Chapter 0 - The Vanishing Isle

The Vanishing Isle
Bromm VIII
 
              “It’s not on any of our charts,” said Bromm. He brushed a hand through his thick black hair and sighed. Turning to the ship’s port side, he cast his gaze out over the clear blue waters to the golden shore some two hundred yards distant. The green-shrouded isle that rose out of the early morning fog had his crew baffled. In the middle of the night, they had seen boulders in the water and quickly dropped anchor lest they run aground, but only with the rising sun had they truly seen land. Yet despite scouring all their maps and charts, then taking another sighting of the stars, they had not reconciled the island with anything recorded. He turned his attention back to the charts and his four officers, all good friends from past voyages.
              “The sea is mysterious,” opined Pyet, youngest of Bromm’s officers, as he leaned over the rail and scrutinized the dark green mass in the fog. “Would an island appearing where there was once nothing be the strangest thing that happened?”
              “Mysterious and dangerous,” grumbled Sahat, the eldest of Bromm’s friends. He rubbed his shaven head and frowned at the map. “If it’s uncharted, it’s uncharted for a reason.”
              “Aye, it means no one has plundered it yet!” the five of them turned to see Urgan, a grizzled and salty dwarf who had claimed his spot as first mate, clamber up to the quarterdeck. His pale blonde beard spread across his chest, and he had an unlit cigar clamped between his teeth. With wild eyes he swept a hand over the maps and charts arrayed on the deck, then smiled.
              “We should go ashore immediately,” he rumbled.
              “We should go ashore cautiously, if at all,” said Tahavi, Bromm’s quartermaster. “The charted islands of the sea are choked with reefs and worse, so I expect that the uncharted ones will be even more so. The water’s clear, so it shouldn’t take long.”
              “Well then, let’s get a boat in the water! What are we waiting for?”
              Bromm frowned. Something about the island was unsettling to him. Nevertheless, he allowed Urgan to put a longboat in the water and plot a way to shore. The White Shepherd’s other longboat had headed out to sea, for Bromm was concerned that they had accidentally sailed into a nest of reefs and might run aground on their way back out to sea. But Apliss had favored him, and the brig lay anchored at the edge of the reefs that surrounded the island. Their way out was clear.
              Urgan climbed aboard from the boat and beamed to his waiting clique. 
              “It’s just waiting for us!” the men cheered, and Bromm had to accede to their demands to go ashore. They piled into the longboats, leaving Sahat in charge of the ship with a reduced crew. Hefting axes, boarding pikes, and firelocks, fifty eager sailors rowed across the open water as silvery fish swirled around them in schools. Pyet dashed a hand into the water to seize one but came up empty. Some of the other sailors laughed.
              “Careful, boy, you’ll tip the boat over before you catch one,” Urgan called from the prow of the other boat. Pyet scowled and took his seat again. Bromm paid them little mind. He crouched at the head of his longboat with a flintlock in hand, narrowed eyes searching the isle’s shores. 
              An expanse of golden sand stretched perhaps a hundred yards from the water to the treeline, where the island was covered by thick green undergrowth and shaded by the canopies of towering trees whose branches were draped with vines. Here and there, Bromm spied brightly colored birds flitting through the branches, and from far off he heard the calls of strange beasts.
              “I hope none of them are dangerous,” he muttered to himself. 
              “What was that, captain?” asked Imre. His friend leaned closer, cradling a matchlock musket under his own arm.
              “Nothing, just thinking aloud,” Bromm replied. Imre nodded and sat back again. They were nearing the shore, and Bromm stood up as the sandy bottom of the sea floor grew nearer. As the longboat’s keel brushed sand, he hopped from the boat with a splash and guided the vessel ashore by its prow. The others piled excitedly from the boat and hauled them out of the water. Bromm looked back to the White Shepherd, anchored in the open water with her gunports open and sails reefed. Sahat was on the quarterdeck with a spyglass, and Bromm gave him a confident wave which he returned.
              He turned inland and felt his feigned confidence waver. The forest ahead of them was dark and foreboding, and the rising sun was doing little to illuminate it. He clutched his flintlock closer and touched a hand to the saber on his hip. 
Behind him, the crew was unloading the boats before they returned to the White Shepherd for more supplies. The more diligent of them piled their provisions onto the beach while others set off toward the treeline with weapons in hand. Their spirits were high, and they spoke of the treasures they might find in the island’s depths more than of any dangers that awaited.
              Urgan stepped up to him, flanked by his lieutenant Nyvald and his lover Heyne. The former was a red-headed bear of a man, standing a hand taller than Bromm and with a wild beard to match Urgan’s own. The latter was a slender youth not yet in his twentieth year, with a soft face and warm green eyes. Nyvald carried a hooked axe and a matchlock musket, while Heyne laid a blunderbuss over his shoulder and hung a straight sword from his hip. Urgan was armed with a pair of throwing axes and a heavy falchion, while a shirt of fine dwarven mail glittered on his chest.
              “We should split up,” the dwarf barked to Bromm, “we’ll cover more ground that way.”
              “We’ll be eaten faster that way,” Imre retorted. The young man was carrying a boarding axe and a bundled tent. Two pistols were thrust through his belt. “We should stick together until we know what’s in this forest.”
              “I’m the first mate here, boy,” Urgan snapped.
              “Aye, and I’m the captain,” Bromm cut in. “We’ll establish a base camp first, then we’ll move into the interior in groups. We must be cautious.”
              “Bah!” Urgan roared, and stalked off. Nyvald gave Bromm a look and a shrug, then he and Heyne went off after the dwarf, whose grumbling could still be heard as he stalked down the beach.
              “He wants to split up so you don’t know what treasure he finds,” Imre said quietly.
              “Aye,” Bromm replied. “I’m more wary of the island’s dangers than being cheated.”
              Pyet approached them with a brace of pistols, which he handed to Bromm with a smile.
              “Ready when you are, captain.” Bromm thrust the pistols through his belt, next to his own ornate ivory-handled pistol and a companion engraved in dwarven runes. He ran a hand through his black beard and looked up the beach. The strip of golden sand stretched two miles east to a rocky cape, and three miles south until it curved away out of sight. As far as he could see, there was only empty beach. 
              “We should look inland for a base camp site,” he said at last. 
              “Aye, Lukodo has our things set out,” Pyet said. He indicated the landing spot, where the stout, dark-skinned Lukodo was supervising five sailors in the gathering of camping material. They hefted tents, timber, axes, and other tools onto their shoulders and Lukodo turned to Bromm.
              “Lead the way, captain,” he said, hefting a bundle of lumber onto his broad shoulders. 
              Bromm turned back to the treeline and pointed to a stand of trees that rose taller than the others.
              “There. These trees are all the same type, so those taller ones must be on a hillock or a rise of some kind. We’ll make for it and set up camp. Pyet, tell the boats to relay this to Sahat.”
Bromm gathered his men at the treeline, where some had already ventured into the forest and need to be called back. With the eager Urgan at the head and Bromm bringing up the rear, they began their march through the forest to the hillock.
              Overhead, strange birds wheeled through the trees, followed by hopping rodents with lustrous fur. Bromm thought that, if he could only catch a few, he could sell their furs for a fine price. But they darted expertly through the high branches far out of sight. The forest floor was an abundant place as well, for he saw many ferns and even flowers growing there. The ground rose slowly but steadily, and he found himself moving slowly to avoid tripping over the many roots that broke from the dark earth. The procession of sailors wound its way around a thicket and reach the base of the hillock where the ground climbed higher faster. With some effort, they reached the top and spread out.
              “I want a defensive ring set up, and lookouts to go with it,” Bromm ordered. Then he laid his weapons at the base of a tall tree and began to climb. The lower trunk was thick and its bark coarse, so he had Imre heft him up to a branch. The bark was rough on his hands, but Bromm was an experienced climber of both trees and rigging and went up undeterred. He hauled himself up onto a branch wide enough to walk up and paused to take stock of his camp.
His crew had begun to emplace sharpened stakes around the edge of the hillock, linked by thick rope as a further impediment to attackers. In the middle of the camp, Lukodo was excavating a firepit while Urgan and his crew dragged together branches for a shelter. Bromm smiled. From there, he pulled himself up through successive layers of the tree’s limbs until he broke out through the green leaves of the top and could see unobstructed. 
              The view was magnificent. He first looked to the sea, where his beloved White Shepherd lay at anchor where he had left her. Beyond his ship was only the open expanse of the wide blue sea. Further inland, he could see tall crags rise from the tree cover, and the sun glinted off what looked to be a lake nestled within them. At the foot of the crags, he saw what looked to be a ruined stone structure of some kind. Above the crags, a small flock of birds wheeled overhead. 
              Bromm shaded his eyes as he looked east, into the morning sun. The sun’s harsh rays nearly blinded him, but through the shade of his fingers he could make out the island’s shape. It broadened like an arrowhead stabbing into the sea, covered completely by tree cover except for the thin fringe of golden sand along the water. Soon enough, he could stand to look into the sun no longer and turned his attention back to the central crags. 
              As he blinked away the sunspots in his eyes, he could make out what looked to be another ruin beyond the crags. It was built of gray stone, though much of it had tumbled down into piles at the base and the roof had caved in. Yet enough of the structure looked intact that he thought they might find treasure there. But as Bromm looked over the island, he could find no signs of habitation, not any indication of other buildings. Had people truly come to this island just to build these stone buildings and nothing else?
              The question burning in his mind, he climbed down from the tree and hopped lightly to the grassy crown of the hillock. Urgan and Pyet approached.
              “Well, what do you see?” Urgan demanded. “We’ve been waiting long enough, it’s time to get moving and find something of worth on this island.”
              “There’s a ruin of some kind to the southwest. It doesn’t look like much, but there could be treasure. Beyond that, there’s a lake where we might find fresh water and another ruin beyond it.”
              Urgan snorted. “We’ve plenty of water, I want treasure. We should make for this ruin immediately!”
              He marched off to where he and his men had laid down their things and began to gather them up. Bromm sighed and turned to Lukodo.
              “I need someone reliable to hold this camp. Keep in contact with the Shepherd and wait for us to return.”
              “I can do that. How long will you be?”
              “It shouldn’t take us more than the day to get there and back. But be careful. We still don’t know much of anything about this place. It could be crawling with basilisks or trolls.”
              “Or just people,” Lukodo replied. “But aye, I’ll keep an eye out. Do the same for yourself. Whatever lives here know the island better than we do, and will know all the spots for an ambush.”
              “Don’t you worry. Nobody is going to get the drop on me.”
              Lukodo looked about to say something but then closed his mouth and nodded. He moved off and Bromm selected his party from the other sailors. He wanted to leave Urgan behind, but the dwarf would never have agreed, so Bromm resigned himself to putting up with him. Leaving behind twenty men to defend the camp, Bromm set off at the head of the rest, making for the first ruin he had seen from the treetops. 
He forged a path through increasingly thick undergrowth and across a clear-flowing stream where his men stopped to refill their waterskins. The ground grew softer and soon enough they found themselves at the edge of a small swamp. Bromm raised his flintlock.
              “It can’t be that big,” Imre said, looking out over the swamp. It was choked with reeds and ferns on the near side and grew clearer as it stretched away from them, into the trees. “We must be able to find a way around it.”
              “Unless you were thinking of going through it,” Urgan growled, appearing at Bromm’s side. “Then I’d wager the snakes and other beasts in it would be having a fine feast.”
              “Not through it,” Bromm replied, his mind elsewhere as he scanned the far treeline. Swamps were places of peril, and he had boasted to Lukodo that he would not be taken off-guard. “We’ll find a way around, but keep your guard up. There’s no telling what could be hiding in there.” 
              “Whatever it is,” boasted Nyvald from the gaggle of men behind them, “It won’t be able to stand up to my axe.”
              “If you see it coming,” Bromm retorted. The Wildman scowled at him and slapped he flat of his axe against his chest. 
              “Nothing sneaks up on me. The Wilds of Cimbra raise strong men who are not easily taken unawares.”
Bromm said nothing in response. He picked a direction and began leading the column of sailors along the edge of the swamp, always keeping an eye on its murky waters. He could not shake the feeling that something was watching him. His men were chattering away behind him, so he shushed them with a cold look and a finger toward the swamp. Somewhat sullenly, they fell silent. 
              The swamp stretched across their path for a great distance, and the ground around it was rough to traverse. Bromm felt their pace slowing, but stoically he continued the march in silence until the ground grew harder under their feet and the swamp faded away. Bromm then turned inland and headed toward the ruin again. 
They emerged suddenly into a bowl-shaped hollow in the trees. The ground fell gently away from them to a small pond in the middle, and on the far side was a formerly grand house that now lay in ruins. Bromm paused as his crew fanned out behind him.
              “Strange,” Pyet muttered. He held an unlit matchlock before him, his eyes roaming around the edge of the hollow.
              “Keep your eyes open,” Urgan urged. He directly Heynes to cover the group’s left and Nyvald to cover their right. To Bromm’s great satisfaction, Imre was guarding their rear without needing to be asked. 
              Bromm surveyed the forest and then the house, finding nothing of concern. “Follow me,” he said at last, and started forward around the edge of the hollow. His crew obeyed cautiously, their weapons at the ready as they crept forward. Bromm brought them to the front of the house and stopped. He laid his flintlock aside and drew his saber. 
“Urgan, stay outside and watch, Imre, Pyet, with me.” The dwarf glowered at being left behind, but did as he was told. Bromm reached toward the old door with his free hand and pushed it open. Far from creaking on ancient hinges, the door simply toppled over with a great crash. Bromm jumped, as did Imre behind him. Urgan laughed.
              “Afraid of a door?” Bromm ignored him and stepped through the doorway. There was little point in stealth now. The foyer was grand but old and worn. Cobwebs crisscrossed a painted ceiling that, once garish, had now faded with age and dust. Bromm stepped onto a wooden floor that creaked under his weight. Suspiciously, he checked its integrity and was satisfied that he would not plummet through it. With Imre following close behind, Bromm advanced into the foyer. 
              Threadbare tapestries covered the walls in places, some old enough that he could see the stone wall behind them through their weave. Strangely, they did not depict people or animals, but merely strange patterns. Bromm stared at them, trying to decipher any message hidden within them, but it only made his head hurt. The others began to filter into the foyer, weapons at the ready. 
              “There must be something valuable in here,” Urgan muttered. Nyvald stepped close to a tapestry. 
              “They are often woven with golden thread,” he said softly, “but this is just cloth, damn it all.”
Imre moved past them into the next room and Bromm followed. They found themselves in a salon. The furniture was covered with white sheets and the floors coated with dust. A wrought iron chandelier hung from the ceiling, though its sconces were empty.
              “Who lived here?” Imre muttered as he paced the edge of the room. “It’s too grand a house to not be surrounded by gardens or a village of some kind.”
              “This is a strange place,” Bromm agreed. “I don’t know if we’ll find any answers, but we might at least make off with something to sell.”
              “How about this?” Imre asked. He swept a sheet off a table, revealing a gilded tea set beneath. Bromm whistled in appreciation and stepped closer. Hidden beneath the sheet, they were free of the dust and wear that plagued the house, and glittered in the sunlight streaming through the windows. He picked up the kettle, half expecting it to crumble in his hands, and found it cold to the touch. 
              “There’s more in here!” Urgan called from another room. Bromm followed his voice through a parlor, similarly covered to the salon, and found Heyne and the dwarf lowering a gilded mirror from the wall. The silvery surface of the mirror was flatter and smoother than any mirror Bromm had seen before. He could clearly see his own reflection, a tall, broad-shouldered man with shoulder-length black hair and a thick beard. He struck a pose, admiring himself as the mirror came down.
              “This,” Urgan said with a thud as the mirror touched the floor, “will adorn some pirate lord’s palace, but not before he pays me a pretty sum.”
              “Aye, it’ll sell,” Imre agreed. “What else does this house hold?”
              They searched the place high and low, prying open a door to the dusty cellar and scouring the house’s attic in search of treasure, which they found in abundance. They piled together their spoils outside the front door. When they were finished, they gathered to admire the haul.
              “That will buy us some pretty girls when we’re back in port,” one man exclaimed, and they all cheered. 
              “We should head back to camp,” Pyet said, “before anything in this forest comes after us.”
              “Bah,” Urgan snorted, “This was just one house, imagine what else is on this island! I’ll not leave a single copper behind!”
              “Half our number will go back,” decided Bromm. “Return this plunder to Lukodo at camp. The rest of us will make for the lake. If all goes well, we will back to camp before nightfall.”
              “One more look before we leave,” Urgan urged. “There must still be something of value in there.”
              “Alright,” Bromm sighed, though in truth Urgan’s search had already been exhaustive. “One more, then we leave.”
              The men nodded their assent, but Nyvald stepped up to pull Bromm aside. At his elbow was another of Urgan’s cohorts, a sea rat named Geitan.
              “Tell him, Geitan,” urged Nyvald. The sea rat nodded, his weak chin bobbing.
              “Aye, captain, there’s something in these woods. I’ve seen the trees moving. Someone is watching us.”
              “What kind of something?” asked Bromm, but he had his answer straight away. Suddenly, from the trees burst a band of huge, hulking creatures that walked on two legs like men, but had the heads of bulls. Their bodies were covered in rags over coarse hair that ranged in color from russet to dark gray, and their eyes shone red with infernal fire. With two hands each, they hefted broadaxes or long cleavers, bellowing terrifying war cries from their monstrous maws.
              “To arms!” someone shouted as the minotaurs bore down on them and Bromm tore his saber free from his belt. In his other hand he drew his ornate, ivory-handled pistol and took aim at the attackers. The weapon sounded with a crack and a gust of white smoke, and one minotaur fell face first in the grass. But the others clashed steel against steel with his crew. Their terrible appearance and towering height made up for the lack of numbers, for there were barely a dozen minotaurs against a score of Bromm’s men. 
              Nevertheless, they quickly evened the losses as a gray-haired minotaur clove through the head of one of Urgan’s men. The monster roared in triumph, the bleached skull that hung from a chain around his neck shaking as it did. Bromm blanched and nearly dropped his saber. 
              The dwarf burst from the house, sword in hand and barking orders. “Form up on me, firelocks inside, shoot from the windows! Pikes, brace yourselves!”
              Bromm ran to him, spurred on by the screams of another man who died under the blade of a minotaur. He slid under the boarding pikes to take a space at Imre’s side. The other man was loading a firelock, his hands unsteady. 
              “Where’s Pyet?” Bromm demanded, but Imre’s white-knuckle grip on the musket had all his attention. Bromm cast a look about and spotted Pyet rushing up from the side of the house, axe in hand. The minotaurs came rushing forward and a barrage of shot met them. Two fell, thick red blood spurting from their mortal wounds, but the rest hurtled forward heedless of their losses. The bloodlust was in them. Bromm thought back to tavern tales of minotaurs who ate their kills, and to one pirate captain who kept a quartet of them as his personal guard and disciplinarians aboard his ship. He clutched his saber tighter in his hands and fumbled for the extra pistols in his belt. 
The minotaurs thundered to a halt just in front of the outstretched pike points, unwilling to mindlessly impale themselves on the crew’s weapons. Bromm felt his courage return. He yanked his runed pistol from his waistband and cocked the hammer in one motion. The crack of the pistol jolted his men to life, and a minotaur fell dying.
              “Forward!” he cried, his saber raised overheard. “They’re wavering!” his men surged ahead on the attack and tangled with their foes in close quarters. A minotaur’s legs were cut from beneath him; Pyet stabbed him in the neck as he fell. Nyvald made good on his earlier boasts and split the chest of a minotaur with his axe. The beast roared in pain as it went down, but the tall Wildman paid it no mind. 
              The others had had enough and turned to flee. A shot from the upper window of the house felled another, and Bromm’s men on the ground attacked their fleeing foe with merciless ferocity. The lumbering minotaurs were easily caught in the forest undergrowth beyond the bowl-shaped dell, and soon enough, they all lay dead.
              But it was not without loss, for two more of Bromm’s men were slain. Their bodies lay bloody and broken in the grass as the minotaurs retreated. Moving closer, Bromm saw that one of them was the sea rat Geitan. He lay facedown in the grass, and when Bromm turned him over, he found that the man’s chest had been split open by an axeblow. 
              “Kanaron have mercy,” Urgan breathed from behind. “I hope the poor bastard didn’t suffer.”
              “It would have been instant,” Bromm agreed, though he had seen men with worse wounds take their time dying. “Bring the dead together, we must give them their rites before we move on.”
              They brought the four men together in a pile and built cairns for them from the house. Pyet, who had once been an acolyte before he abandoned the temple for a life at sea, said the words as best he could remember, and they left the men to their eternal rest. Bromm hoped the rituals had been done right, for he did not wish for any of his men to be cursed to endlessly wander this strange isle.
              “It’s fortunate that the minotaurs attacked when they did,” he murmured to no one in particular. Urgan was close, and shot Bromm a hostile look. Bromm tried to explain. “We were about to split up, and they could likely have overwhelmed half of us in an ambush in the trees.”
              "Four of us are dead, and you think we were fortunate?” Urgan growled.
              “Better four than twenty,” Bromm replied. The dwarf’s eyes narrowed and he stalked off.
              “Pfft,” Pyet muttered as he watched Urgan go. “You think he was fucking one of them, too?”
              “All he ever wants is treasure,” Bromm complained. “Finally, we give him treasure and he complains about the cost.”
              “He’ll get over it. There’s nothing a dwarf likes more than gold, women included.”
              “We should get moving. The funerary rites cost us valuable time, and I don’t want to be in the forest when the sun goes down.”
              They gathered up their things and dispatched half their number back toward the base camp before Bromm led the others in the opposite direction. In addition to himself and his two friends, he was accompanied by Urgan, Nyvald, and Heyne, the dwarf’s lover, along with the sea rats Jeraw and Pikmin. They headed past the ruined house toward the rising crags, which they could sometimes glimpse through the tree canopies ahead of them. It was midday now, and he began to worry about making it back to camp before dark. But there was treasure to be found out there, and Bromm was a captain whose crew expected him to deliver the rewards. He had won his ship through a mutiny and so knew the fate that awaited a captain who left his crew unsatisfied. 
              Banishing the thoughts of mutiny from his mind, Bromm forged ahead with his reduced party. He was confident that the minotaurs had been banished, at least for the moment. The entire ambush party had been annihilated, and so none of them could summon reinforcements. Still, there was surely a camp somewhere on the island, and surely there were more than a dozen. But all of those were problems for later, he decided.
              The forest was proving to be both obstructive and bountiful. They passed beneath trees heavy with fruit, though clearly not part of any orchard. They climbed the trees with ease enough and found that fruits were sweet and juicy. After eating their fill of a midday meal, they picked the rest and stuffed their packs with them before continuing.
              Twice they startled pigs rooting through the underbrush, but it was only when the second went squealing off that Bromm thought that they would make for a nice dinner when the time came. When he heard another pig grunting ahead of them, he stopped in his tracks and signalled for the others to fan out. Slowly and quietly, they encircled the pig and Bromm readied his musket. He crept forward until he could see the beast snuffling about at the base of a tall, moss-encrusted tree. 
              Bromm shouldered the musket and took aim. Past the pig, he could see Nyvald doing the same, while Pyet readied a pistol. Bromm pulled the trigger, and the flint struck the frizzen with a snap, but the action produced no sparks. Bromm swore. The flint was insufficiently knapped; it must have been damaged in the fight with the minotaurs. 
              The pig lifted its head, suddenly alerted to the danger it was in. With a frightened snort, it bolted. There was a cacophony of shots and the forest suddenly filled with smoke. Somewhere in the smoke, Bromm heard the pig squeal, and he cast aside the insubordinate firelock and rushed forward with his sword readied.
              He found the animal flailing about, wounded by a pair of shots to its legs. The beast sported a pair of nasty tusks under its snout, and as Bromm approached it wheeled on him with fury in its eyes. 
              “Look out!” Pyet cried, drawing near with a second pistol raised. The pig charged Bromm before Pyet could shoot, and he threw himself aside before the tusks could tear him open. Pyet fired the pistol and struck the pig in its side. Shrieking in pain, it toppled to the ground. Its thrashing legs threw up a storm of dried leaves, further obscuring it even as the gunsmoke began to dissipate. 
              Bromm scrambled to his feet and rushed the wounded animal. He plunged his saber into its neck and leaned on it until the pig stopped kicking. The others came rushing up as the pig breathed its last.
              “Ohoh!” Urgan crowed, “he’s a fat one!”
              “Aye, he’ll make a good meal for the whole party,” Nyvald agreed.”
              “Pity you couldn’t put him down by surprise,” Urgan went on, “his meat will be tough now. Always maintain your flint.” Bromm shot him an annoyed look, and the dwarf added “captain” out of deference.
              “Cut down a branch and let’s bring him along,” Bromm ordered. He walked back to his musket and knapped it while the others strung up their kill. Urgan’s chastisement aggravated him, but not as much as his overly familiar attitude. He would need a reminder of who wore the captain’s hat. Soon enough the men were done, and they continued their march, now in even higher spirits. 
              The ground rose faster and rockier toward the crags. Tall boulders stood out between the trees and from the high boughs Bromm could hear birds calling. Where the tree canopies grew thin he could see the winged shaped of great long-tailed birds circling overhead. 
              “I hope they aren’t hungry,” Imre muttered, “they look big enough to carry one of us off.”
              “Or all of us,” Heyne added.
              “They won’t find me an easy meal,” Nyvald vowed. He hefted his broad axe and stared skyward. Another shadow passed overhead and he scowled. “They’ll stay in the skies if they know what’s good for ‘em.”
Bromm paid them little mind and urged the party forward. Ahead of them was a rootbound slope that led up into the crags. Using the roots as hand and footholds, they made their way slowly to the crest of the slope. Bromm hauled himself over the edge and looked around. 
              To either side towered the granite faces of the crags, great gray teeth jutting up into the sky. At their center lay a placid tarn that reflected the clear blue sky on its flat surface. The edge of the little valley was ringed with flowering plants and dense thickets. Beneath one such thicket, Bromm saw a pair of white-furred rodents with just their heads poking out. They flitted their gaze from one end of the valley to another in the manner of such small creatures, then fixed their gaze on Bromm and promptly retreated into their burrow. 
              The others clambered over the lip behind him and stopped just as he had. Their slain pig was momentarily forgotten on its pole as they stared about the valley in awe. 
              “This must be a holy place,” Pyet mumbled. 
              Urgan did not wait to find out and went straight to the tarn. Bromm caught up to the dwarf at the water’s edge, where they both knelt and dipped their hands into the water. It was cold but clear and Bromm happily gulped down a handful. The water coursed down his throat and he felt a strange, cold sensation come over him. Suddenly concerned, he looked to Urgan who wore a similar look.
              "What has happened?” the dwarf demanded. “Are we cursed?”
              “Look!” Pyet cried, his finger pointing across the water. On the opposite shore, where the water grew thick with reeds, a cluster of flowers floated on the water’s surface. They were in bloom, wide and dark, with petals of dark violet ranging to black and blood red stamens in the middle. Bromm’s heart grew cold as he recognized the infamous black lotus.
              “Has the water been poisoned by the lotus?” he wondered aloud.
              “Nay,” Urgan replied, standing to his feet. “I should think not. I am no stranger to the lotus and it has never made me feel like this. This is sorcery at work.”
              Bromm had heard rumors that the dwarf liked to smoke petals of the black lotus, but had never put much stock in them. The flower was rare, and alchemists who could distill its essence into a powerful drug instead of its usual form as a deadly poison were rarer still. He stood up as well, and felt the coldness of the water fading fast.
              “I feel as if we are not threatened by whatever was in the water,” he said. The others drew near, looking to the water with suspicion and the lotuses with interest.
              “We should take some with us,” suggested Imre. “The lotus petal is worth its weight in gold to the right man.”
              “Where would we find such a man?”
              “Torvuls,” answered Bromm. “Everything can be found in Torvuls, for the right price.”
              “Aye, but we’ll be the ones setting the price,” Imre said with cheer. “Does anyone know the right way to cut them?”
              “Do not cut my flowers!” called a silvery voice, and the sailors all turned in unison. Emerging from the trees was a young woman, fair of skin and fair of hair, with eyes like the clear blue sky above. She was barefoot and clad only in a sleeveless moss-green dress that exposed her shoulders and reached just past here waist and a garland of flowers. Another ring of flowers crowned her head, and she wore lively green vines around her forearms. She was maddeningly beautiful, and Bromm could feel the famous sailor’s lusts rising all around him.
              But the woman advanced unafraid on dainty feet, her steps leaving behind no trace in the soft grass. As she drew closer, Bromm could smell that she was cloaked in a fragrant perfume of the most delightfully scented wildflowers. 
              “Who are you?” Pyet breathed in wonder. The woman smiled coyly and brushed a golden lock back from her beautiful face. 
              “My name is Oromeia,” she replied in her enchanting, silvery voice, “and this is my home.”
              “These are your flowers?” Imre asked, and Oromeia nodded. 
              “I have raised these lotuses from their seeds, as I have raised everything else here, from sparrow to oak.”
              “You raised the oaks?” Bromm asked. He looked to the nearest one, which towered nearly a hundred feet over his head, and understood. “You are a dryad.”
              Oromeia smiled. “I am. Erchasos is my father, and I tend to his earth as a loyal daughter. You are welcome here, though I ask merely that you treat the tarn and its valley with the care that I have.”
              “My lady,” Bromm began, unsure of exactly how to address an immortal but determined to carry on, “When we drank from your waters, we felt something change in ourselves. What has happened to us? If it is some curse for fouling your waters unbidden, I must humbly beg your forgiveness---”
              Oromeia smiled, her eyes dancing with delight. With one dainty hand, she covered her mouth and laughed to herself. Then she steadied herself and dropped her hand away. “It is no curse, you have drunk from the Fountain of Fortune! Apliss, Lady of Luck, is my mother, and has blessed my pool such that all who drink from its waters will carry her blessing until the moon’s turn.”
              Bromm thought to his star charts and frowned. There were only two days until the new moon rose. It would be a short-lived blessing, but that was the way of the Lady of Luck, who gave with one hand and stole back her gifts with the other. He wondered if her daughter was any different.
              “I thank you for your hospitality, my lady,” Bromm said. He bowed stiffly and the dryad laughed again.
              “I am no queen, you flatter me so.”
              “Your father is a god, and your mother too,” Bromm protested, “I would not dare impugn your station.”
              “My father is a temperamental soul, and my mother a fickle mistress, but I am neither of them. This is my garden, and you are my guests. Seat yourselves and drink of my water. I see that you have slain a pig and I will not begrudge you that, but I will not allow a fire to be made in my hollow.”
              Bromm nodded solemnly and gave a stern look to the others to be sure they understood the importance of obedience. His companions and Nyvald nodded with him, but the sea rats and Urgan had eyes only for the dazzling beauty in front of them, while Heyne looked at her with poorly disguised jealousy. 
              Oromeia turned toward the far side of the grove. “There I grow many fruits that you will not find wanting. Eat of them as you will, for I will not let it be said that I am not a gracious host.”
              The sailors pushed past each other toward the trees, taking their time as they passed Oromeia to look her over close up. She smiled sweetly at them and Pyet blushed a deep red. Bromm remained where he was and soon he and she were alone.
              “My lady, I must inquire,” he began, and she turned her gaze to him. The sight of her dancing green eyes staring into his soul made him weak in the knees. “This island… I…” he stammered, her eyes were piercing. “What is this place?”
              “It is an island,” Oromeia replied, “what else would it be?”
              “I have never heard of such a place, nor is it on any of my charts.”
              “My father is master of the wilds, and his domains defy the efforts of mortals to pin them to any sheet of paper or roll of vellum. He commands the land to be wild, and it obeys.”
              Bromm thought to press further, but decided that was as much of an answer as he was going to get. Together they walked to the fruit trees and joined the others, who had already begun devouring the fruit. Even though they had seemingly sated themselves on the fruits in the forest, the men and Bromm alike found themselves unable to resist the delicious fruits before them. They were round and tan, with tough exteriors but sweet and starchy white insides that the crew devoured without shame. The thick rinds began to pile up at their feet until Oromeia picked them up and threw them into the thickets out of sight. 
              Smiling proudly, she sat cross-legged in the grass with them and watched them eat. 
              “This fruit is divine,” Urgan said around a mouthful of the stuff. “Does this only grow in your garden?”
              “In my garden or the gardens of my sisters, who are most numerous, though still hard to find.” Oromeia took one of the fruits from the pile they had picked and dug her fingers into its rind. With some effort, she tore it in half to expose the fleshy interior and held it before her soft, pink lips. She bit into it and the fruit’s sugary juice spurted forth and ran down her chest.
              The sailors watched, enraptured, but Oromeia merely laughed at the mess she had made. She devoured the rest of the fruit and threw the rind aside, then stood up.
              “This needs a wash,” she declared and then, to the stunned delight of the eight sailors, she pulled it over her head and stood naked before them. Bromm nearly choked on a mouthful of fruit. The dryad was slender yet buxom, with two smooth, shapely breasts topped by pale pink nipples. She was hairless between her legs in the manner of elves and immortals that mortal women could only imitate by shaving. The dryad tossed aside her dress and it gently floated to a rest on a mossy stone beside the tarn. She flicked her blonde hair over her shoulder and looked to the men who stared open-mouthed at her.
              “What’s the matter?” she asked, her silvery voice tinged with a hint of teasing. “You are surprised to see me in my natural state?”
              “Not surprised,” Bromm answered quickly, “we are awed. Never in all the world have I seen such beauty.”
              “You are too kind, mortal,” Oromeia said, her white cheeks turning just the slightest bit rosy. “It is so rare that I look upon a mortal that I forget how handsome you can be. My only male company on this island are my bastard half-brothers, the minotaurs, who are most ugly and savage.”
              “My men may be ugly,” Bromm replied, “but we are far from savage.”
              “And much easier on the eye than my brothers,” the dryad replied. “But no more of them, I have no taste for minotaurs. I find myself with some taste for you, mortal.”
              Bromm’s breath caught. “Taste? How do you mean, my lady?”
              “You are a handsome man, and kind as well. I am naked, and you could be so soon. Remove your garments and let us enjoy ourselves.”
              Bromm stood up in a hurry and stripped off his pants. Behind him, his men stood stunned and motionless. Laughing at their shock, Oromeia knelt before Bromm and took his cock in her hands. Bromm struggled to control himself. He stood in a fantastical valley with an immortal’s hand around his cock, and now she was opening her rosy lips to swallow him in her mouth! He gasped in awe as her lips touched him. A tingle went through his body, for the lips of an immortal were softer and more sensual than any other pair that had ever touched him. His toes curling in the grass, he looked down into Oromeia’s sky-blue eyes and she smiled back at him. 
              He moaned with pleasure and wound a hand through her golden hair. Oromeia wrapped an arm around his naked waist and ran her tongue along his cockshaft. Clutching a fistful of hair, Bromm could on stand stupid and watch. Oromeia giggled, then hopped to her feet.
              “I was so eager for cock that I forgot my manners,” she said with a devastating smile. “A kiss for the weary sailor?”
              Bromm nodded, stupefied, and she leaned in, still stroking his hard cock with one hand. The dryad’s lips touched his own and Bromm kissed back with more passion than he had ever kissed a girl before. Oromeia was thick with the scent of wildflowers and the clear mountain water. Bromm had never been so dumbstruck. After a long, sensual kiss that Bromm spent trying not to come, Oromeia pulled away with another smile.
She knelt down before him again and her soft lips engulfed his cock. Bromm sighed deeply, then turned slightly to the side so that the gawking men behind him could see her clearly, cock in her mouth and a little droplet of spittle on her bare breasts.
              As if awaking from a dream, realization dawned upon them at last and the sailors began eagerly stripping from their clothes. Clothes scattered around them in the grass as the men all crowded around Oromeia, thrusting their hard cocks at her as she fought to satisfy eight men with only one mouth and two hands. The air grew thick with lust and sweat and not even the onset of a cool breeze could clear it. Men grabbed at Oromeia; at her breasts, her ass, her legs. Urgan clutched at her sex, and the dryad pushed his rough hand away, laughing.
              “All in good time,” she called out. She shooed them away and they withdrew half a step, all still with hands on their cocks. Oromeia turned lightly on her bare feet, looking with salacious interest at the men who surrounded her. Turning to Bromm, she touched a finger to her rosy lips. “Lie down,” she commanded. Bromm did as she ordered, the soft grass making a welcoming bed. Oromeia straddled his cock and lowered her dripping sex onto his cock. His eyes rolled back as his cock spread her lips and her silky-smooth purse descended around him. She leaned forward, her gorgeous breasts hanging from her pale chest like ripe fruit. He wanted little more than to squeeze and bite them, to suckle at her teats like a hungry animal. 
              Oromeia knelt atop his cock and Bromm seized her by her hips. The dryad tittered with delight as he began to thrust into her, the clapping of their hips together overpowering the furious stroking of the seven onlookers. Bromm clenched tightly, trying to keep from coming inside her immediately. For her part, Oromeia understood what he was struggling with, but did not make it any easier on it. She ran a finger down his chest and leaned her head in close, her hot breath on his neck. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to control himself.
              Bromm sensed someone close by and his eyes flew open again. Imre had knelt behind Oromeia, one hand on his hard cock and the other holding her steady by the hips. Oromeia twisted her head around to look him in the eye. He smiled hungrily and slid his cock into her asshole. The dryad’s mouth dropped open, and she let out a low moan of pleasure. Imre wrapped a hand around her neck and pulled her close for a kiss. They locked lips and entwined tongues. Imre’s hand closed over Bromm’s as they both grabbed for her tits.
              The two men matched rhythms, each of them withdrawing as the other entered, keeping time as they slapped their hips against her supple white body. Bromm felt the slap of Imre’s balls against his own as they fucked Oromeia between them, each of their cocks pressing the walls of her orifices against the other’s cock. The dryad leaned forward, moaning like a hungry animal, and her pink nipples brushed against Bromm’s lips. Bromm clenched his muscles, straining not to come already. Fucking the dryad was better than any other woman he had ever lain with. 
              “Nystra’s Tits!” he cried. She giggled in delight, her big breasts bouncing against his lips as her body shook with mirth.
              He seized the moment and latched his lips to a bouncing breast. Oromeia squealed with delight as he sucked and Imre fucked. Her sex pulsed around his cock as the two men drove themselves deep inside her. Bromm felt the climax building in his cock. The dryad could tell, and leaned in to passionately kiss him again. At the same time, she reached beneath herself to stroke his cock as he penetrated her. Bromm could contain himself no longer and, with a mighty groan, spurted his seed into her warm and welcoming sex.
              Oromeia did not stop, nor did Imre, who continued to slap his hips against her buttocks. Her delicious breasts continued to bounce in his face, and Bromm slowed his thrusting into her sex. Imre tightened his grip on her, pulling on her hair like the reins of a horse and squeezing her forearm. He too then groaned with release and shuddered, his cum squirting forth into her sex. Bromm felt a trickle run down his slackening cock, though whether the moisture was his, Imre’s, or Oromeia’s he did not know, nor did he care. He lay panting in the grass, starting up at the sky beyond the dryad’s smiling visage and offered a silent thanks to Nystra, Goddess of Tits and Wine.
              Imre slid his cock out of Oromeia’s ass with a satisfied sigh, but an eager Urgan rushed forward and shoved him away.
              “My turn,” he bellowed, and seized Oromeia by the hair.
              “Hold on a moment,” Bromm protested from beneath her. The dryad had craned her neck around to look at the dwarf, and her eyes lit up at the sight of his thick, veiny cock. “Let me get out from beneath her first.”
              Urgan paid him little mind, instead shoving his cock into the dryad with a roar. She squealed and giggled; her attention diverted from Bromm as he awkwardly scuttled out from between her legs. Urgan was grunting with exertion, his muscular hip slapping against her soft white buttocks. Heyne approached them, his cock in hand and laid a plaintive hand on the dwarf’s shoulder. Urgan paid him no mind, his eyes fully fixed on his cock and the dryad’s ass. With a flash of annoyance, Heyne turned Urgan’s head toward his cock and the dwarf obliged him at last.
              Nyvald stepped forward and knelt beside Oromeia. Urgan spat out his lover’s cock and pointed a gnarled finger at the Northman. 
              “Her cunny is for my lad here, wait your turn,” he snapped.
              “I can’t resist the sight of an empty purse,” Nyvald protested, reaching between her legs to play with her sex.
              “Heyne, lad, get beneath her legs and fuck the lass before he steals her away.”
              Heyne abandoned Urgan’s mouth and did as he was told. Nyvald retreated with an annoyed sigh while the lad slid himself underneath Oromeia and thrust his cock between the pink lips of her purse. The dryad squealed again as he entered her and planted her hands on his chest to look deep into his eyes. Heyne managed a shy smile, but the dryad’s body began to shake violently under Urgan’s lustful fucking. He roared and she squealed while Heyne grasped at her bouncing breasts. Bromm lay in the grass, propped on one elbow, and watched. 
              It was a delightful time. The sun was shining overhead, and a cool breeze blew through the valley, carrying the dryad’s delighted giggling with it, along with the titillating slapping of flesh on flesh. She was a sight to behold. Bromm had never seen such a beautiful creature before. Her eagerness to fuck eight sunbeaten sailors in quick succession only further inflamed his desire. And so he watched, stroking his flaccid cock, as Heyne and Urgan fucked her, alternating between kissing her and each other, until at last they came.
              Urgan emptied himself into her asshole, which was still dripping with Imre’s cum. Heyne spasmed inside her first, but then clenched off his cock and stood up from the grass to unleash himself on her face. Oromeia giggled with delight as her face was spattered with white seed, her mouth open and tongue extended to catch it like life-giving rainwater in the desert. She lapped it up and squeezed his cock, hoping for more. Heyne stood panting, hands on hips as the dryad played with his cock. Urgan approached him and gave the lad a slap on his ass.
              “Well done, lad.” He pushed himself up on his tiptoes and kissed Heyne, who gave him a contented smile.
              “Now that that’s all done,” Nyvald barked, “Turn over, girl. I want to fuck your ass.” Oromeia obeyed, laying back in the grass and cupping her breasts. Pyet stepped forward and stood over her, his stiff cock jutting out before him like a ship’s bowsprit. 
              “What do you say, Nyvald?” he asked with a smile. “You have her ass and I’ll take her snatch?”
              The Northman nodded. “Aye. Here, girl, get on top of me.”
              He lay back and she climbed atop him, sliding his cock into her well-used, cum-dripping asshole. Pyet knelt by her open sex and slipped his cock inside. They fucked her while Nyvald gripped her by the hips and Pyet by the breasts. Oromeia turned her head to look at Nyvald beneath her, and puckered her lips for a kiss. Nyvald grimaced, seeing the cum still adorning her pretty face, and averted his gaze. Disappointed, the dryad turned to Pyet.
              Pyet gleefully obliged. He kissed her soft red lips without regard for the other man’s seed on it, even though it stuck and attached to his own face. The sensation seemed to arouse him further, for he fucked her furiously, her buxom chest heaving with each blow, until he at last pulled out and unleashed a spurt of cum onto her chest. Some went as far as to land in her mouth, where she eagerly lapped it up, while most landed in the valley between her breasts and ran down her white stomach to pool in her navel.
              Nyvald was annoyed that some of Pyet’s cum dripped off the dryad and onto his body below. He scowled as little droplets fell upon him, but did not slow his pace of fucking. Soon enough, he came as well, emptying a third load of seed into her tight little asshole. Beaming, Oromeia slid off Nyvald to lie beside him in the grass.
              Bromm looked from her to the two sea rats, the last men left unsatisfied. They were both standing to the side, furiously stroking their limp cocks. Before them, Bromm saw cum staining the grass. They got too eager, he thought to himself with amusement. Jeraw sensed Bromm’s gaze and looked up from his cock sheepishly. He gave him a shrug and let the member fall from his hand.
              Oromeia saw what had happened and stifled a giggle. She lay back in the grass and stretched herself out, a wide smile on her face. Urgan had seated himself on a rock, holding the naked Heyne in his lap and caressing him. The dwarf stroked his own beard thoughtfully and Bromm groaned internally. A story was coming.
              “Ah, that takes me back to when I was a young dwarf just out of the holds. Often we couldn’t afford to have a whore for each of us, so we’d all pitch in for one and fuck the daylights out of her skull until we could no longer walk!”
              Oromeia sprang to her feet. “That was the most fun I’ve had in ages! Come along now, after such a fuck, I need a bath!” She darted past them toward the tarn, her bare feet dancing gracefully across the grass and her long blonde hair flowing in the breeze behind her. Bromm leapt to his feet and ran naked after her.
              They splashed together into the cold, clear water of the tarn, sending white waves rolling across its surface to break on the far shore. His skin broke out in gooseflesh as the chill ran up on his body and he stopped, waist-deep in the water, as his feet refused to carry him any further. 
              The dryad splashed deeper into the water until her breasts was submerged. She turned toward him with a delighted smile and behind he heard more splashing as the others came to join. 
              “Too cold for you, sailor?” Oromeia teased Bromm. “I would have thought you used to cold water.”
              “When sailing, it is usually best to remain aboard the ship, rather than in the sea below.”
              She laughed. “Don’t be such a coward!” She stepped closer to him, her white chest rising from the water. She too was breaking out in gooseflesh, and her pink nipples stood out clearer against her pale skin, diamond droplets of water hanging from them. Oromeia swept an arm through the water, gathering a wall of cold water behind it until she unleashed the wave against Bromm.
              He yelped as the wave broke over his chest, the bitter cold cutting deep. He gasped for breath, his teeth chattering, and hunched his shoulders for warmth. Looking back to Oromeia, the dryad crouched low in the water with just her eyes above its surface, but through the clear water he could see that she was smiling impishly. 
              “You’ll pay for that,” he chattered, and plunged deeper into the tarn in pursuit of her. She fled, laughing, and Bromm felt the cold water clutch him in its icy grip as he sank deeper within the lake. The dryad was in here element here, and stayed always out of Bromm’s reach. They rose from the water as they approached the opposite shore and now Bromm’s longer legs gave him the advantage. He caught her by the hair, but let it go immediately for fear of hurting her. Two strides later, he seized her by the arm and pulled her close. Oromeia blushed as he kissed her, and her soft hand closed about his cock. 
              Bromm lay her down in the grass and, hands entwined, fucked her again. Oromeia wrapped him in her arms and legs, moaning softly as he whispered into her ear. He finished in her again, and they lay together in the grass. Her blue eyes danced in the sunlight and he felt a sense of peace overcome him.
              I could stay here forever, he thought. 
              It was Urgan who interrupted his thoughts. A shadow fell over the two of them and he looked up to find the dwarf standing over him, still naked and wet from the tarn.
              “Captain,” he growled, his narrowed eyes fixed on the naked dryad. “We should be going if we want to make it to that second ruin.”
              Bromm sighed. The dwarf was right. He had thought to send for Sahat and the others and give up the life of a sailor. The five of them could let Urgan take the ship and remain here in Oromeia’s valley, living off her bounty and spending the nights and days inside her. But as beautiful as she was, his heart remained with the open sea and the far horizons, and so he gave the order for the men to begin preparing to move on again.
              The men filled their flasks from the wide tarn and picked fruit from the bounteous boughs in preparation for their march. Oromeia approached Bromm with an expression of curiosity but also sadness.
              “Where do you go now?” she asked. Bromm sighed. He wanted to stay her and fuck her forever.
              “We are headed for the ruins beyond your crags. We search for gold and other treasures.”
              “You may find much there, though I have little knowledge of the island beyond my valley. But beware my brothers, the Brolkarai.”
              “The minotaurs?” Bromm asked.
              “Yes, I forgot to use your name for them. My father’s savage spawn. They live for only carnage and carnal delights. They will devour you if they catch you. If you need return here, you will be safe in my valley. They may enter only by my invitation.”
              “I will remember that. Thank you, my lady, for your hospitality.”
              “Thank you, Bromm the sailor,” she replied.
              “I am afraid we must go,” Bromm said with a heavy heart. “I have others of my crew waiting on us, and there is still much of the island to see. Perhaps we will be back soon.”
              “Take some of the lotuses. I know they are valued like gold among your people. My garden is plentiful enough, it will be my gift to you.”
              “I am deeply thankful, Oromeia,” Bromm replied. “But I fear I have no gift to give you in return.”
              She laughed and grabbed his cock. “You have given me all I wanted. Now go. It is growing later by the moment, and the Brolkarai will be looking for you.”
 
              With much complaining, they at last set forth from the valley again. Oromeia waved farewell, still naked and glistening with the water of the tarn. Bromm set a hard pace for his men, hoping to get them away from the valley before any thoughts of going back overpowered the group. 
              His goal lay in sight as they crested another rise, a broken gray finger jutting up from the green forest ahead of them. The men cheered in triumph, doubling their pace. They crossed a small stream, startling a trio of colored birds into flight. Bromm paid them little attention as they spiralled up and through the trees into the clear blue sky. His attention was fixed on the ruin ahead of them and his mind wandered to what treasures they might find there.
              With the ruin in sight, Bromm spied a path to it that led through a bit of marshy low ground. The others objected to such a constrained approach, but with no further sign of the minotaurs who had ambushed them, Bromm prodded them onward. Urgan grumbled as he usually did, but with Pyet and Imre enthusiastically championing Bromm’s leadership, they wound their way across the swamp from one bit of dry land to another until finally they came to the far side where the ruin lay across a meadow of tall grass. 
              “Careful now,” Urgan hissed in his gravely voice, “this is the perfect place for another ambush.”
              “We killed them all before and we’ll kill them again,” Bromm shot back, and forged through the tall grass with a saber in hand. The grass was dry and brittle, it cracked under his hands and feet as he walked. His path became clearly marked by a trail of trampled grass through which his companions followed. A cool sea breeze gusted through the meadow and the grass waved all around Bromm. For a moment, he feared that Urgan might be right. Any number of minotaurs might be concealed barely an arm’s length from him and he would never know it until they burst forth to slay and devour him.
              The far side of the meadow came not a moment too soon and Bromm emerged to find himself standing a stone’s throw from the gray ruin. It had once been a tower, sticking up gods-only-knew how high into the clear blue sky, but now it had rotted and crumbled away until only a narrow arc of the cylindrical wall stood more than twenty feet from the ground. All around its base were fallen blocks of hewn granite. Bromm regarded the ruin curiously as his companions emerged from the brush behind him. Any satisfactory explanation of what these structures were for or who had built them still eluded him. 
              Bromm had never before considered himself to be of a scholarly bent, but these ruins piqued his curiosity. On occasion he had encountered scholars in the taverns of great ports. Usually they were in search of artifacts to buy off sailors, but more than once he had encountered a scholar who wished to hire a captain to take him to a ruin or other site of interest overseas for the purposes of study. Few captains wished to go prowling ancient ruins instead of running cargoes – or stealing cargoes, and the scholars so rarely had much money to pay them, so these endeavors rarely went anywhere. 
              But as he pushed open the rotting door to the ruin, Bromm found himself wishing that he had a scholar on hand to explain what he was looking at. The room beyond the portal was an old sitting room, worn away by time and weather. A threadbare carpet caked with dust and mold lay stretched across the floor except for the places where dripping water had rotted holes through it. 
              He stepped inside carefully, saber at the ready. Sunlight streamed through a hole in the outer wall where the tower’s stones had fallen away and taken the plaster with them. Apart from a few hanging weeds swaying in the breeze, nothing else moved in the tower. 
              “It’s empty,” he breathed. Urgan shoved his way past him with a surly grunt. The dwarf planted his fists on his hips and looked around. Though he faced away from him, Bromm could tell the dwarf’s face was a mask of disgust. Perhaps I heard his nose crinkling, Bromm thought drily. 
              “What a cesspit,” Urgan grumbled. “Why is this place in such a state when the first place was teeming with treasure?”
              “That staircase looks intact,” Pyet opined over Bromm’s shoulder. The lad extended a finger toward a crumbling stone staircase that wound up the far wall of the tower before connecting to a decrepit wooden ceiling above them. Bromm frowned. Intact was not the word he would have used.
              “You want to climb it, be my guest,” Urgan barked with a mocking laugh. He stomped off toward a chest of drawers and wrenched them open. The handle came off in his hand, and wrenched part of the drawer with it. Heyne and Nyvald pushed past Bromm to join him, though neither of them looked enthused. Bromm turned to Pyet with a shrug.
              “Stairs?” he asked, and Pyet shrugged.
              “After you,” he replied. Bromm crossed the room, shaking his head as Urgan and his companions tore the decaying furniture to pieces in search of treasure. Together with Imre and Pyet, he gingerly tested the first stone step with one boot. It flaked away a bit of crumbling stone, but otherwise held. Slightly more confident now, Bromm took another step.
              The stairs became more worn and unsteady as he climbed, though his confidence mounted all the same the further rose. Above him, the wooden ceiling creaked in another breeze. As he reached the top, the stairs beneath his feet cracked and crumbled, small rocks falling away to clack and clatter on the floor below. Bromm steadied himself with a hand against the wall, and the discolored plaster too crumbled beneath his touch.
              The ceiling here was broken from above where a great weight had crashed through, leaving only a pile of junk beneath the hole. The rest of the round chamber was cluttered with broken furniture and debris. Beneath the broken masonry, dirt, and weeds, Bromm spied the familiar glint of gold.
              “This looks to be the place,” Imre breathed from behind him.
              “Aye, but watch these boards. And tell them to look out below.”
              With great trepidation, Bromm gingerly lowered his foot to the first of the floorboards. It creaked and bowed under his weight but held firm enough. Breathing a sigh of relief, he slowly made his way toward the junk pile beneath the gaping hole in the ceiling. An arc of gilded iron protruded from the mess and Bromm leaned closer. All along the band of metal were carvings in some strange script, along with notches at regular intervals like those on a sextant. Clearing away what he could of the mess, Bromm behold a gilded orrery, some of its crystal orbs shining in the sunlight. 
              The floorboards creaked behind him, and he turned to see Pyet. The other man looked on the orrery with wonder and whistled low. 
              “That will fetch good coin in Torvuls,” he whispered. He looked from the orrery to rest of the debris. “Look, a mirror! And it’s still unbroken!” Bromm saw that he was right, for against the wall lay a silvery mirror banded in brass. Despite all the destruction wrought by time and the elements, its reflective surface was still in perfect condition.
              “This must have been the abode of some wizard,” Imre called from the stairs. 
              “Aye. There is a bowl that sorcerers use for scrying,” Pyet pointed out.
              “Well, magical or not, it’s all made of gold and silver. Pack it up along with anything else valuable and let’s be on our way.” Nodding at Bromm’s command, the three of them began collecting various trinkets and baubles that they could retrieve from the detritus. When all the loose objects had been retrieved, Bromm turned his attention to the orrery. It lay wedged against the outer wall of the tower by a heavy stone block.
              “Here, Pyet,” he demanded, “help me move this damned block so we can get this out.”
              They grabbed it with their four hands and lifted it clear of the orrery. As soon as the obstruction was removed, the orrery began to spin again, as if powered by bound magic. Bromm stared at it in amazement as its crystal orbs clacked away on their gears. 
              “What sorcerer made this?” he wondered aloud. He went to reach for it, but remembered the heavy stone in his hands with a flash of frustration.
              Bromm dropped the stone to the side with an impatient crash and froze. The floorboards creaked ominously. He had just enough time to regret his haste, and for Imre to shout in alarm, before the whole thing collapsed under from beneath him. he and Pyet went crashing down to the floor atop their loot. One arm of the orrery jabbed him painfully beneath the arm and he felt all the breath blasted out from his lungs.
              He groaned in pain and rolled off the orrery. Dazed, his gaze was drawn upwards, where he could see the clear blue sky above. More of those great birds wheeled overhead.
              “What in Eldrin’s name did you do?” Urgan demanded, looming over him with an angrily furrowed brow.
              “Ohhhh…” Pyet moaned, crawling out from atop the pile. “We got a little overeager.”
              “Was anyone else hurt?” Bromm asked and the dwarf scowled deeper.
              “Heyne was nearly killed. It was Apliss’ own luck that he spied a silver chalice across the room and went for it just before you brought the roof down on him.”
              Bromm sat up and pressed a hand to his side. Nothing seemed broken, but he would be suffering from this fall for a good while yet. “Didn’t Imre warn you to look out above?”
              “I did,” Imre called from the stairs before Urgan could answer. The dwarf simply glared at Bromm and stalked off. Bromm rose to his feet and looked around. The orrery seemed undamaged, and the fall had disinterred some other pretty baubles for them to carry off. 
              The loose odds and ends went into one sack, while the rest was piled into another sack and cushioned with bundles of cut grass so that it would not damage itself during the march. Imre then tied the sacks to hang from a pair of tree branches and together with Pyet he hefted the whole assembly onto their shoulders.
              “Ready to go, captain!” he beamed.
              “Well then, we’re all ready. Back up the hill to the dryad!” Bromm cheered, and slapped Imre on the back. The other man smiled, his hand going to his belt in anticipation.
              “You mean to head back?” Urgan asked suspiciously. The dwarf’s eyes narrowed, and he hunched his shoulders forward. Behind him, Nyvald and Heyne bristled in sympathy.
              “Aye, my cock has recovered from that fucking I gave her,” said Bromm with a guffaw, “I could do with another turn on the dryad’s pretty little ass.” The others roared with laughter, backs were slapped, but Urgan frowned.
              “If we head back through the valley, we won’t make the camp before dark. We may not make it before dark as it is.”
              “What?” Bromm demanded with a scowl. “How are we to get back?”
              “We will head back toward camp along the coast.” Urgan pointed toward the shore, where not far away the blue expanse of the sea could be seen. “The return path will be shorter. But the sun is low, and we will need to move quickly. Lukodo will be expecting us, and might get worried if we aren’t back before dark. I don’t want the ship leaving without us.”
              “What if we camped here for the night?” Heyne suggested. “Then we could start back in the morning, fuck the girl some more, and get back to camp tomorrow.”
              “We are only eight of us,” Urgan answered. “There are bound to be more of the minotaurs. If we stay out here tonight, we may not survive to return to the tarn.”
              “We could head back to the valley,” Bromm suggested. “Stay there tonight, have another turn on her, then make for the camp in the morning.”
              “If we stop our bickering and move now,” Urgan replied with rising heat, “we can make it to Lukodo’s camp before dark. Look here.” He sketched their day’s journey in the dirt. “We’ve made two long sides of a triangle. All there is to do now is close the triangle and return to where we started. This one edge back to camp is much shorter than the combined two edges we marched to get here.”
              “Aye, but the two edges have a pretty, eager slut along the way,” Imre argued. The sea rats chorused their agreement. “A pretty slut and delicious fruits. And clear mountain water to drink!”
              “Are we here to fuck or to get treasure?” Urgan snapped. “There are plenty of pretty whores in the brothels of Torvuls. My concern lies with getting off this island with our treasure. There will be time to fuck once we’re safely in port.”
              “Easy for you to say,” Jeraw growled, “You’ve got some ass with you all the time. And I didn’t get to fuck.”
              “That’s your own fault,” Bromm shot back with a laugh. “Don’t go expecting us to give you a free turn just because you can’t control your cock.”
              “Will it? We still have no idea what this island is. It’s not on any of our charts. Who knows what monsters might prowl its shores, above or below the waves? We’ve taken a fine haul for ourselves, now we should secure it before we go looking for women.”
              “I am the captain,” Bromm declared at last. “And I say we are going back to the dryad’s valley to eat delicious fruits, drink the clear mountain water, and fuck her wondrous little body until we can’t walk anymore!”
              The crew cheered, except for Urgan. The dwarf scowled deeply, his cheeks turning red beneath his beard. Muttering dwarvish curses under his breath, he shouldered his pack and stalked off.
              “You’re welcome to head back to camp alone if you wish,” Bromm called after him. “I’ll take your turn on the girl for you.”
              With a grumbling Urgan in the lead, they lugged their treasure and the dead pig back up the slopes toward the dryad’s valley. Bromm took the lead, strolling confidently through the forest with his head filled with thoughts of the dryad’s delicious fruit and delicious body. Just the thought of fucking her a third time made his cock hard in his breeches.
              It was perhaps these thoughts that left him distracted, and he obliviously set his foot into a vine snare. It tightened fast about his ankle and jolted him from his reverie. Bromm looked down at the snare with confusion, unable to make sense of it. 
              Urgan barked behind him: “Ambush!”
              Bromm’s heart began to race, and Urgan’s cry was answer by a roar from the woods. Five minotaurs burst from hiding and rushed down on them, axes held high and eyes burning with voracious malice. He froze in the icy grip of fear.
              Behind him, a pistol cracked, and one minotaur’s arm burst apart at the elbow with blood. It fell screaming, but its companions paid it no heed. The other four trampled through the brush, bellowing war cries that turned Bromm’s blood to ice. 
              Pyet fired his pistol and missed high. Beside him, Imre lowered a boarding pike to impale any minotaur foolish enough to charge into its point, but there were too few of them to form a proper formation. 
Urgan drew two pistols of his own and the sight of it spurred Bromm to action. The men need their captain, a voice said from somewhere deep in the recesses of his head. He fumbled for his saber and pistol and somehow they wound up in his hands. 
              The minotaurs reached them at last, and one beast with a yellowed skull hanging about its next simply bowled over poor Jeraw. The sea rat was hurled to the ground with a crack that Bromm hoped was a branch beneath him. Imre’s pike warded the rushing monsters away from him while Heyne deftly parried the blow of an axe. 
The russet-furred beast that had knocked over Jeraw reached down and seized the man by his foot. The sea rat screamed as he was dragged toward the brush, flailing his sword about. He cut the minotaur just below its knee, drawing a roar of pain. Pikmin darted forward to help his companion, blade at the ready. But another minotaur stepped forward and cut him off.
              Jeraw fought desperately to escape his captor’s grip, but it was for naught. The russet-furred creature kicked his sword from his hands and loomed over him. Jeraw screamed and covered his eyes at the monster raised a heavy hoof over his head and stomped. 
              Bromm cried out as the sea rat’s body jerked with a sickening crunch. Gore splattered outward from beneath the hoof. Jeraw lay still thereafter. Without thinking, Bromm raised his ivory-handled pistol and fired a shot into the russet minotaur’s flank. He struck home, and the beast staggered to one knee. Its horned head turned to glare at him, eyes burning with hate. 
              With the smoking pistol in one hand and his saber in the other, Bromm stood stupid under its baleful glare. So much so that he did not react when another monster lumbered toward him with a long axe gripped in its two hands. Turning, he beheld his death as the blade came whistling down at him.
              There was a sharp crack, and the air filled with smoke. The axe blade shrieked past him and crashed into the forest. The minotaur staggered and fell, clutching a blossoming red wound in its chest. Bromm turned to see Nyvald standing with a smoking pistol.
              “Come on, captain!” the Northman urged, “There’s only three of them now. Find your courage!”
              Bromm clutched his weapons in a white-knuckled grip and nodded mutely. Find your courage, he told himself. He stepped closer to the dying minotaur and plunged his blade into its neck. 
The two minotaurs still standing backed off, bellowing war cries and brandishing their weapons. Nyvald watched them for a moment.
              “Reload your pistol captain,” he said softly. “If they want to loiter and talk, we’ll shoot them dead without the need to risk getting our heads chopped off.”
              Bromm nodded. He fumbled for his powder horn and spare shot, hands trembling. He had come so close to death, only to be spared by a man he had never especially liked. He only wished someone could have done the same for poor Jeraw. He involuntarily looked to where the man lay, head smashed open like rotten fruit, and shuddered.
Imre and Pyet were advancing slowly against the last two minotaurs, driving them back toward the brush that had hidden them before. Urgan clutched his messer in both hands, also moving toward the minotaurs with Heyne in tow. Clearly, they hoped to surround the minotaurs and then attack from all sides. It was good fighting skill, Bromm noted, the kind that all experienced pirates knew but he had somehow forgotten when the minotaurs came rushing down at him. He at last pulled the cap off his powder horn and held up his pistol’s muzzle.
              From beside him, he heard a sickening splat – a sound he knew all too well. Turning, he saw Nyvald standing transfixed, a heavy battleaxe jutting from his collarbone. Behind him stood a huge, white-furred minotaur, a second axe held high for a killing blow. Bromm cried out against his will as it came hurtling down. It seemed to whistle in the air and time stood still for a moment before it crashed sickeningly through Nyvald’s collar until it clanged against its opposite number. With a bestial roar, the minotaur lifted Nyvald’s head from his shoulders and hurled it over his horns to crash, trailing viscera, into the brush behind him. Four more minotaurs crashed through the brush behind their leader.
              We’re surrounded, Bromm realized with panic. “Run!” he cried, involuntarily at first and then again with intent. “Run for the dryad’s valley!” 
              Without waiting to see if the others would obey, he turned and ran. His pistol and powder horn were cast aside in the rush, but he kept his saber at hand to hack at the foliage that blocked his path. The slope ahead of him was treacherous; choked with roots and stones that threatened to trip him up and serve him up as a meal for the horrific monsters who were hot on his heels. All the while, his sides ached from when he had fallen through the tower floor.
              Shouts and bestial bellows behind told him that the others were following his lead. Someone screamed, he heard Urgan yell, but he did not turn back. He carried on up the slope as fast as his legs would carry him. His breath began to fail him, coming shorter and shorter with each pained stride. But the crags had come into view and the bellowing of the minotaurs behind him had not abated. 
              At last, he drew near to the valley. He feared he was on his last legs, and could hear the grunting of a minotaur close behind. His heart pounding in his chest, he poured on every last bit of speed he could muster until he passed between the towering rocks at the entrance to Oromeia’s valley.
              From all around them, vines burst from the ground, snapping and grasping at the air. Bromm did not stop running and carried through them until one snagged his foot and sent him spilling to the earth. He turned over, ready to meet his end with saber in hand.
              To his great surprise, the valley mouth was choked with vines that had snared a hulking, black-furred minotaur. The thorny vines had hoisted him off the ground, where he struggled futilely like a fly in a spider’s web. On the interior side of the thicket were Urgan, Pikmin, Imre, and Pyet. Bromm breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of his friends, but Urgan lay in the grass with tears in his eyes. 
              Oromeia appeared from the trees. She had dressed herself but remained no less desirable than when Bromm had had his cock inside her by the tarn. “You return so soon, and with my brothers in hot pursuit.”
              “Yes, well,” Bromm gasped, trying to maintain some levity, “we missed you so much.”
              She laughed, silvery bells ringing in the cool evening breeze. “It is good to see you again, Bromm.” She looked to the trapped minotaur. “What have we here?” she wondered, moving toward the beast.
              Inspired by her cool confidence, Bromm followed. The thrashing vines calmed where she walked, then retreated into the earth without a trace. Soon, the only vines left where those holding the captive aloft and those blocking off the entrance to the valley so that the others could not join him. Beyond the retreating vines, Bromm could see the big, white-furred minotaur lurking among the trees, his terrible red eyes just as frightening from this far away.
              Undaunted, Oromeia stood below the captive minotaur, head tilted up to look at him with an amused air. Bromm stood just behind her, where he could feel the menace in the beast’s eyes. He thrashed about in the clutches of Oromeia’s vines, arms pinned to his side and axe discarded in the grass below. 
              The minotaur kicked at the dryad’s head, but she had positioned herself just out of reach. It snarled with frustrated fury. 
              “Hello, brother,” she called in her silvery voice, tinged with derision. “You are not invited to my valley, so why have you come here?”
              The minotaur roared at her, shaking with fury. Spittle flew from its maw, where fanged teeth dripped with unsated hunger. “Manflesh,” it spat at last, “We must feast, sister.” It spat the last word, dark red eyes fixed on her with palpable hate. 
              The minotaur wore only a harness of leather, the provenance of which he decidedly did not want to know, and a rope belt woven through a trio of old skulls, and between its legs Bromm could see its monstrous cock. It stiffened and rose at the sight of Oromeia, despite its shaking fury. 
              “Let me down,” it spat, “Let my brothers through. We will devour these mortals and fuck you raw!”
              “Not this time, I’m afraid. These are my guests.”
              “Guest!” the minotaur sneered. “Tasty morsels, nothing else. We feast and we fuck, and it has been too long since I’ve feasted on manflesh.”
              “Eight set out,” Oromeia observed, “Five return. You have your manflesh. Now begone.”
              “More!” it roared, “Always more, never enough. Give it to us, sister. Give us the mortals for feasting, then let us fuck you again!”
              Oromeia flicked her hair over her shoulder. “I have no need of you.”
              Urgan came stomping up behind them, his face a mask of fury. “Bring it down,” he roared.
              “Dwarf?” the minotaur spat. “Better than pig, but not much. I want manflesh!”
              “Oh ho,” Urgan sneered. “You’ll not be eating me! You and yours killed two of mine, now I’ll have my revenge!”
              “Heyne is dead?” Bromm asked with concern.
              “Dead!” Urgan roared in reply. “Cut down in his prime by these bullheaded brutes! Bring his down, girl, and I’ll carve his name in this beast and make him beg for death!”
              “Bring me down, sister,” the minotaur snarled, “I will feast on this impudent dwarf’s flesh!”
              “Aye,” Urgan snarled, clenching his blade in a white-knuckle grip. “Let’s settle this.”
              Oromeia turned to Bromm. “It’s up to you, my dear sailor. What becomes of him?”
              Bromm hesitated, unsure of her loyalties for a moment. “Let the dwarf have his revenge.”
              The dryad shrugged and the vines let the minotaur fall. He thudded to the ground with a grunt of pain, and before he could rise, Urgan was upon him. The dwarf screamed in fury, his iron falchion flashing in the late afternoon sun as he slashed and hacked at the monster’s furred flesh. The minotaur flailed about in protest, but its arms and legs were still entangled in the vines and its fate was sealed. The ground grew bloodier and wetter until at last Urgan collapsed, heaving and sobbing, atop the ruin of the minotaur.
              He lay there for a spell while the others watched silently, unsure of what to say. At last, Bromm stepped close to the dwarf and laid a hand on his shoulder.
              “Urgan,” Bromm began, “I am sorry about Heyne.”
              The dwarf whirled on him in a fury and threw a heavy punch into Bromm’s side. He gasped, the blow connecting where he had fallen on a bit of rubble in the tower, and doubled over.
              “I told you we should go directly back to camp!” Urgan roared. “But you wanted to fuck the dryad again, and now here we are! Heyne dead, Nyvald dead, our treasure lost, and even the pig is gone!”
              “I had no idea that—” 
              “Damn right! You have no idea about anything! You walked us straight into an ambush where we lost good men. You’re not fit to be captain!” 
              “You followed me into that ambush!” Bromm shot back, “If I’m a fool, you’re twice the fool for following me!”
“Well, perhaps I won’t be following you much longer!”
              Urgan half raised his sword again, but Imre and Pyet drew in reply and the dwarf reconsidered. Pikmin stepped behind him, his hand on his saber.
              “Jeraw is dead, too,” he reminded the dwarf, “You are not the only one who has suffered losses today.”
              “Aye,” Imre added, “And lest you think to do anything stupid, there’s four of us against one of you.”
              “Bah!” Urgan snorted. “I could kill the four of you with one arm tied behind my back!”
              “You’ve had a tough day,” Bromm soothed, but the dwarf only narrowed his eyes. “Before you say or do something we might all regret, take a drink from the tarn, eat some of the dryad’s fruit, and rest overnight. In the morning, we’ll make for Lukodo’s camp.”
              Urgan looked from Bromm to the other three pirates and bristled. All five of them raised their swords, with the dwarf surrounded and the others at compass points. Urgan narrowed his hands and steeled himself for a clash of blades. Imre, off to Urgan’s side, raised his rapier and prepared to strike.
              Urgan stood up and let his swordpoint fall. “Bah!” he snorted. “I’ve had enough killing for the day.” He flung his sword down in the grass and stalked away in the direction of the dryad’s orchard. Imre looked to Bromm for direction as the unarmed dwarf drew near. Bromm thought to give him the signal and rid himself of the troublesome dwarf once and for all. With only the three of them and Pikmin, he could easily convince the crew that Urgan had been slain by the minotaurs. 
              But he sighed internally and shook his head and Imre. The dwarf marched past without incident, and an air of relief settled over the dryad’s valley.
              “Well, that seems to be all settled now,” Oromeia said breezily. She approached them with an easy smile, her hips swaying in the evening breeze. “I see you still have the lotuses you cut,” she pointed to the bag on Bromm’s belt. “Not all is lost to the minotaurs.”
              “Small consolation for the dwarf, I’m afraid. He lost a friend, a lover, and a not inconsiderable amount of treasure and blames me.”
              “My savage brothers are wily ambushers,” the dryad replied. “Your companions are far from the first to fall to their bloodlust.”
              “I should not have left so many men behind at the camp,” Bromm thought aloud. “I just hope that they are safe there.”
              “Minotaurs are hunters. When they attack a herd, they cut off lone prey and run them down rather than take on the whole herd. Your companions will be safe in numbers.”
              “And you will keep us safe in this valley?”
              “I will,” Oromeia replied, laying a soft, delicate hand on his chest. “But whatever will we do to while away the night?”
              She had her answer moments later, down on all four with Imre’s cock in her mouth while Bromm fucked her from behind. A cool breeze heralded the setting of the sun and the crags’ shadows grew long. He watched her pale ass bounce on his cock and clutched her tightly by the hips until they grew red. When he was at last ready to cum, he rolled her onto her back and squirted long ropes of cum across her big, heaving breasts. 
              Bromm sat back on his heels and wiped the sweat from his brow. Oromeia smiled at him around Imre’s cock and touched the droplets of cum on her breasts with her free hand. Imre stood up, leaving Oromeia to pout at the retreat of his cock. But she was not long disappointed, for Imre took up Bromm’s place between her legs and began to fuck, while Pyet appeared and knelt by her mouth to offer up his cock for her pleasure. 
              As his friends fucked, Bromm lay back in the grass and stared at the sky. He heard Imre groan in release soon after and looked over to see him cum on Oromeia’s breasts as well. Pyet transferred to between her legs in turn, while Pikmin at last fed his stiff cock into her waiting mouth. Meanwhile, Urgan sulked under the fruit trees alone. 
Shaking his head, Bromm looked from the dwarf back to the dryad, who moaned delightedly as Pyet slapped his hips against hers in coitus. The young man fucked her vigorously, hands clutching at her soft white breasts and twisting her nipples between his fingers.
              Oromeia arched her back as Pyet fucked harder, a high-pitched moan of pleasure escaping her delicate lips. Pikmin’s cock slipped out fell along her rosy cheek, ignored as her attention went to the man between her legs. The dryad’s hands scrabbled at the earth as Pyet lifted her hips up to better fuck her. She cried out, her silvery voice reaching into the high boughs above, and her whole body shuddered. Pyet pulled his cock out and spurted a third line of cum across her naked body. Droplets rained down on her face and into her open, gasping mouth. Some even landed on Pikmin’s bare hip, though he paid it no mind. Instead, he eagerly crawled around her to take replace Pyet between her legs. 
              The dryad was still trembling with pleasure when the sea rat slid his cock inside her, so much that she barely paid him any mind. 
              “This is for you, Jeraw,” Bromm heard him whisper, then he lay himself atop her and wrapped her in his arms. He looked to his friends, who returned his bemused smile. The man’s chest was now surely wet with their cum. Pikmin kissed her lips, also wet with cum, and Oromeia at last registered his presence. She wrapped him up in her arms and legs and he began to thrust.
              Naked, Bromm and his two friends seated themselves in the grass behind the couple and watched between their legs as Pikmin fucked. His cock was thin and hairy, her sex wet and smooth. Pikmin thrust into her for only a short while before he came, his white cum spurting up from inside her to dribble down her buttocks into the grass.
Pikmin rolled off her to lie in the grass. They were all still for a moment, until the dryad sat up with a satisfied sigh. 
              “What will you do now?”
              Bromm sighed and idly plucked a blade of grass. “We’ll stay here the night and make for our camp in the morning. Then it’s on to the next ruin.”
              “Hm,” she replied, brushing her hair back from her pretty face. “Do return sometime. And bring more friends.”
              “Aye, I will,” Bromm agreed with a smile.
 
              They left the valley again at dawn. Oromeia assured them that the minotaurs would not have the valley surrounded, and so they left by a different entrance that they had not used before. They skirted along the feet of the crags until they came to the swamp they had encountered the previous day. Still concerned about the minotaurs, Bromm pushed them to a fast pace until at last they spied the beach through the trees. 
              They broke out of the treeline and onto the wide expanse of white sand with a shared sigh of relief. White Shepherd still lay at anchor where they had left her. With Bromm at the lead, they hurried down the beach, waving to those aboard, then turned back into the trees and headed for Lukodo’s camp on the hill. With the air of a man returning home after a long voyage, Bromm hurried up the slope to the stake palisade and was greeted by Lukodo’s broad smile.
              “Welcome back! We expected you yesterday, but I am glad to see you alive all the same.”
              “Aye, we ran into trouble.” Bromm related their travails the day before, starting with their battles against the minotaurs and then progressing to their time in the dryad’s valley and her fortune-blessed waters. He handed over the bag of lotus petals, their only loot to show for it, and ordered a sailor to take it back aboard the Shepherd for safekeeping. 
              “I have not been idle myself,” Lukodo said as they watched the courier go. “I sent a party to scout to in the other direction and they spotted a ruin. With luck, it will have enough treasure to make up for our losses.”
              “Then gather up the men and strike camp. I don’t want to be moving around in small parties anymore, it is too great a risk.”
              “Aye, aye, captain.”
 
              With Bromm again in the lead, the party headed in the direction that Lukodo’s scouts indicated. Here, the ground grew rocky and steep, as the crawled around the opposite flank of the crags towards the isle’s far shore. He set a slow pace, always cautious of an ambush, and so it was nearly midday before they summitted the rocky butte where the scouts had perched the day before.
              “There,” one of the sailors said, stretching a sunbeaten finger toward a break in the treetops. Bromm raised a spyglass to his eye. The sailor spoke true, for where the forest fell away he could see a tumbled down ruin of stone that sprawled across a low ridge. Beneath its crumbling roof, Bromm thought he saw the glint of gold in the sunlight. 
              “It looks promising,” Bromm said, scanning the ground that lay between their precipice and the ruin. “But getting there will prove troublesome.” Not far from the base of the butte, the green forest gave way to a rocky gorge and Bromm could make out the sound of a fast-flowing river that crashed and roared through its depths. Between the butte and the river, the forest was broken by large crags and boulders that turned the terrain treacherous.
              “We had best be on our guard,” he muttered. They climbed down from the butte and gathered the shore party close again. Bromm outlined the path to the ruin and the terrain ahead. Only Urgan, once again ensconced among his loyal supporters in the crew, objected.
              “Sounds like you’re leading us into another ambush. We should go around, along the beach.”
              “If the minotaurs want to ambush us again, let them try. We fought them off when we were just eight, now we are a real warband. We have little to fear. Besides, when did you become one to shy away from a treasure?”
              Urgan fumed but protested no more. Bromm seized the opportunity. “Onwards!”
              The band wound its way down the slopes toward the gorge. With every step, the rocks grew taller and the trees more oppressive. Where once they had stretched straight up toward the sky, the trees now grew from their rocky perches at odd angles, looming over their chosen paths like menacing crows. The men traveled with swords drawn and firelocks loaded and lit. Imre kept close to Bromm and hissed in a harsh whisper as they passed beneath the shadowed boughs of an ominous oak.
              “I don’t like this. Bad enough we have the minotaurs to worry about, but Urgan is spreading discontent among the men.”
              “They know the punishment for mutiny,” Bromm retorted breezily. “Men are always complaining when they encounter setbacks. Give them treasure, take them to port and point them at whores, and all of this will blow away like morning fog.”
              “You take your position too easily, Bromm. You are no king. Mutinies have brought down as many captains as storms or pirate hunters.”
              “You worry too much, Imre. You are beginning to sound like Sahat! I assure you, once we meet with success again, all of this will resolve itself.”
              “Then you had better hope that ruin is as rich with treasure as you act like it is. And that we don’t all die trying to get there. Look at this cursed forest. I fear worse things than minotaurs lurk behind these trees.”
              Somewhere off in the distance, a bird squawked twice, then fell silent. The forest grew still around them. “I don’t like this, Bromm,” Imre muttered again. Bromm bit his lip. Imre was right; something was wrong. He halted and looked back along their column. The men were silent, their faces drawn. All eyes were fixed on the forest around them, which seemed to grow darker by the moment. Bromm drew his remaining pistol, keenly feeling the loss of its mate during his rush to escape the earlier ambush.
              “Tighten up the column,” he hissed, and Imre passed the order up the ranks. Lukodo had already taken to ordering the men so that each firelock was next to a man with a pike for protection. Bromm summoned Pyet, and the pike he carried, to his side. 
              “I hear them moving out there, captain,” Pyet whispered, his green eyes fixed on the forest around them. “They’re close.”
              Bromm nodded, but once he was satisfied that the column was in order, he signaled the march to resume. Ahead of them he could see the trees thinning out and knew they must be near the gorge. With luck, they would be able to reach and cross the gorge before the minotaurs sprang their ambush. He thought to the dryad’s enchanted fountain. Would its blessing carry them to success and spoils?
              Motion above drew his gaze to the sky. A large shadow passed over the treetops, then another. More of those great birds, Bromm thought. Are they scavengers, come to steal scraps from the minotaurs’ table? They will feast on minotaur flesh tonight, he promised himself.
              Somewhere off in the brush, a twig snapped. Bromm whirled toward the source, pistol leveled and ready to fire. His whole column stopped; anticipation sharp in the moment. He sensed figures among the trees even though he could not see them. Hushed voices sounded, guttural and bestial. Bromm’s men leveled their firelocks and pikes. 
There came from the trees a mighty roar, first from a single throat and then resounding all throughout the woods. Bromm felt his bones rattle inside him and the blood drain from his face. More than a dozen of the hulking beasts burst from the trees, cruel axes and mauls carried in their clawed hands and murder in their red eyes. At their head was the white-furred minotaur, the skulls hanging from his belt clacking as he surged forward. 
              Bromm’s column crackled with gunfire as firelocks sounded in answer. Shot whipped through the forest, carving furrows through the trunks of unfortunate trees, blasting off thin branches and leaves, felling three of the brutes in their tracks. Bromm held his own pistol shot back, waiting for one of the beasts to draw near. Frantically, the men who had just fired began to reload while their comrades with pikes steeled themselves for the deadly clash at close quarters. 
              The minotaurs hurtled forward and reached the line well before even Bromm’s best shooters could fire again. Two of the monsters hurled themselves against the outstretched pike points, battering them aside with their muscle-bound bulk and terrible horns. A gap was opened, and the rest of the warband poured into it. A man screamed his dying cries, then another, and Bromm felt the panic rising in his mind. 
              The white-furred minotaur buried his axe in the face of one of Urgan’s men, the spraying blood and brain drenching its fur. The monster roared in triumph, spittle flying from its sharp teeth. Bromm leveled his pistol at the beast and fired. There was a sharp crack and a puff of smoke, but when it cleared, the monster stood tall and unbothered. It fixed its terrible gaze on Bromm and recognition dawned on its face. 
              It snarled, and lumbered forward, batting aside an unfortunate sailor who crashed against a tree and lay still. Two axes clenched in its fists, the minotaur burst into a run. Bromm retreated behind Pyet’s pike and reholstered his pistol. The column was disintegrating as the minotaurs poured into the breach they had made. Urgan was nowhere to be seen, and many of his compatriots had abandoned the fight already. Those who were not cut down fled into the forest, though a small group drew close in a knot around Bromm, their captain. Imre was there as well, reading a pike beside Pyet. Bromm clutched his saber hilt in both hands, feeling his heart pounding in his ears. 
              More minotaurs joined the white-furred one, and still more appeared from deeper in the forest. Between the dead, dying, and fled, Bromm realized that the balance of numbers was shifting quickly against his crew. 
              A sailor staggered to his feet in the white-furred minotaur’s path, dazed by battle. Oblivious to the monster’s approach, the man blundered straight into his path and was knocked aside by a cruel headbutt. The sailor screamed, caught with one of the monster’s horns piercing his shoulder. The minotaur slowed its charge for a moment to tear the man free and in that moment, Imre fired a pistol into its leg.
              The minotaur howled in pain, drawing the attention of its fellows. The rest of the column was down or running, and the score or more of minotaurs fixed their gaze on Bromm and his little band of stalwart sailors. Bromm swallowed hard. The white minotaur fell to a knee, glaring up at Imre with hatred in its red eyes. Its minions formed a crescent that drew down on them from three sides, moving slowly and deliberately. The minotaurs gnashed their teeth, panting with hunger and beating their thick chests with anticipation. 
              “We’re going to die,” Pyet mumbled to himself, though loud enough for the rest to hear.
              “We’ve got to get out of here,” Imre replied, his eyes darting about as the minotaurs closed in. “They’ll eat us alive or dead, they don’t much care.”
              “Where can we run?” Bromm wondered. “We could make for the butte and stand our ground there, but they’ve cut off our escape.”
              “To the gorge?” Imre wondered. “I’d dash myself against the rocks rather than let them feast on me, alive or dead.”
              “Perhaps we can find away across and avoid the unfortunate part about dying,” Bromm offered.
              “If we’re going to run, we should run now,” Pyet urged. Bromm hesitated, caught in the horns of a decision.
              “Fuck it,” he said at last, “RUN!”
              He burst from their knot of sailors and ran for the thinning trees ahead. Behind him, he heard the others cast aside their pikes and heavy firelocks to join him. With hot blood rushing through his ears, Bromm scrambled over tree roots and across the rocky ground until he suddenly ground to a halt, arms flailing in the air.
              He had come abruptly to the gorge, and the earth fell away just in front of his feet. A hundred feet below, white water rushed through a twisting riverbed clogged with fallen branches and boulders. Imre skidded to a halt next to him, and Pyet shot past him. With a panicked cry, Bromm reached out after his friend and snagged him by the coat. The weight in his outstretched hand bore him down, and Bromm feared they would both plummet to their deaths. Yet Imre grabbed on in time, and though they both fell to their stomachs on the rocky lip, Pyet remained in their grasp.
              One man did not stop in time and plunged screaming into the gorge. He crashed against the far wall and bounced into the river, disappearing beneath the water with a splash. The water foamed white, then red, and the man was gone. Bromm groaned, as much from witnessing the man’s fate as from his exacerbated bruises from the fall in the tower, and he and Imre hauled Pyet back to solid ground. 
              “Now what?” one of the sailors asked. They stood at the lip of the gorge, with the far side tantalizingly close, but too far for a comfortable jump to reach. 
              “Look for a bridge!” Imre cried, but there was no such escape. Bromm thought to fell a tree and use it to cross the gap, but he could hear the hunting cries of the minotaurs drawing ever nearer and they had no time. 
              “Run,” he cried in panic, “I’ll draw them off!” He did not know why he volunteered for such a task, but he felt that it was his duty as captain. Most of his sailors ran as ordered, but Imre and Pyet hesitated. “Go on,” Bromm urged, casting a frightened eye toward the source of the minotaurs’ cries, “I’ll evade them more easily on my own and meet you on the beach.”
              “They’ll kill you!” Imre protested, “They’ll eat you alive!”
              “Better me than all of us, now go!”
              They turned and fled as the crashing of the minotaurs in the brush grew louder. Bromm watched from the lip of the gorge as they ran off down its windy course, quickly disappearing around a bend. No sooner had they gone than the minotaurs appeared, the white one supported on the shoulder of a companion, his left knee a bloody mess. Ten pairs of blood red eyes fixed themselves on him, ten bestial mouths seethed with voracious rage.
              Bromm turned to face them, his back to the gorge and a saber in his hand. At least I got to fuck a dryad before I died, he told himself. How many other sailors can say that? He drew his empty pistol in his free hand and held it like a club. Bromm felt his knees go weak as the white-furred minotaur shoved off its supporting companions to stand on its own. It teetered a moment, then stood tall. Bile dripped from its growling maw. Bromm clutched his weapons tighter. 
              The other minotaurs looked up and down the gorge for his companions, snorting in annoyance. One bent to the ground and sniffed the dirt. With a terrible smile, he pointed in the direction they had fled. The others lumbered forward to join him. 
              Bromm spurred himself into action. Pistol raised high and saber couched low, he charged the white minotaur with a warcry that he hoped was frightening, even as it sounded pitiful to his own ears. The brute bellowed in answer, clashing its two axes together in anticipation. As Bromm had hoped, the other minotaurs turned back to watch the duel. 
              The twin axes flashed, and Bromm darted aside. He did not know where he found the speed to do so but thanked the gods for sparing him the grisly death that the axes promised. Bromm feinted with his club and stabbed at the minotaur’s wounded knee with his saber. The beast hopped backwards to avoid the blow and teetered precariously. It snarled in fury, axes chopping at him again. Bromm scuttled away just in time for the heavy overhead blows to crash into the dirt. A shower of dirt and grass rained down on him, but Bromm was already moving to attack from another side. 
              The beast turned quickly to meet him, and Bromm’s slash was batted aside by an axe. The other axe came rushing forward and Bromm scurried away. He was uncomfortably close to the lip of the gorge now and, despite its wounded leg, the minotaur held the initiative. It snarled with fury and hobbled forward, axes at the ready should Bromm dart to either side. The yellowed skulls around its waist stared at Bromm with empty eye sockets, pleading with him to join them. 
              Bromm lunged forward, saber outstretched, hoping against hope for a killing blow. The minotaur lurched to the side, but just too late, and caught the thrust in its shoulder. The blade sank in a hand’s length and the monster bellowed with pain. Bromm felt his spirits soar, and threw his weight behind the blade, driving it deeper. The wounded arm fell limp by the minotaur’s side, its axe dropping to the ground.
              But the other axe came flashing across, and Bromm only barely managed to avoid losing his head to it. He tore his saber free and dived away, knocking loose a pebble that skittered away into the gorge. The minotaur dabbed two fingers into its fresh wound and looked to Bromm with hate. He stood up, sneaking a cautious glance toward the other minotaurs, who waited impatiently for the end of the duel. 
              Their leader closed with dreadful slowness, his lone axe remaining still promising a bloody end for Bromm. Bromm readied his saber to face the beast. It stood more than a head taller than him, staring down with desperate fury in its eyes. Bromm steeled himself for what he knew would be the final clash of blades. The minotaur stood panting, spittle dripping from its teeth. Above, the great birds circled and awaited the result.
              The minotaur lunged forward with a roar, and Bromm darted aside. His saber slashed a red furrow across the beast’s blood-soaked chest as rushed past. The minotaur roared in frustration as Bromm evaded him, then in terror as it stumbled and crashed to the rocky ground. It skidded forward toward the lip of the gorge and its companions cried out. Bromm turned on it, wasting no time. Its shoulders hung over the precipice, its axe plummeted into the gorge. Bromm raised his saber to his ear and plunged it down with all his might. 
              The blade pierced the minotaur’s throat and buried itself up to the basket hilt. Blood spurted back onto Bromm’s hand and forearm as well as into the gorge. The minotaur’s dying roar turned into a strangled gurgle as its one good hand clasped itself around Bromm’s arm. It stared up at him with bitter enmity, though the red was now fading fast from its eyes. Bromm allowed himself a thin smile of victory.
              It would not last long. The other minotaurs surged forward in a vengeful fury, blades clashing, teeth gnashing, and throats bellowing with hatred. Bromm tore his blade from the dead beast’s throat and looked upon his doom. Weapons or no weapons, the mob was fixing to tear him limb from life and devour him screaming. Without a moment of hesitation, he threw himself into the gorge.
 
              He fell, the rocky walls rushing past him and offering a promise of the death that awaited at the bottom. Bromm closed his eyes, welcoming a quick death on the rocks. He hoped he had won enough time for his crew to escape.
              But something halted his fall. Clawed hands tightened around him and his downward motion reversed. He was being pulled upward. The minotaurs had caught him
              His eyes snapped open, flailing about with his saber to hack his way free and die the death he had chosen. But it was not minotaurs who held him, but women. Two women grasped him by the arms, held aloft by great black-feathered wings that beat from their backs. They were naked, tanned, and taut, with sharp features and clawed hands and feet. Harpies, Bromm thought with dread. I have escaped being eaten by minotaurs to be eaten by harpies instead. He slashed at one captor with his saber, but the attack was stifled by their control of his limbs.
              “Stay your hand!” called the one holding his sword arm. “We mean you no harm, mortal.” She looked down at him with a predator’s eyes, but Bromm sensed no malice in them and let his sword arm fall. Behind them, more harpies circled, calling out to the minotaurs in a harsh, screeching tongue. The landbound brutes roared back, beating their chests and gnashing their teeth, but it was no use. The harpies carried Bromm higher and higher, leaving the minotaurs to vanish into the green expanse of the forest below. 
              High above, he had a bird’s view of the island. He spied another ruin on the far beach and a jetty of tumbled stones that projected out into the sea’s open blue. Looking back the way he had come, he saw the White Shepherd still sitting at anchor and the dryad’s valley hidden among the crags. 
              It was to the crags that the harpies carried him. Instead of descending into the valley, they alit on the tallest of the buttes and set Bromm down on his own two feet. Freed of their burden, they dispersed to tall aeries made of brush and feathers. Only the harpy who had spoken to him remained. She set herself down before him, her wings folded behind her.
              “Greetings, mortal. I am Rayada, queen of the aerie.” Bromm considered a moment. The harpy who stood before him was at once both womanly and monstrous, with thick fingers that ended in sharp claws and feet to match. Yet at the same time, she was comely, with small breasts and long black hair that fell to her waist. She and her sisters were tanned from the sun and toned from the rigors of a hard life on the island. Far from the soft, pale women of the ports, the harpies still inspired a lust in Bromm that made his cock hard. 
              “Greetings. I am Bromm, captain of the White Shepherd,” he replied cautiously. The other harpies watched aloofly from their aeries and Bromm began to think they might not devour him after all. He sheathed his saber and stowed the pistol in his belt. “While I thank you for your aid, why did you help me?”
              Rayada smiled slightly. “We are ever at war with our brothers the Brolkarai. They set traps for us in the forest and sometimes try to climb our aeries. They hunger for flesh and blood, and lurk always under the boughs. If they catch one of us, they ravish and devour her, so we must always be on our guard. You are our ally in that, though you may not be of much use.”
              Bromm bristled. “We were ambushed,” he retorted. “In a fair fight, we’d slaughter them with gunfire and kill the rest with sword and pike!”
              “The Brolkarai will never fight fair. This forest is their home, they know it better than you could ever hope to, even if you could spend all your life here. But that is no matter. You have slain some of them already, and for that we are grateful.”
              “We have paid a cost in blood. And I fear I do not yet know how high the cost will be. Many of my men are dead or lost in the forest.”
              “My sisters have watched over you, but we dared not venture into the forest for the Brolkarai were always near. The minotaurs chased your companions far, but many of them have escaped, though they are scattered.”
              “Then take me to them, I must rally them and reach the ship before the minotaurs hunt them down!”
              “We do not know where they are,” Rayada replied with a shake of her head. “They will be scattered all over the forest and hidden from our eyes.”
              “Then we must find some high point where they can see us, see me,” Bromm replied.
              “The Brolkarai will be able to see us as well,” the harpy pointed out. “And they will come in great numbers.”
              “Damn it all!” Bromm kicked the covering of branches and leaves that lay over the crag’s rocky face. He sighed. “What would you have us do instead?”
              “Wait,” the harpy replied, “though you cannot wait too long. The minotaurs will sate their hunger tonight on the bodies that have already fallen. In the meantime, bring us to your ship and arm us with the firelocks you carry. In the morning, the Brolkarai will return to the hunt. We will follow them through the woods until they find your companions for us, for no doubt they will have rallied together by then. Then, with my sisters in the air and your brothers on the ground, we will lead you to your ship before the island fades.”
              “Fades?” Bromm demanded, “what do you mean?”
              “The dryad did not tell you?” Rayada asked curiously. “This island sits upon the face of the world only for a moon’s turn, after which it fades away and will leave you adrift in the open sea.”
              “Where does it go?”
              “To a place where no mortal can follow. You must be back aboard your ship before it fades, else you will surely drown alone out here.”
              Bromm frowned. The moon’s phase ended on the morrow. His time was running short. “Very well, it seems we must go, though I hate to leave those ruins untouched.”
              “Mortals and their treasure,” Rayada laughed, some of her sisters tittered from their aeries. “You would die in a minotaur’s maw for a chance at a few golden coins!”
              “My men rely on me to bring them fortune. Without it, they will turn on me.”
              “I understand as much. It merely means that they are the mortals I speak of.”
              “I can’t leave them to drown when the island fades. If I had known that, I never would have set out again today,” Bromm said, though as he spoke the words he could not convince himself of their truth.
              “I am still surprised that the dryad did not tell you as much,” remarked Rayada.
              “No doubt she forgot to mention that while we were distracted,” Bromm remarked sourly. “Once again, my cock has gotten me in trouble.”
              Rayada stifled a smile. Bromm looked to her in annoyance. “What is it?”
              “I am just amused, that is all. When there were many of us, there was but one woman. Now that there are many women, there is only you. My sisters and I have long awaited the coming of men, but now you must leave.”
              “The coming of men?” Bromm asked with rising interest. “I assure you, the coming of men is never far away. What is it that you desire?”
              Rayada stepped closer and her sisters sat straighter in their aeries. “We are alone here, with only ourselves and the Brolkarai’s cocks for company. I would have your cock inside me, if you would spare but a moment from your quest.”
              Bromm considered. He had never bedded a harpy before, but then he had never bedded a dryad before landing on this strange isle. What’s the harm in a short delay? he wondered. Before he knew it, he was stripping out of his clothes.
              From their aeries, the other harpies crowed with delight, some hopping down to get a closer look. Rayada watched with interest as Bromm’s stiffening cock spilled forth from his breeches. Her clawed hand drifted to the mass of coarse black hair between her legs and her fingers seemed to soften. Her fingers now looked like those of any other woman, sliding sensually into her wet sex as she cupped one small breast with her other hand, biting her lip.
Bromm threw aside his shirt and kicked away his boots to stand naked before her. From their tall roosts, a half dozen sharp faces peered down at him with great interest. Bromm took his cock in his hands and stroked it slowly as he watched Rayada pleasure herself. 
              The harpy queen did not wait long. Her wings unfurled and she lifted herself off the ground, fluttering forward toward Bromm, who caught her in his arms. She threw her arms around his shoulders and positioned her sex above his hard cock.
              “What are you waiting for?” she demanded. Bromm did not hesitate. Steadying her with a hand on her taut buttocks, he seized his cock and thrust it inside her. Rayada’s mouth dropped open as he penetrated her, revealing a mouth of razor-sharp teeth. Suddenly concerned, he managed a weak smile. The harpy paid him little mind, giddily sliding down his cock.
              On their aeries, her harpy sisters leaned forward with hungry smiles on their sharp-featured faces. Bromm swallowed. He was not unaccustomed to audiences, but all the previous audiences had been mortals, not flesh-eating monsters. He did his best to banish the thought from his mind and focused his attention on his cock and the woman he was inside. 
              Rayada’s wings flapped, lifting her up on his cock before she let herself slide back down. Her wings pumped again, and Bromm felt himself losing sight of anything but her. Rayada’s fingers dug into his back, leaving him grateful that they were no longer the ferocious talons they once were. An unbidden image of her sucking his cock leapt into his mind, leading him to fear losing his cock.
              But the harpy queen would not allow it. Her legs wrapped around him tighter, her arms coiled about his neck, and her fingers dug deeper into his back. Bromm fucked harder, fears of a messy end disappearing in the throes of lust. His hips slapped against hers, the claps echoing off the stony ground beneath them. The other harpies were enraptured, hungrily eyeing their queen and her lover.
              Bromm could contain himself no longer. His toes curled and he spasmed, spurting a load of cum into her nethers. He groaned and she crowed in delight, slowing her wingbeats until she hung off him, motionless.
              “Well done, though I’ve had longer,” she teased. “But you will have to do.”
              “My apologies, queen,” Bromm managed through heavy breaths. “I could only contain myself so long.”
              “Perhaps there will be time later,” she replied before her wings flapped again and she lifted herself off his cock. A line of cum trailed her as she rose into the air and the queen laughed with delight. She brought herself down to the stony ground and touched the wetness between her legs with two fingers. Bringing it to her lips, she tasted it and smiled. Bromm managed a bashful smile in return.
              “Find yourself a place to rest,” she commanded, “my sisters will go in search of your companions. But the island is large and darkly forested, so this man take some time.
Nodding, he seated himself at the edge of the crags, legs dangling over the edge, and settled in for the wait. Rayada’s harpies went out to circle over one place, then another. After several hours, they came back, rested and went out again. All the while, Bromm waited impatiently for word of his friends. Far away, he could make out his ship waiting unawares at anchor. 
              The day was dying when Rayada approached him again.
              “Have they found them yet?” Bromm asked as the last rays of the sun retreated over the horizon.”
              “They will,” Rayada replied with determination. “Get some rest, sailor. Tomorrow will be a long day.”
 
              Bromm was awoken shortly after dawn by the prodding of Rayada’s foot.
              “Wake up. My sisters have spotted a Brolkarai war party leaving their camp. We must get moving.”
              Bromm rose from the ground and dressed himself, then reloaded his pistol. The other harpies readied themselves, collecting javelins and bows from compartments hidden within their aeries. 
              “Time to go to war,” Rayada said, and Bromm could only nod.
              Rayada and another of her sisters unfurled their wings and lifted themselves into the air. Their hands closed about Bromm’s shoulders and they pulled him from the ground. Looking down, he watched the crag-top aerie shrink below him as the harpies carried him out to sea. All around the base of the crags, the island was a rich carpet of green. Looking to the dryad’s valley, he imagined for a moment that he saw Oromeia one last time, floating naked in the tarn as he passed overhead.
              He looked for his crewmates as well, but the thick forest canopy obscured whatever roamed below. With a squawk and a pointed finger, Rayada ordered two of her sisters to head off in search of survivors. They took wing toward the gorge where he had last seen them, rapidly diminishing to tiny dots in the wide blue sky.
              Looking in the other direction, Bromm spotted another set of dots approaching. They grew in size quickly until he saw that they were more harpies, approaching from another aerie on the far side of the island.
              “I have called out all my sisters for this battle,” Rayada called over the whipping winds, “We stand poised to win a great victory over our enemies today.”
              Bromm only hoped that he and his crew could deliver. The White Shepherd was close by now, and Rayada left her sisters to circle while she and her wingmate brought Bromm down lower. The deck broke out into a mad scramble, the ship’s bell ringing wildly in alarm. Bromm hoped they weren’t show down as they approached. Rayada brought them in low over the water, swooping quickly up from the water to carry him just over the gunwale onto the quarterdeck where he thudded to the ground, just barely keeping his footing.
              “Captain!” Sahat cried, holding his shamshir in one hand and a boarding axe in the other, “What’s happening?!”
              “A truce, Sahat. Lower your weapons.” The crew did as ordered, but relaxed little. Rayada and her friend perched in the rigging, the object of curious and lusty stares from the crew. “The crew ashore has been ambushed by minotaurs. The harpies will help us free them, but they need weapons. Firelocks, shot, and powder.”
              “And you agreed to give it to them?” Sahat asked suspiciously. His eyes went to Rayada, perched naked above them on a spar with her knees upraised. The harpy coolly looked down upon him, her long hair blowing in the breeze. 
              “I did,” Bromm replied. “We need their help to have any hope of rescuing the others. And they won’t have long to use them against us, this whole island will disappear with the coming moon.”
              Sahat said nothing to that, but slowly nodded. “Very well. We’ll dispatch another shore party to prepare a stronghold on the beach. Break open the armory! The harpies need weapons and shot to go with them!”
His crew quickly piled up firelocks and shot on the deck and the circling harpies flew down in pairs to retrieve them. Bromm waited on the quarterdeck with Rayada, who was soon joined by another of her sisters. They exchanged words in their strange tongue for a moment, then the newcomer flew off.
              “They’ve located your companions,” Rayada said when the other harpy had gone. “They are camped on a rocky butte near the gorge, but the Brolkarai have them surrounded.”
              “That’s likely the butte where we stopped to survey the terrain,” Bromm said. “Come on, we have little time to lose. I’ll get them out of there before someone tries something stupid. Sahat, pull up anchor and come down the beach to those buttes on the horizon. We’ll shorten our trip a bit.”
              “Aye, aye, captain. You’d best be going now, while there’s still anyone left to save.”
              Accompanied by her companion, Rayada swooped down from her perch and snatched up Bromm by the arm again. They flew straight away from the ship, making for the butte in a direct line. Bromm hoped they would hurry, for his arms were beginning to ache from the strain. 
              As they neared the butte, he could make out figures atop it. They were clustered around the interior face of the butte in a crescent. A white puff of smoke signaled a battle. 
              “Hurry!” he cried, “they’re under attack!”
              Rayada did not seem to hear him over the wind whipping through her ears, but the harpies were flying no slow pace. They swept in from the opposite side unnoticed and deposited Bromm onto the clifftop, then Rayada and three other harpies landed at his side. Bromm looked about at their makeshift camp. A shallow firepit had been dug, and packs were strewn everywhere. All his men were concentrated on the interior side, waiting with firelocks ready.
              “Your captain returns!” he called out, and they turned with shock. At the sight of the harpies standing by his side, they hastily readied their weapons. “No, don’t shoot! They’re with me!” he cried. Faces contorted in confusion, they cautiously lowered their weapons. Lukodo stepped forward, and Bromm breathed a sigh of relief. 
              “How?” he wondered. “How did you escape?”
              “The harpies,” he said, indicating his saviors. “It’s a story for another time. We must get back to the ship right away, for reasons that don’t bear going into right now. But we must move.”
              “How are we going to that?!” Urgan roared as he emerged from the crowd. Bromm could only groan internally. “We’re trapped here, no thanks to you!”
              “Me?!” Bromm retorted. “I didn’t pick this spot!”
              “You led us off into the forest, right into an ambush! Again!”
              “You ran away!” Bromm countered. “If you had not run, we could have beaten them, ambush be damned!”
              “I ran from certain death!” the dwarf shouted back through a face contorted with rage. “I escaped your blundering for the second time and lost many friends to do it!”
              “Alright, calm down lads!” Imre called, stepping between them. “There will be plenty of time to tear each other apart once we’re back aboard the ship. But I think we would agree that we would rather kill each other there than let these minotaurs do it, aye?”
              Urgan’s face was so red that Bromm feared he was about to burst. But instead, the dwarf turned and stomped back through the crowd to the cliff’s edge. 
              “Now that that’s settled, what’s the plan, captain?”
              “We’ll fight our way back to the ship with the harpies above us. We must avoid the deep forest, so make for the beach as fast as we can and move along it to where the Shepherd is anchored.”
              “The path down this butte is narrow, and the minotaurs have it bottled up. Can’t the harpies just fly us there?”
              “You’ll tire them out moving all of us. And we can’t afford to leave a small party behind on the butte, else the minotaurs will surge up here and overwhelm them.”
              “Very well,” Imre sighed. “Lead the way, captain.”
              Bromm took the lead with saber and pistol at the ready. As Imre had warned, the path was narrow and treacherous. It wound its way along the edge of the butte until it debouched into the thick, foreboding forest at the bottom, where even now Bromm could see minotaurs lurking. He steeled himself for battle as they hiked down the path, the steeply sloping trail seemingly pushing them faster toward the inevitable clash. High overheard, Rayada and her harpies circled, waiting.
              The sailors came to the bottom of the path all too soon, and Bromm formed them into a tight knot with pikes at the forefront. The minotaurs lurked in the trees, unwilling to come out. A harpy’s shadow passed along the ground, marking the most direct path to the beach. Bromm took a deep breath.
              “Fire!” he called, and half his shooters let loose into the treeline. Two minotaurs fell, one dead and the other dying, but the others held back. Bromm waited for his shooters to reload, then directed the rest to fire again. This time, the minotaurs roared in anger and surged forward.
              “Tighten up the ranks!” he called, pulled his pikemen closer together. A score of minotaurs thundered down at them, horns lowered for goring strikes and axes raised to cleave asunder whomever might survive it. Scattered shots from above whipped through the minotaurs’ herd, felling another here or there. The harpies were playing it safe but still exacting their toll. The ground beneath his feet shook, and Bromm could feel the fear rising in his throat as the minotaurs neared. Behind him, Imre called for fire again, and the other half of his shooters let loose with another volley.
              The effect was ruinous at such close range. A half dozen minotaurs fell, their roars of agony driving the others into either a panic or a frenzy. Some fell back in consternation while a handful more plunged onwards – one right onto the point of Pyet’s pike. The ashwood shaft bent under the impact but did not break, and Pyet drove it deeper into his foe. The minotaur dropped one axe, crying out in what Bromm hoped was a dying wail. He did not have to hope much longer, for Urgan stepped forward and fired a pistol directly into its throat from point-blank range.               The beast crumpled to the ground straight away. 
              More shots from above tore through the minotaurs that held back, accompanied by arrows and a hail of javelins. Bromm stepped forward and thrust his saber into the thigh of a minotaur distracted by Imre. The brute roared in pain, whirling on him to swipe off his head with a wickedly hooked axe, but Bromm ducked beneath the blow and darted back out of range. The minotaur took one staggering step toward him, but Imre plunged his own sword into the beast’s back. The monster cried out in pain again, this one more pitiful than frightening. It turned back toward Imre but teetered on its bad leg and fell to the ground. Bromm darted forward once again and delivered a heavy, two-handed slash to the back of its neck.
              His saber bit deep. He heard the crack of bone and the minotaur’s head lolled limply forward. For good measure, he thrust the tip through the open wound until it emerged out the other side, then tore the blade sideways. The nearly severed head flopped to the side as if hinged, and the minotaur collapsed into the dirt. 
              That was enough for its fellows, who fled back into the forest. 
              “Hurrah, they’ve had enough!” Imre shouted, but Bromm threw cold water on his fire. 
              “They’ll be back once they get their stomachs back. Quickly, make for the beach!”
              Gathering the men and their packs that they had discarded for the fight, Bromm urged them forward through the trees. Beneath the dense boughs they were out of sight of the harpies, but Bromm could occasionally see their shadows passing overhead. With Lukodo to bring up the rear, Bromm hurried his crew toward the beach. Behind him, he could hear shouts and roars reverberating through the trees. The white-furred minotaur had been replaced by a new leader, and the new beast was hungry. 
              “They’ll be coming again soon,” Bromm called over his shoulder. He hacked aside a low-hanging branch with his saber. “We must be on the beach again before they rally.”
              The men chorused in agreement, and they increased their pace. The beach was visible ahead, a white-gold belt peaking through the trees. In the trees behind, Bromm could hear a rumbling chant and the clashing of iron on iron. 
               Nearly at a run, the crew broke out onto the beach and kept moving. Bromm halted at the treeline until all his men had hurried past. Lukodo passed by with a tense smile and a nod.
              “We made, Bromm.”
              “Aye, we did,” Bromm replied, “And look!” he pointed out to sea, where the white, billowing sails of the Shepherd heralded her arrival. She was perhaps a half mile off and already preparing to drop anchor. The first of her longboats was suspended in the hoist, preparing to put to sea.
              “They won’t be long now,” Lukodo smiled. “We’ve just got to hold on.”
              “I’ve got a plan for that.” Bromm signaled to Rayada, who, after some hesitation, descended to the beach with two of her sisters. “I want your sisters to land here,” Bromm instructed, laying out with his outstretched hand a skirmish line along the face of his crew’s formation. “When the minotaurs burst from the forest, harry them with shot and arrows. If they come close, take wing and stay out of reach. But do not give them a moment’s rest. By the time they rest our pike line, they’ll be close to breaking.”
              Rayada nodded and turned to the others. She screeched commands to them and set them off to convey the plan to the rest of the flock. As they flew off, more roars sounded from the trees. Bromm and Lukodo hurriedly abandoned the treeline and joined their crewmates a stone’s throw from the water’s edge. The harpies took up their skirmish line as ordered, and Bromm tried to settle his breathing as they waited.
              The wait was torturous, but not long. Reinforced from gods-only-knew-where, nearly thirty minotaurs burst from the trees, roaring furiously with their blades held high. They thundered down at Rayada’s skirmish line, taking fire from both ahead and above. Firelocks crackled, filling the air with smoke to accompany the hoof-churned sand. The minotaurs snarled as they brought themselves into arm’s reach of the harpies, only for the harpies to take flight, wings beating furiously as they retreated above and away. The minotaurs bellowed in frustrated rage, earning nothing but a fresh shower of lead and arrows. One fell with a javelin in its eye, another with an arrow in each knee.
              The harpies fluttered away to land elsewhere on the beach, and the minotaurs searched for new prey. Their eyes settled on Bromm’s knot of sailors further out along the beach. Their new leader, an ugly, one-eyed monster with russet fur, snarled and clashed his axes together before pointing in Bromm’s direction. With a mighty warcry that set Bromm’s teeth chattering, the russet beast and its remaining companions hurled themselves forward toward the sailors’ knot.
              “One volley at fifty paces, then another at twenty,” Bromm commanded, trying to stay calm as thousands of pounds of muscle and fury rumbled toward them. He raised a pistol in his free hand, holding his saber aloft with the other. The beasts bore down on them, the distance falling away with terrifying speed. Seventy paces, sixty paces, fifty… “FIRE!”
              He sliced his saber downward for emphasis, and the air crackled with gunfire. Through the billowing smoke he could see minotaurs fall, limbs blasted apart, and holes torn right through their powerful chests. The survivors staggered on, and soon enough Lukodo cried “fire!” and a fresh volley ripped through them. The few who remained standing pulled up to a shocked standstill. Arrows streaked in from above and the harpies’ firelocks continued to crackle. 
              Bromm stepped forward, pistol leveled. He fired a shot directly into the chest of the russet-furred minotaur. The monster staggered silently, then looked to Bromm in surprise. It fell to one knee, holding itself up with one hand in the sand. 
              From above, Rayada fell on him like a bolt from the heavens, her taloned feet reaching for the creature’s throat. She found it and tore a red gash from shoulder to shoulder. Stunned, the beast fell backwards, staring supinely up at her as she readied a javelin for the killing blow. The harpies screeched above her in delight, their queen standing victorious over their hated foe. 
              One lone minotaur hauled itself to its feet behind her, bleeding profusely from a chest wound. It lumbered toward the queen, threatening to take her unawares. The harpies called, but the queen was lost in her moment of triumph.
              Bromm bolted forward with a cry of warning. He fell upon the creature as it neared the queen, who plunged her javelin down into the russet-furred minotaur’s remaining eye. The monster twitched and lay still; the queen lifted her head, then turned to face behind her. Her eyes went wide as she spied the minotaur staggering toward her, her wings beat but did not lift her clear of its grasp.
              Bromm fell upon the brute from behind, splintering its spine with a two-handed saber blow just before it reached the harpy queen. The minotaur stumbled, stunned and crippled, then fell to its side in the sand. An arrow streaked in from above, burying itself in the monster’s flank. Another struck it in the shoulder and it lay still. Bromm ran it through with his saber to be sure.
              He looked up. The few minotaurs who remained were in full flight, thundering back toward the forested interior. Rayada smiled at him, pointing over his shoulder. Bromm followed her gaze to see the White Shepherd’s longboats approaching fast, his beloved brig resting at anchor to their stern.
              “The minotaurs will be a long time in rallying,” he called to his men, “but let us put to sea anyway. We have done enough here, and this island is set to sink back into the sea when the moon turns. Back to the Shepherd!”
              The men cheered in triumph, fortunate to be brought through the jaws of death by their captain and their newfound allies. In orderly groups, they boarded the longboats and rowed their way back to the ship where they were welcomed with warm embraces and hearty slaps on the back. Bromm clasped hands with his loyal officers Sahat and Tahavi.
              “Welcome back, captain,” Tahavi beamed. “I see your friends were a great help.”
              “Aye, they were,” Bromm agreed. Sahat leaned close.
              “They will be giving those firelocks back, won’t they? They were expensive…”
              Bromm could only laugh. The harpies triumphantly circled the ship, squawking in delight. Rayada and her closest sisters swooped in low to perch on the gunwale and rigging. They regarded the crew with curiosity, and the crew returned their stares with a mixture of suspicion but also great interest, for the harpies were naked to a woman, and the crew sailors to a man. More harpies swooped in to perch in the rigging, looking down at the mortal men below. One called to Rayada in their squawking tongue and the queen called back. A wry grin spread across her face, and the harpy queen looked to the horizon. The white sliver of the moon hung low above the deep blue sea. She turned to Bromm with a hungry smile.
              “There is still time before the island fades,” the harpy queen said. She passed an approving look over his crew. “It has been a long time since many of my sisters have seen men and it may yet be some time again.”
“A revel, then?” Bromm suggested. “To celebrate our escape? I agree. Sahat, break out the rum! We will have an orgy to shame Nystra herself!”
 