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The Elemental Portals

Book II – Medioterrae

Chapter XI – Like Attracts Like

It took several more days of rest and practice with their newly enchanted weapons before the group was ready to move north into Muspelia. Even then, Paul had his doubts that they were ready.

His main concern was Junafir. The tigress was clearly still suffering from stress after being violated by the spiders and the almost equally horrifying solution Chris had come up with to rid her of the eggs. She hardly ate and refused to practice with her cleaver to find out what magical abilities Magnus might have unlocked in the star sapphire mounted on it. Her symptoms were more than just physical, she was irritable one moment, dazed and confused the next, and she avoided contact with everyone, especially James.

Annie said that Junafir had post-traumatic stress disorder, a fancy name for what they called battle fatigue in Paul’s army days. The symptoms were the same as far as he could tell, he had suffered them himself after losing his family, but he only knew two treatments. The first was to get sloppy drunk with people who had lived through the same experience and cry it out on each other’s shoulders and the second was to find a new purpose in life and let time heal your wounds. Unfortunately, no one else had gone through what Junafir had and they did not have the luxury of time, or beer, to spare.

His second concern was with James. The young human had grown up fast since his father’s death. He had learned something about responsibility and duty, and he had killed several enemies in battle already, but emotionally he was still a boy. James was not handling Junafir’s rejection of his attempts to comfort her well. It was making James angry and aggressive in his training, and that did not bode well for the upcoming fight with the dragoness Aldreda.

Paul was not the only one watching the two former lovers carefully.

Nahal had promised James that she would try to help Junafir, but she had not approached her yet. She had some experience with the shock of rape. Even though the other girls at the brothel she had been sold to tried to prepare her, the man her virginity had been auctioned off to was rough and brutal and she would have killed herself afterwards if the madam had not kept a constant watch over her. Still, she remembered months spent in a fog as she dwindled away before deciding that she would live, if only to exact vengeance on those that had put her there. That list now included certain members of her family, the madam from the brothel, the cruelest customers, Mister Ross, who had hardly even touched her, and Rory Douglas, especially Rory Douglas.

Years later, and violated in more ways than she could have imagined or would care to recall, she had only managed to kill but one of the people on her list, the assassin Sevade. Truth to tell, the fox had not been as cruel as many of the men she had forgotten over the years, but he had been working for Douglas, and had coerced her into trading sex for the skills she needed to exact her revenge.

She also considered James Douglas fair game, since he was the reason she had been sent out with the lecherous assassin, as well as the means for her revenge.

Now, after studying the growing frustration in the man-child and the deteriorating condition of the tigress for several days, Nahal had come up with a plan. Not only a plan to kill James Douglas, as his uncle expected, but to use what was left of him to kill Rory Douglas as well.

The night before they moved out of the campsite she contacted Rory Douglas on the miniature portal. It had been over a week since she had last contacted him, and the fox was upset.

“You’d best be calling to report the death of my Nephew.” The red fox snarled though the small portal.

“Not yet, my liege. The boy is never alone and to kill him in such a large group would be suicide. You would be denied your proof and the trophy you demand. But I have a plan that will allow for both.”

She explained the situation between James and Junafir and how she planned to exploit it. “Then, when I can get him alone close to a portal that will take me back to you, I will collect his head and return forthwith, although I might have to kill one or two more to ensure a clean getaway.”

“No matter.” The fox shrugged. “You don’t get extra credit for volume, just for success.”

“What exactly do I get if I succeed?”

“You get to live and continue working for me.” He grinned.

The prospect did not thrill her. “And if I fail?”

His grin widened. “Assuming you are still alive, you get a personal visit from Mister Ross, whereupon you will wish that you were not.”

She could see the confidence in his smirk, the type that comes with holding all the good cards. With his resources and knowledge of the portals she had no doubt that she would spend the rest of her days looking over her shoulder for Mister Ross should she abandon her task, and those days were likely to be few.

“I shall succeed.”

“I’m counting on it.”

She closed the mini portal, hating what she had to do and wishing that there was another way, but her upbringing had ingrained a need to avenge herself on those that had done her wrong and she could see no alternative. She composed herself before returning top the campsite, least her troubles show on her face and give her away.

* * * * * * *

Back in his Terran castle, where he had taken Nahal’s call, Rory Douglas was deep in thought.

He had excellent night vision and had seen the lines of doubt and deceit on the human’s face as she described her plan. She might have been trained and practiced in feigning pleasure and desire for the brothel customers, but Rory had almost as much experience as a customer as she did as a provider. He had also had a lot of time to study her while ravishing her in increasingly rough and humiliating ways before sending her and the assassin after James Douglas. There was nothing she could hide from him, or so he thought.

All seemed well. At best she would kill James and bring him his head. At worst she would be killed trying, alerting his nephew that he was still after him. If she ran he would find her. If she killed James and died in the act he would hear of it. But was that the total limit of her options? Probably, he told himself.

There was, however, that one lingering note of doubt left hanging in the air after their latest conversation.

He reached out and rang a small silver bell. Almost immediately Mister Ross appeared in the doorway.

“You rang?”

“Yes. I want you to shadow our novice assassin, the girl Nahal.”

“You think she may be up to something?”

Rory shrugged. “Call it insurance.”

Mister Ross bowed and left. He needed no further instruction. Rory nodded at the empty doorway, assured.

He was a strong believer in insurance.

* * * * * * *

After returning to the camp Darryl hinted, strongly, that he and Nahal should retire somewhere private for an hour or two before either had to stand watch. Nahal brushed him off with a gesture.

“I’m going to stay with Junafir tonight.” She told him. “She could use my comfort.”

“Of course, I just ...”

She turned back to him with a smile and gave him a peck on the cheek. “Yes, you just need to rest, but Junafir needs a friend, a female friend. I’m glad that you understand.” Then she whirled away and headed for a small hut that Junafir had taken to staying in, away from the crowded communal hut and James’ fumbling attempts to comfort her.

There were no locks on the doors, but Nahal paused at the entrance, knocked on the frame and called, “Junafir, may I come in?”

“What do you want?”

Nahal took that as a yes and entered the hut. Her eyes adjusted quickly to the dark interior. She found the tigress squatting in the corner, facing the wall, her tail laying limp on the dirt floor.

Junafir glanced over her shoulder. “You are ... Nahal? Darryl’s friend?”

“Yes.”

“Did James send you?”

Nahal moved closer. “No. I came on my own.”

“Why?”

The human girl put a tentative hand on the tiger’s shoulder. Junafir flinched but did not shrug it off.

“I know something of what you have suffered. Not all of it, but some.”

Junafir buried her head between her knees at the mention of her troubles. “How could you?”

Nahal squatted down beside Junafir and gripped her shoulders. “When I was young, I was sold to a woman who kept girls for the pleasure of men. I was not a great beauty or a talented temptress to be offered sparingly at great price, just an ordinary girl. She saw profit only in volume, and so I was used by many, many men; often in groups.”

“At least they weren’t spiders.”

“No. They were dirty, smelly men. Some of which treated me, a daughter of their tribe, with contempt for providing the service they felt guilty for desiring. What is worse, do you think? A mindless attack by creatures acting on instinct or a willful act of violence on one of your own?”

Junafir could hear the ring of truth in Nahal’s voice.

“Were you there a long time?” She sniffled.

“Years. Years of pain and anguish because they almost convinced me that it was my fault. That I was there because I was bad, because something was wrong with me. That is how they control you, by making you a victim and blaming it on you.”

“How did you end up here?”

Nahal answered truthfully, to a degree. “I was bought by a rich ... patron ... who hurt me.” She swept her hair away from the scars on her face. “He marred me, but he continued to abuse me until he grew tired of me and gave me over to me of his minions. His servant brought me here, to the, uh, north country, and the abuse continued until I got away from him.”

Junafir could feel the tension in the human’s embrace and remembered that she had felt that embrace once before, on the night the eggs were purged from her. Although she was tying hard to drive the memory from her mind, she remembered that Nahal had been there helping along side Annie and the coyote. Junafir began to feel a bond of trust between them.

“It’s funny.” She said, feeling a bit apprehensive still. “But after carrying those horrid eggs for so long, when they went, it a little like giving up my babies.”

“Motherly instinct can run high, no matter the circumstances.”

“Have ... have you ever been pregnant?”

Nahal sat back on her heels and her face went blank. “Twice. Twice they gave me drugs to make me miscarry when I started to show and then confined me to my room.” Nahal swallowed. “Squatting over the stone floor when the cramps hit me ... the sound of the discharge hitting the floor ... that is why I had to leave when ... when ...”

Junafir turned and hugged the smaller female. “Shush. I know, I know.”

She reflected on how the human girl had suffered as much as her, not all at once as she had, but repeatedly, over a longer period. Yet she had seen the human moving about the camp, working and acting like a normal person. If Nahal could find the strength to go on, she thought, then maybe she could too.

Nahal sensed the change in the tigress. She buried the real emotions she had called up for her performance and wiped the tears they had produced.

“Thank you, Junafir. I hope we can be friends.”

“I’m sure we can.” Junafir replied. “After all, like attracts like.”

Nahal stroked the tigress’s fur thoughtfully. “Yes, they do, don’t they?”

* * * * * * * *

With Junafir somewhat recovered they head north.

At their first stop after leaving the campsite Darryl estimated that it could take ten or twelve days to reach the base of the mountain where Aldreda was said to store her hoard.

“She’s one of the oldest, largest dragons in Muspelia.” He explained. “So she claims the highest mountain in the northernmost part of the range for her own.”

“It must be cold up there.” Magnus speculated, drawing his cloak closer about him.

“Many of the larger mountains are active volcanos, with hot air vents to keep their chambers warm.” Yup informed him.

“And those that aren’t can be kept comfortable by heating the rocks with a few blasts of dragon breath.” Darryl added.

“Just how much fire can an adult dragon produce?” Coyotka asked out of academic interest.

“Yes.” Paul said, thinking more along more tactical lines. “What will we be up against?”

Darryl sat back and thought for a minute. “Well, my mother told me that when the biggest dragons fight they can blast each other with fire intense enough to melt rock for the time it takes the sun to cross a space the width of her hand before having to resort to claw-to-claw and tooth-to-tooth combat.”

Paul looked to the coyote, who made some mumbled calculations under her breath.

“About a thousand heartbeats on Terra, or twenty Earth minutes.” She declared.

“I suppose.” Darryl conceded. “It takes the better part of a day before they can generate such fire again.”

Paul considered the information silently. While he did the others settled down into their evening routines. Gael and Annie wandered off hand-in-hand to a nearby stream. Coyotka suggested to Chris that they might need more firewood and that they had not tried the area on the other side of the forest. Yup pulled out his deck of cards and board, challenging Magnus to another game of cribbage.

James tried to approach Junafir, but the tigress got up and walked away from the clearing they had stopped in. In frustration James got up and walked in the opposite direction. Nahal took it all in and got up too.

Darryl tried to take her hand to pull her back down beside him. “Maybe Junafir just needs some time to herself.” He suggested.

“I agree.” She said, brushing away his hand and following James out of the clearing.

She found James siting on a log, sulking. She made more noise than necessary as she approached so as not to startle him. He looked around when he heard her and while he did not invite her to join him, he did not get up and leave when she sat down on the log beside him either.

They sat without speaking for a time, and Nahal could feel the tension in James growing.

“Is there something you wanted to say to me?” James grunted when he could not take the silence anymore.

“Yes. Just that I know what you and Junafir are going through and for you not to be mad at her for rejecting you.”

“How could you know what we’ve been though?”

Nahal repeated her story of being sold and abused as a child, again comparing it to Junafir’s brief but horrid rape by the spiders. She also added the part about her abortions and how the expulsion of the eggs reminded her of that. She was surprised to find that the newly awakened memories could bring so much pain after all these years, but by letting the pain reveal itself in her voice she could sense her fellow human’s sympathy for her growing.

When she was finished James was hugging her, comforting her the way he wanted to comfort his tigress. Nahal hugged him back, but not because she needed his comfort. She hugged him back because she had learned it was the best way to make a man-child emotionally attached to you. Those that were brought to the brothel by callous friends and who could not perform because of shyness or love for another quickly felt comfort change to desire in her embrace, and she suspected that James would be no different.

She also did it for Darryl’s benefit, as she had detected the young dragon following her as she sought out James. She suspected that the overgrown lizard would be jealous, and that was fine with her. His anger would help break the integrity of the group and make her job all the easier, so she hugged James, and tucked her head into the hollow of his shoulder like a lover might, and she did not let him break away from the embrace until she had heard Darryl back away from were he was spying on them.

“I’m sorry, Nahal.” James said after she released him. “I didn’t know about … all that.”

“It’s alright.” She replied, wiping a pretend tear. “It’s just been so ling since I’ve had someone I felt I could talk to about it. You are very much like me, despite me being from … the south.”

They were sitting on the log, half turned toward each other, and she had taken his hand. It was smaller than Annie’s hand, and softer than Junafir’s. Her small hand felt comfortable in his larger one. He was unaware that was because she was gently squeezing the sensitive flesh between his thumb and forefinger, as she had been taught to do to calm down aggressive customers.

“I … I should let you get back to Darryl.” James stammered.

“Darryl.” She said dismissively with a toss of her head. “He and I were only together as a form of payment for taking me with him on the road. I didn’t mind, but now that I’ve been able to see the kind of life I have been living I want to put all that behind me. No more trading sex for favours.” She clasped his hand in both of hers and looked up into his face with bright grey eyes. “From now on I want to be that way only with someone I love. You’ve helped me see that, James.”

“I … I have?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

Her face, her lips in articular, were getting closer to his, giving rise to conflicting emotions inside him.

“I … uh, …I should check in of Junafir.”

Nahal drew back, but not far. “Oh, I would not do that. She blames you for all her troubles and unfair as it is, forcing yourself on her too soon will just make her resentment worse.”

“You think so?”

“I know so. She told me herself.” Nahal wrinkled her brow as she pretended to think for a moment. “I will tell you want. I will talk to her …. alone … every day as we head north and tell her how much you care for her and miss her. I will give you an update on the progress every day and when she is ready to see you again I will let you know.”

“You’re sure that’s the best way to handle this?”

“Trust me.” She said, patting his thigh. “You don’t want to blow your chances by rushing in like some over-eager boy.”

James thought about it.

“I suppose you’re right. My experience with women was very limited before meeting Junafir and you have much more in common with her than I do, in a way. And you seem to understand me even though you’re not from Earth.”

“That’s because we’re both human, James, and you know,” she added with a final squeeze to his thigh, “like attracts like.”

* * * * * * * *

Their progress was good over the next few days, but everyone could feel the tension rising between James, Junafir, Nahal and Darryl. Paul was tempted to intervene but both James and Darryl told him that it was being handled, by which he assumed that they meant it was none of his concern, but the welfare of the group and their ability to fight together when they reached Aldreda’s lair was his concern.

He cornered Darryl first.

“I haven’t seen you with your southern friend lately.” He said sitting beside the brooding dragon.

“She’s spending a lot of time with Junafir lately.”

“And with James. Is there a problem there?”

The iridescent blue dragon shook his head. “No, of course not. Nahal is an adult and can choose her own ... friends.” The stick Darryl had been fiddling with snapped in two on the last word.

“And you aren’t feeling even a little bit jealous?”

“What! No! I mean, sure, we had a few moments, but why shouldn’t she want to hang out with mammals like her? With humans, especially. She probably just misses her people.”

Paul could have pointed out that Nahal was not ‘hanging out’ with Annie, the only other female human in the group, or Yup who was at least humanoid, but he held his tongue. Jealous Darryl may be, but he did not have that crazy look in his eyes that said ‘I’m about to snap and murder you all in your sleep’. Still, it would take time for him to get over the girl, even if it was just a case of her loosing interest in him.

Paul tried Junafir next, hoping that his closeness to her mother could help her open up to him. He was disappointed with the results.

“You’ve made no secret of how you disapproved of my choices in the past.” She told him in response to his probing. “My infatuation with Jimmy, my decision to join this expedition. You never did seem to approve of Human-Terran relationships, even though your boss was married to a fox. I would think that you would rejoice in this ... cooling ... in our relationship.”

Paul noted that she had referred to the boy as ‘Jimmy’. She had been one of the first to start calling him James after his father died in an attempt to boost his self-esteem. Reverting to his childhood nickname was not a good sign.

“I just want to make sure that there is no resentment brewing under the surface, Junafir. We still have a long way to go and face a tough battle at the end of the road.”

“Not that I will be of any use in it.” Junafir said, drawing her mother’s cleaver. “So far the best this thing can do in the way of magic is tell us which direction to go in. Deer-boy hasn’t found anything else useful it can do after casting his spells and in a fight with a forty-foot dragon a cleaver with a compass in the hilt is not an ideal weapon.”

Paul tried some humour. “Maybe you can chop her tail off while we distract her?” He smiled.

Junafir squinted at the smaller collie and bared her fangs. “Are you making fun because my mother was just the village butcher? I seem to recall that she was good enough for you to fuck when your whore of a cheetah was too busy for you.”

Paul mumbled an apology as he backed away. This was not going well. maybe James would be more reasonable. But James proved to be aloof.

“She obviously does not have the same feeling for me since ... since the attack.”

“How do you know that, James? Did she tell you?”

“Not in so many words, but it’s obvious, isn’t it? If I try to take her hand, she slaps it away. If I offer a comforting hug, she turns her back to me.”

“Maybe she just needs some time to adjust. She has been though a lot.”

“That’s what Nahal said, but despite her passing on my concerns and ... my love for her ... Junafir refuses to acknowledge me.”

“Do you want me to talk to Junafir?”

“No need. She and Nahal have formed a bond because ... well, I should leave that to Nahal to tell you, but Nahal is trying very hard to make Junafir see that I still have feelings for her and if you interfere it could ruin everything she has done so far.”

“Alright.” Paul said. “I’ll back off. But no matter how this goes I’m counting on you to take it like a man. We’re all counting on you and your sword to shield us from Aldreda’s fire when we find her.”

James nodded, somewhat reluctantly, and Paul left with an uneasy feeling.

What Paul did not know, and would not have found out even if he questioned her, was Nahal was not relaying messages of love and longing between the estranged lovers. What she was doing was feeding each false and conflicting information about the other’s feelings.

“Does he ask about me?” Junafir had inquired when Nahal first started comforting her.

“He talks about you.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, about how he and you .... I won’t go into details. It’s the kind of thing boys tell other boys to make themselves look big.”

“But when you took him aside and told him that I still feel for him, that I just need some space because ...” The tigress had crossed her arms over her chest. “You know.”

“I do, I do know.” Nahal had replied, taking the larger tigress in her arms. “But boys only want one thing from a girl at his age, and they can get quite nasty if they don’t get it.”

“Not James. We mean much more than that to each other.”

“Then why is he always frowning when you don’t come to him?”

When she reported on her conversation with Junafir Nahal started by telling James that Junafir was repulsed by the thought of him touching her.

“Because of the trauma after the spiders.” James guessed.

Nahal bit her lip and pretended to not ant to answer, but James had insisted that she say what she had to say.

“The spiders certainly didn’t help, but she confessed that she was already growing apart from you before that. She said that you seemed to only care about the sex, not for her.”

“No! That’s not true. I mean ... sure, the sex was good, but it wasn’t why I loved her. You tell her that I just want to hold her and make her feel better, nothing more.”

“He said that if you loved him you would sleep with him again.”

“Sleep with him?”

“He used cruder language, and the tone! I really don’t know what you saw in him in the first place, Junafir.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to, but ... the horror of being stuffed with those... eggs. And the pain when they were ... were ...”

“Shush, don’t you cry. I’ll make him understand.”

“She doesn’t think that you tried hard enough to save her, and that it was probably her own fault for mating outside of her species. She and said a tiger would have ripped though those webs and rescued her.”

“She said that? How could she? She’s a tiger and she was helpless too. This is not my fault!”

“That’s not the way she sees it, I’m afraid.” Nahal sighed. “She thinks of you as just a randy little boy.”

James’ anger flared. “And you agree with her, I suppose?”

Nahal leaned over to him and touched his arm submissively. “Oh no! After our talks I can see that you are very mature, very noble, and compassionate. Why, look at how patient you have been with her. Any girl would be lucky to have a man like you.”

She pulled her hand back and looked away with a forlorn expression she had seen an actress use in a movie once. “Any girl of any worth, anyway. Not damaged goods like ... like me.”

James gripped her shoulders and forced her to look at him. “Don’t say that about yourself, Nahal. You didn’t choose your life. And you got away! You’re free now. You can make your own story, and you can and should expect the same treatment from a man as anyone else.”

She leaned her head against his broad chest. Placing a hand beside it to feel the beating of his heart. “You really think so? You really think that I deserve love too?”

She could feel the beat of his heart accelerate as he thought about it. She knew that in the back of his mind he had already accepted the possibility of her becoming his lover.

“Yes. Yes you do. And one day you will find someone. But for now, how do I make Junafir see what you see?”

“I’ll talk to her again tomorrow.”

Three more days passed, and the surrounding mountains got taller and darker. The foreboding cliffs and cold mists that trickled down them were putting a damper on everyone’s mood, and the growing tension between James and Junafir was not helping things either.

They could barely stand to look at each other now. Whenever they came face to face accidentally James would smile and reach out unconsciously, only to see Junafir turn abruptly and head the other way, but not before she saw his face fall into what she assumed would be a frown. Paul could not put them on the same watch or even adjacent ones because Junafir refused to touch James to wake him for his shift and she screamed the first time he woke her for hers.

Annie was concerned, but when she tried to talk to James about it he immediately reminded her of things she had said against the relationship at the onset. Junafir’s initial jealousy of Annie was renewed when James’ friend questioned her about James and that conversation went nowhere. She took her frustration out by raving at Gael, who mistakenly interpreted her rant as a demand to choose sides.

The big horse did not know what position to take. Junafir was a Terran, like him, but James was a friend, and Annie’s best friend. He tried to avoid conflict by being non-committal, which Annie interpreted as indifference. Nahal noticed this and, as she had with Junafir, opined that boys only wanted one thing from girls their age.

“He seems content enough to get it while it lasts.” The smaller human said. “I suppose he will find someone new once you are safe on Earth.”

Annie sat up in shock. Of course, the whole object of this trip was to get her back to Earth, and Gael was well aware that would be the end of their relationship. There was no more portal for her to visit him in Dougs-ur-Mark. The day she stepped through whatever portal they found leading back to her time on Earth was the day they said goodbye. Why had Gael never talked to her about that?

Annie began to distance herself from Gael and he did not know why.

Whenever she saw Darryl looking at her Nahal made sure to cast him a pitiful look, often turning to James or one of the other humans when she could immediately after with a smile and a laugh as if there was something humorous in the dragon’s sad expression. She was saying nothing of the sort, but she knew that he could not hear her innocent observations about the clouds or the habits of birds and would interpret her expressions the way she intended.

And he did. Each time she laughed with one of the mammals he was sure that they were sharing a joke at his expense. Every smile told him that he had been a fool to think that there could be any real connection between a dragon and a humanoid.

“Why didn’t you tell us that dragons were shape shifters?” Paul had asked with what to Darryl sounded like irritation when they were discussing how best to confront Aldreda.

“What? I’m sure I did! Maybe you were just not listening?”

Darryl had left the discussion at that point and had gone away to brood.

Why am I helping these mammals go after one of my own? He asked himself. Aldreda was not much different from his mother, when you thought about it. Sure, his mom had only let him and his siblings stay in her lair provided they stayed out of the way and didn’t eat too much. And yes, she had kicked them all out the instant they were old enough to survive on their own, with only enough of her horde to fill a small sac. But was that reason enough to hate all female dragons?

He had forgotten completely about Tenille and how the group had promised to help him get her back.

Even those not directly involved in the conflict were affected. Coyotka and Chris, who were starting to have feeling for each other deeper than the lust that first attracted them were warry of showing it. They did not want to be the one happy couple in the bunch so they curtailed their evening activities too, and were on edge because of it.

Paul was desperately trying to hold things together but could feel them slipping though his furry hands. Even Yup and Magnus, who had formed a partnership of necessity over the need for both to be present to fire the blunderbuss effectively, were losing their confidence in his leadership.

“It’s not that we don’t find your motives noble,” Yup told him while Magnus nodded in agreement beside him, “but we two do not have a dog in this fight, so to speak, and right now the others are like to turn on each other before we reach the dragon’s lair. If nothing changes, we might be better off forgetting this whole thing and going home, tarnished reputations or not.”

Paul had nothing to counter with. This was not their quest. They had no interest in seeing Annie home or buying off Morholt for the use of his portal. They did not care about reuniting Darryl with his parasprite or his gold. They were not even driven by the need to hold the elf/dragon accountable for her subterfuge, the way he was.

He knew that he needed to say something to reassure them, to obviate them, all of them, but he had no words to say.

If I could solve the first problem, he thought, if I can get James and Junafir back together, then the rest of the problems will fall in line. He decided to call a meeting that night after supper in order to confront the issue head on, as he always had with sticky problems in the past.

“We’re about halfway there.” He told the group assembled around the campfire. “Darryl tells me that we will likely start seeing dragons soon, big ones.”

“But not as big as Aldreda.” Darryl interrupted. She will be the only one her size for leagues around.”

“Yes, well.” Paul continued. “We’ll eat a hot meal in the middle of the day providing we can find the material to make a smokeless fire and eat cold in the evening. The good news is that with the gems fully enchanted we can count on good weather and as short a march as possible to reach our objective, so we should not be too uncomfortable. But we need to move more tactically during daylight hours and double the watch at night so that we don’t get surprised.”

He glanced pointedly between James and Junafir, who were sitting on opposite sides of the fire. “That means the chance of avoiding anyone in particular will be very slim, and I need to know that everyone can work with everyone else.”

James glared through the flames at Junafir. “I can work with anyone, provided they are willing to listen.”

“I can listen to anyone who has something worthwhile to say.” The tigress shot back.

Gael held up his big hands. “Hey guys ....”

“Maybe if you respected people a bit more they would say what you want to hear, Junafir.”

“Maybe if someone wasn’t so concerned with his own needs he could grow up and be worthy of respect, Jimmy.”

James sputtered. It had been months since she called him that and the reason was obvious, to him at least. He stood up, looking like he was about to say something, but turned with a frown and stomped off south.

“Aw, geez Junafir. Did you have to call him that?” Gael asked.

Before Junafir could answer Annie stood up and looked down on the roan horse with a frown etched deep by the flickering fire.

“Why? Because she thinks he’s just in it for the sex? Why shouldn’t she? Have you thought how she’s going to feel when they’re separated at the last portal? Better to break it off now than to let her heart bleed until the inevitable.” At that Annie spun on her heel and strode away to the west.

“Annie, wait! Are you talking about them or us?”

Annie’s lightly choked voice came back from the gloom. “Don’t follow me.”

Gael looked around the fire for help, but Junafir was already running toward the woods north of their camp and Nahal was nowhere to be seen. Coyotka and Chris were pointedly looking everywhere but at the blacksmith. With a grumble Gael stood up and headed for where he had laid out his bedroll.

Looking uncomfortable, Coyotka and Chris stood and, awkwardly moving around each other without touching announced they would take the first watch. They moved together but separately out of range of the fire to let their night vision adjust.

Magnus, who had very little experience in this department, got up also. “Yup and I will take second shift, so I’ll head to bed too. And, uhm ... nice talk ... Paul.” He added with a smile that was more of a grimace.

Paul sat slumped by the fire. Yup stood up and walked over behind the crouching canine and put a rough hand on the leader’s shoulder. Paul appreciated the gesture, and when he heard Yup clear his throat he prepared himself for whatever kind and encouraging words the older dwarf might have.

“Paul.” Yup said in his deep gravely voice. “That did not go well.” And then he turned and went to join Magnus.

* * * * * * * *

Nahal had slipped away when everyone’s attention was focused on Annie. She circled around the rest out of sight in the darkness until she was south of the fire and then she hurried after James. She found him sitting cross legged in the middle of a small clearing just within hailing distance of the camp.

Perfect, she thought.

James had not been there long, but long enough to run Junafir’s last words through his head a dozen different ways. Each time it came out the same, she called him Jimmy because she thought that he was just a kid, and an inexperienced, hormone-driven punk. What does she want from me? He asked himself. Or is it that she wants something else … someone else. Who? One of her own kind, he supposed. Most likely the more mature Collie who used to sleep with her mother. Had she been jealous when she caught them together?

A noise from behind alerted him that someone was there. He turned, half hoping that it would be Junafir come to apologize, but the smaller silhouette could only be one person.

“Oh, hello Nahal.”

The slim human girl sat on the grass beside him.

“Are you okay, James?” She asked, taking his hand and holding it to her cheek. “Junafir was very cruel to you back there.”

James did not pull his hand away. “Yes, she was. She treated me like a child.”

She began to caress his arm, which was thick with muscle from daily sword practice. “I don’t think that she ever really appreciated or cared for you. She just wanted to get away from her small village life, to see the outside world, and who better to take her than the son of the famous trader.”

James thought about that. Junafir had been very eager to visit Earth through the portal and insisted on not being left behind in Dougs-ur-Mark when they left.

Nahal’s caresses had moved from his arm to his torso as she snuggled in against him, faking a shiver to make it look like she was cold.

“It happens on all worlds, I suppose. Rebellious young girls running off with the first boy they can seduce ... until they find someone better.”

“Has she found someone better?” James asked, his anger rising at the thought of Junafir and Paul.

“No. There is no one better than you here.” Her hands were moving under his cloak, tracing the ridges of his tense muscles through the thin material of his shirt. “You are the strongest, kindest person here.”

“Now, that is not true.” James blushed in the dark and smiled for the first time in weeks. “Gael is much stronger, and Magnus has the kindest soul I’ve ever seen.”

“There is more than just physical strength, and Magnus is not kind, he is naive.” She tucked her head under his arm. He dutifully wrapped it around her shoulders and pulled her in tight. “You have the training and the heritage needed to lead this group, but you defer to the collie, your father’s servant. Is it because you do not wish to hurt his feelings?”

“Paul? No ... I mean ... he has had much more experience in this kind of thing than I have.”

“Oh? He has fought dragons before?”

“No, but ... you know what I mean.”

“Perhaps, but I’m sure that it will be you with your flaming sword that wins the day when we face the dragon. Just like Imam Ali.”

“Who?”

“A prince who is said to have raised a mighty sword that could withstand fire to kill the last dragon in my homeland.”

“Is that why there are no dragons in the south where you come from?”

“So it is said.” She snuggled against him, wrapping her right arm around his wait while dropping her left hand to his thigh. She felt him twitch when her nails dug into the muscle on the inside, and smiled when he made no attempt to move it away.

Things progressed quickly from there. As her hand moved higher on the inside of his thigh his moved closer to her breast. When she felt his breath on her hair she turned her face up to his and offered her lips for a kiss. He obliged, shifting around and placing his other hand on her chest to pull open her blouse and squeeze her breast. By the time the first kiss finished she could feel his member swelling in his trousers. Thanks to the chilly air her nipples were similarly erect.

James was aware of his condition. “Nahal, we shouldn’t.” He said, pulling away a bit, but his voice lacked conviction.

“Yes,” she breathed, “we should. I’ve wanted you since I first laid eyes on you, but refrained out of respect for your tiger companion. But she doesn’t want you anymore, and I don’t want to perish in a battle with a dragon without having known your love.”

The words, the kind one hears in the movies the Madam watched on her DVD when she thought no one was around, almost made Nahal giggle, but she turned it into a convincing shiver.

“You’re cold.” James declared, reaching to wrap his arms around her.

She skillfully guided his hand between her legs under the long cloak that concealed the fact that she wore nothing underneath except her blouse and leggings tied above the knee. His big hand settled against her plump mound. She no longer shaved there as Rory Douglas liked her to, but the hairs that had grown in were thin and fine and soft. As he moved his hand one of his fingers slipped between the mounds.

“You’re already wet.”

One of the first potions she had learned to make at the brothel was a lubricant which reacted to body heat to produce a flow of fluids similar to that of sexual arousal. She had rubbed some on before revealing her presence to the boy.

“It’s because I want you, James. You are man, I am woman. Like attracts like. Forget the tiger girl and take me.”

James did not have Paul’s sense of smell but the heat coming off her groin and the sight of her half naked in the starlight was enough to overcome any lingering doubts. He leaned down to kiss her again, probing with his tongue as his fingers worked down below.

She met his kiss greedily, sucking on his tongue as his fingers probed her cunt. As far as kissers went, he was not so bad, and the way he slid his finger in and out so that they teased her clit on each stoke showed that he had some skill, but his forced celibacy these past weeks was making him overeager. That was fine with her, but she did not want to let him cum and go, and not because she would be left unsatisfied. No, she wanted to set her hooks deep so that he would not even think of going back to the tiger girl after laying with her.

So, she told herself, nothing fancy. Be submissive but excited and let him set the pace, this time.

With James holding her up with one strong arm while he strummed her twat with the other Nahal used her hands to peel off her cloak and blouse. Naked in the starlight, except for the leggings, which she was sure would not get in the way, she started on James’ clothes. She opened his shirt but made no move to interrupt his foreplay by trying to pull it over his shoulders. Then she felt for the toggle at his waist, flicking it open expertly and spreading the flap it had held closed.

As she expected, he had abandoned whatever underwear he might have brought from earth for the local custom of relying on loose trousers to keep the groin from getting too dirty and sweaty. Her fingers found a tuft of curly hair that she assumed would be as red as that on his head and then the thick warm tube of his cock.

She stroked it and squeezed it. She could feel why the tigress liked it. It was longer than most, and thicker than average, an attribute most men did not appreciate the importance of. It was swelling rapidly now that it had been freed and could already stand up on its own without her help. It was uncircumcised, but the helmet-like head had already pushed free as the skin tightened along the shaft.

It felt good in her hand. It was not permanently hard, like Darryl’s, or rigged with orgasm enticing boney knobs, but it was warmer, somehow more alive. By the time it was fully erect it had developed a pronounced curve, one that would provide friction in just the right places in the proper position. She wondered if he knew that, but decided that this was not the time to bring it up, so to speak. Once he was smitten with her, she would educate him so that she would not go completely unsatisfied during this charade.

He has stopped kissing her mouth while she stroked him and moved down to her chest, where he drew each nipple in and sucked in it while flicking his tongue across it. It was a good effort, and that as well as the cool mountain air made them stand out hard and proud. Her breasts were not large, but they were more than a mouthful, and James tried to pull as much into his warm mouth as he could while he lapped at the erect nipple.

She released his cock as soon as she felt the dribble of lubricating fluid leaking from the slit in the tip. She used both hands to pull his head back up to hers, twisting her body so that more of his weight fell across her. He continued the movement as if it had been his idea and she let him turn her and press her down to where she had draped her cloak to protect her back from the cold grass. She stretched out her right leg so he could roll on top of her unimpeded, and then bent it again to trap him between her legs.

His fingers had spread her lubricant around and teased the inner lips of her twat out into the open. She prepared to reach down and guide the head of his cock to her waiting cunt but it proved unnecessary, in a move he must have learned from his time with the tigress he hunched forward and drew the head of his cock up between her legs, from anus to clit, along the line of her gash. When he felt the small hard button at the apex he dropped his hips straight down, and his cock slid into her like a sword seeking its sheath.

She was slightly impressed, especially since instead of ramming it in like he was loading a cannon he stopped as soon as he felt resistance, pulled halfway back out and then eased it in a little farther than before. He took his time, but not too much; after a half dozen thrusts she could feel his hot balls against the cold exposed skin of her ass. He could feel it too, and that was his signal to go into overdrive.

He was very much like some of the first-timers at the brothel now. His thrusts were hard and fast as he rose up on his hands and knees and reveled in the pleasure of a hot, tight cunt wrapped around his slick cock. There was no finesse, no attempt to maximize her pleasure, but no malice or violence either. It was release he was seeking, and she would give it to him.

She could tell when he was getting close. He was trying to hold it in, to prolong his pleasure, and the strain showed on his face. She rocked back against him, meeting his thrusts with a roll of her hips that brought his balls slapping against her ass each time. When his lips started to tremble and he began grunting “ju- ju- ju” she knew she had him.

He made one last plunge as a stifled scream escaped him. She felt his hot seed filling her, splashing against her cervix and squeezing between the walls of her cunt along his shaft.

James started to collapse, but she used her knees and feet to push him back. Then she wrapped one leg around the small of his back and used it to shove him back down again.

“I’m so close, James, so close.” She cried in a breathless voice as she wiggled beneath him. “Don’t stop now.”

Encouraged, and still erect, James resumed his stroke.

Nahal was nowhere near cumming, but she had faked many an orgasm for the benefit of the brothel customers, and even had experienced a few real ones of her own lately thanks to her reptilian fuck toy. She knew how to make them convincing ... and loud.

She threw her head back and gasped like she could not catch and hold her breath as she called his name with increasing volume. Convinced that she was mere strokes away from orgasm James lowered his head beside hers, slipped his arms under her and gripped her shoulders for more power and rose up on his toes as his ass rocked and rolled madly between her legs.

When she felt that he had about as much as he could stand Nahal drew in a deep breath, clamped his groin against hers by scissoring her legs across his back, and screamed at the top of her lungs while she twitched and twisted under him.

James was waiting for the rush of liquid fire that always accompanied Junafir’s orgasms and the scream took James by surprise. His arms were trapped under her and it took him a moment to free them before he could clamp a hand over her mouth to stifle her cries, but by then she had already achieved a note that would make an opera singer proud.

“Jesus, Nahal, keep it down. Do you want the whole camp to hear us?”

She was sure that they already had, especially Junafir with her cup-shaped ears lined with sensitive hairs that could pick up a mouse fart at 50 metres. If the tigress was not done with James Douglas before, Nahal told herself, she would be when she caught the scent of him on me. She stopped screaming as a hidden smile spread under his hand. Satisfied that the crisis was over, James slumped down on her, exhausted.

Nahal relaxed under his weight. The boy would be ready for another round soon enough, and who knows, maybe at a slower pace she could teach him how to really bring her to orgasm with that thick, warm cock of his. Even if he didn’t though, the act would cement his dependence on her, and after that she would be able to lead him away from the rest without interference or suspicion whenever she wanted.

Now all she needed, she thought as she stared up at the stars, were the ingredients for a small homemade explosive device about the size of his brain.

Paul Collieman © Collifan

Gael Tholkes © MarcusXLight

Junafir Pawstone © Frostlupus

Chris Cinereo © Kyroo Echos

Yup Thatchwatyahurd © Kyroo Echos

Sevade © Frostlupus

Constance “Coyotka” Jotkowska © Coyotek

Darryl D. Dragon © Major Matt Mason

Ladread © White Tiger Hunting

Aldreda © White Tiger Hunting

Magnus © Thwaitesy