. Then as I thought about it, a small smile crept over my face. “It would take you quite some time to teach us that much.”

She smiled as well. “Then I shall stay with you until you have learned all I can teach.”

Then I held up a hand. “But under the condition that you can leave and do whatever you want whenever you want”, I said hurriedly, then added: “I refuse to accept any sort of binding oath from you.”

She shook her head. “You should really stop being so considerate. It makes me think you're too good to be true.”

I chuckled. “I've been living a life too good to be true ever since I met Alisha”, I countered. “Sometimes you just need to accept that good things happen.”

At that she leaned forward and caught my lips in a whisper of a kiss. When she drew back she'd taken the dispelling stiletto out of my hands. As she looked at it, she got a worried look on her face.

“What do I do if I lose this or if he realizes what it is and makes me drop it?”, she asked.

I snorted. “Look, I always carry ten of these. If you lose it I still have nine. Worst comes to worst, I'll use one in your stead.”

She relaxed at that. “Alright, that's good.” She paused for a long time, then said: “I still owe you something, though.”

I frowned. “What would that be?”, I asked.

She smiled. “Release. We stopped at the worst possible time there”, she told me. I swallowed. “You don't want that?”

“I'd like that very much. I just don't want you to think I expect this of you.”

She smirked. “And if I want to do this for me?”

I smiled and told her: “Then I'd be glad to let you.”

Needing no further encouragement she slid onto the bedroll beside me to my right. Her hand sneaked under the blanket and grabbed my dick, which was already getting hard again. She pressed her lips against my neck and started kissing as she pulled the blanket away and then started stroking my dick, the motion almost lazy.

“Do you trust me?”, she asked again.

I wasn't quite sure what she was planning to do now but after everything that had happened so far I did trust her, even more than the last time she'd asked.

“Yes”, I said and I saw a light blue haze permeating the area.

“Say my name”, she whispered into my ear.

“Yume”, I said and she shivered.

“Do you know what it means?”, she asked, her voice still a whisper.

“No”, I said, my eyelids growing heavy.

“It means 'dream'”, she whispered, and I felt consciousness slip away.