Page 61 of Nexus
ONCE AGAIN, THE BIRD led me to water. It was the same yellow color and tasted just as flat and salty. Dipping my hands into the pond was enough to draw leeches to me. I batted them away and scraped the blood and dirt from beneath my fingernails until they were clean.
“Do you have a name?” I asked my magical companion when I was done. She nodded, surprising both Ruen and me. “Can you spell it for us?” She gave me a look that indicated she thought I was an idiot, so I elaborated. “Stop me when I get to the right letter.” She nodded again, then chirped when I said A.
“Your name starts with an A?” Ruen asked, just to be sure the bird understood our intentions. She rolled her eyes and nodded. “I was just checking,” he muttered.
I began reciting the alphabet as we continued our journey. “Your name is Aurora?” I asked once I’d gone through the lengthy process of getting her to spell it out. “That’s pretty,” I complimented her when she nodded. Her response was to affectionately rub her head against my cheek.
“I’d like to know how Aurora came to be in the wilds where we found her,” Ruen said from his perch on my back. “She must have a home somewhere.”
“I don’t think any of us have the patience for her to spell that out for us,” I said doubtfully. Aurora shook her head, then gestured towards the horizon. We’d told her about our plan to cut overland rather than following the road. She knew we wanted to avoid the overlord’s trackers and was willing to help us. I hadn’t told Ruen about the bargain I’d made with her. He might object to taking a magical bird back home with us. That was a fight I would put off for as long as possible.
Between the three of us, we had better success at avoiding dangerous creatures as I sped through the wilderness. Aurora could sense anything magical and Ruen’s hearing and sense of smell were uncanny. I could pick up on intelligent creatures, except for Aurora. She was smart and she could communicate, but she was still an animal and didn’t show up on my radar.
“Are there other beings like you in this realm?” I asked when we took a break so Ruen could hunt for a snack.
Aurora lifted her good wing, then let it drop. I took that to mean there were similar beings, but none quite like her.
“Can you perform other magic, or can you just make things climax?”
She shook her head, so her talents were singular in nature. Then again, being able to sense magic and magical items was a talent all of its own.
“Can you use your talent on anything, or only intelligent beings?”
She nodded, but I wasn’t sure which choice she was responding to. “Did you mean you can use it on anything?” She nodded again to clarify. “So, if we get attacked by an angry bear, you could make it orgasm so hard it would knock it out like it did to the ogre?” Again, she nodded. “That’s the weirdest talent I’ve ever heard of, but I guess it must come in handy.” She shrugged to indicate it had its ups and downs.
Ruen returned, smelling like fresh blood and smiling happily. His mood would become sour as his blood high wore off. The only time he was happy was when his belly was full. It was no wonder he was so cranky back home, since Drake wouldn’t let him feed with abandon.
“Did you two ladies have a nice chat?” he asked before clambering onto my back.
“Aurora was telling me about her orgasm talent,” I said, knowing full well he’d heard every word I’d uttered. “She can apparently use it on anything.”
“Can you use it on more than one creature or being at a time?” he asked.
She shrugged, then pointed at her beak. “I think she has to peck them to get it to work and she only has one beak,” I figured. She nodded in confirmation.
“That’s a pity,” the vampire said. “It would be handy if she could disable an entire army with her talent.”
“She saved me from the ogre, so I’m grateful we ran into her,” I said, which earned me a hug from the bird. I wasn’t used to anyone except my mom being affectionate towards me, but I kind of liked it. It was like having an actual friend, which was something I’d lacked my entire life.
“How many days will it take us to reach the city at this pace?” Ruen asked. Aurora chirped seven times. “A week is far too long,” he fretted. “The trackers will be able to move faster on the road. They’ll find our trail soon and they’ll be able to catch up to us before we reach our destination.”
Grimacing at what I was going to have to do, I knew I didn’t have a choice. “Buckle yourselves in, kids,” I warned them. “You’re in for a bumpy ride.”
I took off at a run before Ruen could ask me what I’d meant by that. Wind whistled past me and my boobs, belly and butt wobbled madly. If I hadn’t been wearing the bra, my breasts would have swung around all over the place, smashing into each other, my gut and my face.
Aurora clung to me tightly and the vampire went off into fresh peals of laughter, amused by my blubbery body. My eyes were slitted against the wind as I did my best not to trip over anything. The ground shook from my footsteps. Birds and animals were startled into bursting from their hiding places. I snatched up something that resembled a deer and fed on it to keep me going.
Ruen leaned over my shoulder to latch onto the carcass, draining it of blood before it could go cold. His laughter had subsided, but I could feel him giggling every now and then.
Running so far and so fast depleted my reserves. My fat withered away and I had to eat everything I could catch to keep going. Sleeping for most of the day, I continued on as soon as I woke up. The trek that should have taken a full week only took three nights to complete.
Starving and trembling with fatigue, I stood on a rocky outcrop of a low cliff, staring at what passed for a city in this realm. Just like the vision in my dream, the buildings made of brown bricks were clustered together. There was no electricity here. Flaming torches and lanterns offered the only form of light.
I could tell at a glance that this wasn’t the place I’d dreamed about. There were far too many buildings and none of them had a clearing with an army in the middle of it. The cliffs were too small to be the ones from my vision. I guessed the overlord was training his soldiers somewhere else, getting them ready to invade my world.
“Is the scroll fragment hidden somewhere in the city?” I asked.
Aurora shook her head and gestured beyond the metropolis. It was ringed by increasingly tall cliffs. Only one road passed through it.
