Echidna

 

Taro fumbled through his potion bag. Vials clicked together between his numbing fingers. Time was running out like blood from a wound. Damn, he actually was bleeding out onto the smooth granite floor. Blood trickling out into the dark. There were beasts down here that could smell blood through a thousand feet of solid rock.

 

 

"Gotcha," Taro said, pulling out a silvered flask. He popped the stopper off with his thumb and guzzled. Crimson fluid poured down his throat, warming him faster than any brandy. This was the serious shit. It healed Taro so fast--bones knitting, fresh blood pumping, nerves re-firing--it hurt almost as much as the mattock that cracked open his chest in the first place. Almost.

 

 

He grit his teeth as the potion fixed him up like a blacksmith would pound a dent out of plate-mail. The world snapped back into focus and he remembered where he was: a week's journey into the dark beneath the world, lost horta-carved warrens below the ruined Undercity of the Serpent People, and down to his last healing potion.

 

 

Last healing potion. Uh-oh. He held up the empty silvered vial, then inventoried his potion bag. "Oops."

 

 

Taro shook another glow-globe to life. As the tunnel brightened, he listened for a reaction. Nothing. Good. Time to get the fuck out.

 

 

He rifled through his rucksacks--everyone was their own mule down here--and pulled out a lacquer box. He cracked open the lid and watched the compass inside spin. This was a sweet little toy; it pointed to the object of the heart's desire. Taro had lifted it from some swishy buccaneer when a gate scroll misfired and set him world-hopping.

 

 

The needle pointed back the way he came.  Taro moved it to try and triangulate, then stopped, frowning. The needle was pointing back at *him*. Strange. What could that mean? Something wanted him more than he wanted anything else in the world? Well, that was really strange--Taro was the kind of man that wanted all sorts of things--but in Taro's line of work, really strange usually meant really profitable.

 

 

He got his gear back into shape, stood up, and followed the compass needle, using the end opposite of the point as a guide. "Let's see who wants me so much," he said, moving in a well-practiced skulk.

 

 

He maneuvered through the horta-warrens for a few hours, keeping time by the strength of the glow-globe. He took it slow at first, anticipating a random encounter at (ironically enough) regular intervals, but this zone was clean. Hell, it was cleared.  A sterile zone in the middle of a dungeon crawling with degenerate descendants of the Serpent People, undead serpentine sorcerer-kings, and every scaly beast in between. One head-smarting glance through his amber spyglass explained why. The walls were crawling with eldritch glyphs, probably in Old Ophidian, the same short psychic pattern over and over again. You did not need to be a wizard to guess what it meant: "This is the local Big Bad's backyard. Stay and die."

 

 

One horta-smoothed tunnel opened up into a corridor tiled in marble slabs. Taro moved the lacquer box to and fro in front of him, and the compass see-sawed. The subject of his desire was very close now. Taro catalogued the weapons strapped in his scabbards and across his bandoleers, and after careful consideration, drew out first weapon he had ever purchased (instead of inherited from his father or looted from a corpse). A masterwork kukri, curved and wicked.

 

 

"Magic works here," he recited as he crept down the corridor. "High-tech works there." The compass swung like mad. He fell into a ready stance, knees bent, arms splayed but relaxed, kukri at the ready. "But a big fucking knife works everywhere."

 

 

Someone spoke up behind him, "That's what they say."

 

 

Taro spun about, a neat trick when laden down with a couple hundred pounds of adventure gear. A heartbeat later, he said, "Holy shit."

 

 

The girl laughed, a tympanic and silver sound. "You swear a lot for a paladin."

 

 

Taro smiled, but his knife stayed ready. "I lie a lot, too."

 

 

She stepped forward, her bare feet peeking out from her green silk dress. "When I recruited you," she said, tapping a finger against her milk white skin, "everyone in town thought you were a paladin. How? Why?"

 

 

Taro shuffled back. "Easy. Polish your armor and act like you have a stick up your ass. You get free beer and more adventure hooks. Like yours." Taro cleared his throat and impersonated the girl's breathy voice with uncanny accuracy.  "'Look what I found in the nunnery archives! A map to the old Ophidian Empire. I bet there's oodles of treasure down there. Oh, pooh, if only I weren't an innocent, gentle, virginal librarian.'" He swallowed as she laughed. "You lie a lot, too," he accused.

 

 

She stepped closer, one finger coiling a long lock of her blonde hair. "Hey, I *am* a librarian."

 

 

Taro lashed out, his kukri a grey blur in the glow-globe light, until its blade kissed the girl's neck, right below the chin. "That's close enough."

 

 

She bit her lip, watching the muscles of his arm gather and flex. "If I wanted to kill you," she said, "you'd be dead already."

 

 

"You, too," Taro said, and tucked the kukri back into his belt.

 

 

She caressed her neck with a graceful hand. "Now that was a knife," she purred. She shivered and blushed. "So, Mister Fake Paladin. You do not want me dead. What do you want?"

 

 

"A safe, one-way trip out of here," Taro said, scratching the week's growth of beard on his chin. "I'm guessing you run this whole place." He glanced down. Slung to his bandoleer, the compass was going berserk, pointing from her, to him, and back again. "So, Miss Fake Nun, what do you want?"

 

 

"Your children," she said simply.

 

 

"Very funny. What do you want?"

 

 

She rolled her eyes. "Your children."

 

 

"Wait, what?" Taro shook his head. "Look, lady, I'm trying to bargain here. Just tell me what--"

 

 

The girl flung her head back, setting her long blonde hair flying. A snake, green and glittering, uncoiled from behind one of her ears and lashed around Taro's throat like a living whip. The golden color of her hair bled away like so much yellow paint, revealing tresses as green as emeralds. A second snake emerged from her halo of green hair and joined its sister about Taro's neck.

 

 

The snakes possessed a cold, muscular power. They drew Taro to the girl. "I want," she hissed, "to have your children." She pressed her body against his with that same alien strength, and kissed his breath away even as her snakes threatened to choke the life out of him. She reached between his legs. "At least little Taro gets it," she said, and released him.

 

 

Taro fell to all fours, gasping. "Holy shit."

 

 

"You got that right," the girl said, wriggling out of her green dress as if shedding a second skin.

 

 

She stood above him, hands on her bare hips. A dusky flush began between her breasts and spread outward. When the flush touched tipped her breasts, her nipples hardened and darkened to a true purple. Her mouth parted then, and when the flush raced over her belly and into the delta of her sex she mewled, scrapping her fingernails down her thighs. The snakes in her hair encircled her breasts, forked tongues flicking over her flesh. Soon her farmer's daughter complexion vanished entirely, and she stood before Taro, proud and naked and indigo. She demanded, "Well? Don't you dare say 'holy shit' again."

 

 

Taro shook his head and sat up. "No," he said, swallowing, "no. I get it.  You need someone to sire a new royal line, and I'm the first mortal to make it all the way down here alive." He coughed, wiped his mouth. "A test."

 

 

He glanced to his right, where a bare, dainty purple foot tapped out an impatient rhythm on the marble floor. He looked up and met the girl's gaze. Her eyes were wide and impossibly bright, golden and mesmerizing. "How many legitimate paladins did you convince to venture down here before I showed up?"

 

 

"A dozen or so. None of them made it past those inbred dark elves on level three. Too busy smiting evil to keep their eyes on the prize." She tilted her head. "I guess there's a lesson in that, somewhere. Oh, well." She clapped her hands and rubbed them together in an eerie susurrus. "Let's get to the siring. I haven't been knocked up since the empire fell. You can't imagine how bad a girl's biological clock can get after three thousand years."

 

 

"Bad enough to bargain, I bet," Taro said, confidence returning along with the circulation to his head.

 

 

She stamped her foot. Taro saw a spray of green scales on her ankles. "I could just rape the ever living shit out of you. I am a god-damned goddess, I'll have you know," she said.

 

 

"The magic wouldn't work then," Taro said, smiling. "You need the mortal to be willing."

 

 

She crooked an eyebrow at him. "How'd you know?"

 

 

"I'm just making educated guesses. This plane is full of monsters looking for husbands. Frankly, it's bizarre." Taro stood up. "Anyway, my bargain: I'll give myself willingly to you, but there's got to be a limit, and then you've got to let me go, unchanged and unharmed."

 

 

She paced away from him. A splash of emerald green scales traced her spine from the nape of her neck to her pert ass before she disappeared into the gloom at the edge of the glow-globe's light. "Very well," she turned, "I will let you go as soon as you sire me a son." Her eyes gleamed, two points of golden light bobbing in the darkness. "Do we have a bargain?"

 

 

He nodded. "Done deal." There was a sudden rush of air. He looked around.  "So what happens n--"

 

 

The lacquer box cracked. The compass wheel flew out in a shower of splinters and buried itself in the leather codpiece of Taro's armor. "Yeow!"

 

 

The girl surged out of the dark. For a vertiginous moment, Taro thought she was riding a wave of scales, that a sea of snakes was rushing in, filling the corridor behind her. His perspective shifted and he saw the truth. Below her bellybutton, the girl's legs melted and merged into the body of a snake. A massive coil of emerald scaled flesh, as thick and stout as a tree-trunk, sprouted below the delta of her sex.

 

 

She body-slammed Taro against the wall, mouth sealed over his. Her snake trunk thrashed behind her, pulverizing marble. She broke her kiss long enough to whimper, "Sorry," into his mouth. She reached out to him and tore his armor in two. "I'm so sorry." She tossed away his armor and gear like so much crumpled rice-paper. "But it's been so long--mmf." She dove forward for another kiss. Her snake-trunk pressed between his legs and Taro felt his feet leave the ground as she pushed him up the wall. She undulated cool, slick scales against his cock. She treated Taro to the most sinuous dry-hump grind in the material planes. His manhood hardened at once.

 

 

The girl sobbed. "It's been so long. And you gave yourself to me. I…I can’t stop." The snakes in her hair wrapped around his wrists and spread his arms wide. "I can't stop. I need you." She reached down with trembling hands and guided his member into her sex. "Now."

 

 

She held Taro immobile as she fucked him, her body rocking against his as unstoppable and irresistible as a storming sea. He was humiliated to be so powerless against her, bit exhilarated to be the focus of that power. His world narrowed to the heat of her sex, the pillow of sweat her breasts rode against his chest, his denied need to move with her.

 

 

The girl full-body fucked Taro to a shattering orgasm. She screamed his name as he flooded into her. She swooned backward, pulling him gently downward, her great snake-trunk cradling him against her, a snuggle as intimate as it was inhuman.

 

 

"I'm sorry," she whispered again after a while.

 

 

Taro nestled in her coils.  "Are you kidding?" He kissed her neck and she shivered. "My cock made a goddess faint. I've never felt more manly in my fucking life." She giggled but still sounded melancholy, so Taro added, "I came so hard I think I saw my barbarian ancestors punch the sky in Valhalla."

 

 

The girl just stared up at the ceiling. "That's not what I'm apologizing for."

 

 

"Okay." He shrugged. "I give up. What did you do that was so bad?"

 

 

She met his gaze and grinned like an imp. "I only give birth to daughters," she said.