“I accept your pledge,” Nola said. “Now, I must rest while you work if I’m going to evolve before Duul manages to kill me off, but I’ll leave you with this nugget of wisdom: donkeys don’t belong in the temple.”
“Right,” I said. “Sorry.” I pulled the animal through the temple’s doorframe and back outside. “Stay here, little man.”
“I’m sure no male wants to be called that,” Vix said, leaning against the doorframe.
“Hey. Thank you for sticking around. I want to do everything I can to help you work efficiently at building up the temple. What do you need from me?”
She stepped close and leaned in until her nose grazed against my ear. “I need wood.”
+16
The heat of her breath sent goosebumps down my neck. I wondered what a beastkin would smell like up close, and worried her scent would be more fox than girl, but she was all flowers and vanilla. Either she had been rolling around in a bed of daisies before we got here, or she kept perfume handy.
“Grab a hatchet,” she said, handing me one of the two hatchets she had in hand.
“What?” I asked. “Oh, lumber. Yeah, let’s do it.”
As we walked into the forest, I wondered how the past day had affected our stats. I had used my skillmeister skills on a few folks, and battled two snarling death monsters. Vix had fashioned a huge stone slab door. “Want me to check on your skills before we get started?”
“Sure, boss,” she said.
Boss. It was better than Master. “I can up a few attributes and get you closer to Fundamentals 5, which will let you build with iron. Or I can unlock Wallop 2 for your hammer skills. What do you think?”
“When this is over,” she said, “I need to make a living out there. Fundamentals please.”
“And just like that,” I said, “you’re a little bit stronger. Meanwhile, I’m not sure about this being over anytime soon. I think we’re fighting for our lives, and the fate of the world.”
“Don’t be so dire,” she said. “The gods fight all the time. I’m sure the Great Mother will reign in Duul soon and this will all blow over. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll help protect Nola while we’re here. I don’t want to see her die, but this whole god of war skirmish isn’t going to stop me from planning out the rest of my life.”
“You could plan to stay,” I said. “If Nola survives this, we’ll found a city here. We’d need builders for that.”
Vix sank a hatchet into the side of a tree. “We’ll see.”
I picked a tree of my own to start on. My hatchet arm throbbed with the impact of the first few whacks. I spent some XP to improve my Strength to level eight to help with the task.
I never tired of how powerful that feeling was, of every muscle tightening and growing before relaxing again. My body grew just a bit bigger, heavier. More substantial. At higher levels, my physique would become something truly impressive, to rival the strongest adventurers that walked the lands. I’d just have to make sure I didn’t grow so fast that I became clumsy. Putting on an extra two pounds of muscle is one thing. An extra 20 was quite another. If Blade really had managed to kill Scar after I upped his Strength by nine points, that was pretty impressive from a balance and coordination perspective alone.
It took ten minutes of swinging and grunting before my first tree toppled over. It would take time to cut it into smaller pieces and haul it back to the temple, but it was a start. “How much wood do we need,” I asked.
“Funny you should ask,” Vix said. “Cindra and Mamba will bring back stone, which is great for making strong, dense buildings. It’s slower that way though, and the weight makes building high tricky. So I know I need wood. I just don’t know what to use it for yet.”
“Or how much,” I added.
“Right.”
We worked away at the forest, clearing a small patch where we had knocked the trees over. Five fallen trunks lay in different directions. Vix sank her hatchet into one of them, then threw it aside and bent her knees.
She took in a deep breath, then exhaled quickly. Her voice gave a quick yip as she breathed out.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“No!” she said. “I’m not okay! I’m hundreds of miles from home, the one man in the whole world that wants me is someone I don’t want back, and he’s probably following my scent here while we play house in a big empty cave.”
“He’s not the only one that wants you,” I said. “I hate to hear you talk about yourself that way.”
“Well if there’s someone else,” she said, “he’d better show up soon, because it’s getting increasingly difficult to concentrate with my hormones raging the way they are.”
I landed my hatchet into the fallen tree I was working on.
“You’ve been working out,” Vix said. She took a step toward me. I wiped the sweat from my forehead.
“Yep,” I said, “I’m stronger than ever. You are too.”
“It’s not just your shape,” she said. She was only a foot away from me now. “It’s your scent. It gets more powerful the stronger you grow.”
I left my hatchet poking out of the tree trunk and turned to face her. She nuzzled her head against my chest and breathed in.
“I shouldn’t be so close,” she said. “It just makes me want you more.”
I put my hands on her face and lifted her to eye level. Her skin was soft. Her eyes were wide with emotion.
“I don’t want to take advantage,” I muttered.
“I want you to,” she said. “Please, I need it. It’s the only way I can get my focus back.”
No more holding back. I may not have another chance if I turn her away now, and I wanted her too. I may not be in heat, but thoughts of being with her had been percolating in the back of my mind since I met her. I leaned forward and kissed her. She tilted her head back and let me.
Vix’s tail curled around my body and pulled me closer until our bodies were pinned against each other. She reached in front of her and unhooked her top while I undid the lacing on my vest. When we pulled our leathers away her breasts pressed against my bare chest.
She started to whimper as I kissed her neck and worked my way down. She reached for my pants.
There was no going back now. I wasn’t a worthless boy taking up space in Meadowdale’s temple; I wasn’t an orphan that no one cared about, or a weakling consigned to a life of killing rats and sleeping while hungry. I was skillmeister now. I was a man. I was home.
I was wanted.
+17
The next few days were productive, and my relationship with Vix had only changed for the better after we explored each other’s bodies in the forest. Her mood improved, her focus increased, and I started to work a little harder too. It was strange. I hadn’t set out to impress her until after we became intimate.
Truth be told, we had done it a few times before Vix decided I should keep chopping wood while she started construction. I was happy that we had enough materials for her to start building, but there was part of me that was a little uncomfortable with our arrangement. Cindra had also shown an interest, and I felt like I was betraying her by sleeping with Vix instead of her.
“Twenty more logs,” I said, driving the donkey cart up to the temple’s door. Cindra and Mamba stood there directing a dozen snakes with large blocks of stone on their backs, as well as a horde of cockroaches that carried a single block on their many combined backs.
“I think I figured out what comes next,” Vix said. She had drawn out a diagram in the dirt with a stick. “The temple’s front door stands at the end of this long path, which is flanked on both sides by a hill that rises gradually, like someone long ago had chipped this path out of the hillside itself. Then the temple is built inside the hill under its peak.