Terrible Company Ch. 14

Ayen smirked back, using the erection like an anchor to pull himself in. Uli almost didn't recognize his own body on the table between them. It was a strange sensation to be looking down at himself, but it felt good. It felt right. It felt perfect, and that wasn't even counting the fact that he could still feel everything they were doing to him and everything he was doing to them.

"Yeah, but it's not like I haven't spent my whole life grabbing a cock from just about this angle."

Mathilda rolled her eyes and smirked, and then sighed happily. Uli knew, instinctively, that it was his tongue that was softening her in more ways than one.

"I's fine, isn' it?"

"What?"

"Yer 'and."

Ayen said nothing, but the sweat traveling down his brow was not enough to have him so tongue tied. Uli thought it was strange that he suddenly knew their names, but at the same time, there was such an intensity to the connection of the moment that he also knew it was right. A confluence of events and time. A convergence. It was bigger than him. It was bigger than the three of them.

"Yer legs are gettin' tired."

"They are not," Ayen fired back.

Mathilda shook her head. "Ye can't 'ide tha' from me. Ah can read ye like a map."

"They're not tired."

Mathilda smiled. "I's no' a challenge, lad. Ah'm sayin climb up 'ere an' sit'on this one."

Ayen blinked and looked down at the cock in his hand.

Yes.

Uli's head swam trying to figure out who's voice had said that. It felt like many voices speaking from the past, present, future, and the great beyond. It came to him from all directions. Ayen and Mathilda seemed not to hear it. The moment danced on the head of a pin.

Ayen licked his lips and slowed to a stop. The body between them continued to writhe as if it were still being penetrated. Muscles twitching. Legs pulsing. The Thief took off his shirt and climbed up onto the table. His knees nearly reached the Dwarf's, though his longer legs were slightly farther apart, as he straddled the body.

Yes, they said, and this time Uli's voice was with them.

"Oh my... Oh my..." Ayen's eyelids fluttered as he guided Uli's cock to his ass and lowered himself. "Oh my Gods that feels good."

Mathilda's eyes seemed to shine with a glow from within. A light all their own. Uli knew it was coming from her yet originating from somewhere else.

"Righ'?"

"Yeeeah," Ayen groaned. "Oh fuck it's been a while."

Mathilda's lip curled up at one end. "Yer close," she said definitively.

Ayen nodded absently as he began to rise up and down.

"Real close."

"Yeah, I... I just need..."

" 'ow does yer 'and feel?"

"Fine," Ayen murmured, distractedly. "Fine."

"No." The Dwarf reached out, and took his left hand in hers. "How is it?"

"It's fine," Ayen said, eyes popping open.

"Say i'."

Ayen was too close to stop the shallow thrusting in his legs, but at the same time he could get no closer to the release.

"Say i'."

"Say what?"

"Say Ah healed i'."

"Yes, it's fine," he groaned, still trying to find just the right angle in his legs to get the right pressure inside of himself.

"Say i'."

"You did it. You healed it."

Mathilda grabbed hold of his cock, and Ayen's spine straightened in a way he could not have made himself do under any circumstances. Her hand was too small to get very far around, but her dexterous fingers worked untold waves of pressure.

"It was always fine," he groaned, feeling that last push he needed toward exquisite oblivion. "You healed my hand."

YES, cheered the voices, with Uli's loud and proud among a number beyond counting.

Mathilda took his cock in both hands, with just the tips of her fingers interlacing and overlapping, and stroked him hard and slow.

"Ah was wrong abou' ye," Mathilda whispered, just before their lips met in a devastating kiss.

The room erupted in sound and color. Uli felt himself pulled and pushed even as he knew his own cock was cumming again. Deep inside of the Half-Elf, Uli was cumming again.

The Half-Elf was cumming, as jet after thick jet streaked over the Dwarf's middle. Across breasts that hung from her frame as she leaned forward. Across her belly and thighs. Across Uli's chest and neck. Uli felt the heat of it on his skin.

The Dwarf was cumming. There was no denying the tremors in her legs, as they squeezed around Uli's head. The taste on his tongue was so much sharper. So much more fragrant. There was so much sweat, gathering between her thighs, that was pooling on his cheeks and chin. He was covered in her, and as Uli noticed these things more and more tangibly, the otherworldly sensations of only moments before were fading. Even the memories of it were already almost gone. Their names were lost to him.

Everyone was shaking. Everyone was trembling. Everyone was warm, and sweating, and heaving, and thoroughly overwhelmed.

Their lips parted, and Uli felt their weight shifting apart. Away from each other. Then he felt the weight on his middle shift away, and his own cock slapped down against his groin. Light and sound returned to him as the Dwarf shifted back. The silence was long and heavy, but Uli was content to just be.

"Fuck," the Dwarf groaned. "Ye go' yer ball chowder all over me."

"What?" sputtered the Half-Elf.

"Look't i'," she cried, gesturing to herself. "Ah'm gonna need an acid bath t'get this off."

"You were the one aiming!"

"Some warning migh'ta been—"

"Will you two shut up?!" Uli screamed. His hands were shaking. His whole body was shaking. In the back of his mind he knew this was not what he, Uli, did when presented with an uncomfortable situation, and yet he had never felt more strongly about a course of action in his entire life. He had never had less doubt in himself.

"Oy," the Dwarf said, frowning and moving toward the edge of the table. "Wha's 'is—"

"Don't you take that tone with me," he roared, rolling and fixing her with a stare. His index finger quivered in the air between them. "This is my house."

"Alrigh'," the Dwarf said, backing away.

"You came into my house."

"If you'll just," the Half-Elf started, but his voice dropped off when Uli rounded on him.

"Get out!"

"We're going," the Dwarf cried, grabbing their clothes in a pile under her arms and pushing the naked Half-Elf in front of her. "We're going."

Uli fumed as he watched them scurry out the door and into the street. For just a moment, he was sure that same choir was cheering him, and only him this time, but it was gone as soon as noticed and forgotten even faster.

"What's his problem," the Half-Elf muttered outside.

"I heard that!"

***

Ivy suddenly blinked and looked around.

"What's wrong?"

"I sensed something," the Bard said, her eyes unfocused in the distance.. "As if millions of voices cried out, and then suddenly fist-pumped. I feel something... terrible has happened."

Katsa folded her arms and turned toward the big Orc. "Do you think she means terrible like everyone in the world means when they say terrible, or do you think she means terrible like she thinks it sometimes means something good?"

"What are you asking me for? She's standing right there."

Katsa rolled her eyes with untold fury and kicked a rock with the tip of her heeled boot. "How much longer are we going to wait for them?"

"They're coming," Ivy said loudly.

Val and Katsa turned, looking in every direction. "They are?"

"They who?" Ivy asked.

"Mathilda and Ayen," the Orc grumbled.

"What about them?"

Katsa's face was marked with apoplectic rage, but Val stepped between her and the Bard before she could unleash it. Thick green fingers wrapped around her throat, and the Arcanists eyes went wide.

"I love it when you act like such a bitch," Val whispered softly, right into her ear, "because it reminds me that you're my bitch."

"Here she comes," Ivy said.

Val turned away, and Katsa was grateful to be able to have her hategasm go unnoticed. She both loathed and loved how well the Orc knew her, and her expression was under control by the time Val looked back.

"And there's Ayen too!"

"Where the hell have you two been?" Val barked.

"Oh, Ah didn' realize i' was yer turn ta keep tabs on us!"

Val narrowed her eyes, but the Dwarf continued to march toward her unafraid. "I think we figured out why your beer God sent us here."

"Liquor, Ale, Beer, an' Spirits," Mathilda said, counting off loudly on her fingers.

Val narrowed her eyes again and sniffed at the air. And then sniffed again.

"Ge' on with i'," the Healer growled, "unless yer big revelation involves standin' around an' wastin' my time."

"Look around," Katsa said, stepping up next to Val. "What don't you see."

"Green alliga'ors," Mathilda said.

"Long-necked geese," Ayen added.

"Some 'umpty backed camels, and—"

"Temples," Val interjected, more harshly than she needed to. "There's no temples."

Mathilda blinked and turned around. "None?"

"None," Katsa said.

"Well wha' the'ell d'they worship?"

Val nodded behind them. "C'mon. We'll show you."

"Now I've got that song stuck in my head," Ayen grumbled.

***

Terrible Company marched, as much as they ever really march which is to say not, across the main road in town and down a side road. Many of the buildings had billowing white decorations. Every home, and at least half of the businesses. Quite a few were being erected and installed as they walked by. There was a gazebo, near the center of town, surrounded by a sea of cotton puffs so vast that it engulfed the green they'd seen when they'd arrived hours earlier, but that was not the main attraction.

All of them saw it coming as they walked, between and above the buildings. Objects were floating through the air; some traveling up while others traveled down. As they rounded a low home at the end of the dirt side street, they saw the stone circle that was the beginning and end of both paths. A old man stood in the circle as they approached, staring upward at a chicken that was descending toward him. There was a line behind him, outside the edge of the circle. The serving girl, second in line, gave them all sour looks as she stood there with the table she'd so recently brought for them.

"Where is all that crap going?"

Val turned toward them, with a dramatic flourish, and said, "The Cloud."

"The Cloud," an elderly man repeated reverently, as he passed them with a garden hoe under his arm.

" 'ow d'ye pu' something in a cloud?"

Val shook her head. "You can barely see it, but apparently there's a mountain over there."

Mathilda and Ayen both leaned and squinted at a low rise that disappeared quickly in the overcast sky.

"From what we're told it's all really going in some cave way up on the mountainside, but they all treat this cloud like it's magic." Val looked at the people lined up and grumbled. "Apparently, we're just in time for some big shindig where they all get together and celebrate how great it is."

The Healer and the Thief stared up in stupefied incredulity as an assortment of objects rose into the air or came down from it. Animal, vegetable, and mineral. For the home and for work. In every color of the rainbow. Even though they'd already seen it, Val, Ivy and Katsa were only slightly less dumbfounded by the ongoing spectacle. They watched for minutes on end.

"Some of that," Katsa said eventually, pointing into the air, "is just standard Arcane stuff. There's an air wheel, and that's... well I'm not really sure what that is. The items are all sitting on little platforms of air, and then the platforms are what's doing the floating. I just can't see what's making it all go like that."

"Ah can," Mathilda said softly.

Val frowned and unfolded her arms. "This all looks way outside of Rhogan's purview."

"S'no' tha' miserable bastard," she said, shaking her head. "I's some other miserable bastard. I's divine."

"What's divine?" Katsa asked. "The Cloud?"

"The Cloud," echoed a pair of young girls as they skipped past with matching dolls.

"Is someone going to do that every time?" the Arcanist shrieked. "It's creepy!"

"All Ah'm sayin is there's a ligh' up there an' i's no' natural."

Katsa, Ayen, Ivy, and Val looked up as one.

"I don't see a light," Ivy said. "All I see is The Cloud."

"The Cloud," mimicked the serving girl as she stalked back to her tavern, though when she said it there was slightly less awe.

"Could we all just stop saying the C word," Katsa said. "Please?"

One by one, the members of Terrible Company gave a thumbs up, and Ivy marked the motion as having passed unanimously and unopposed.

"Okay," Ayen said. "We came, we saw. We..." He looked around and shrugged, leaving the quote unfinished.

"We should ask her," Ivy said, pointing to a young woman standing on the far side of the stone circle. She had her arms wrapped tightly around herself, and her eyes were bloodshot. The Bard promptly started off, and the Warrior, Healer, and Thief were right behind her.

"So now we just do whatever she says?" Katsa whined. "Without question?"

***

Mathilda grinned smugly as she grabbed Val's wrist and hauled the big Orc up the last few steps. "Ah told ye so," she said.

As soon as they were on flat ground again, Ayen climbed down from her back with a sickened expression. "Yes," he groaned. "My legs were tired! Congratulations!"

"Ah told ye so."

"It was really annoying to have you point that out every twenty feet," Val grumbled. The Orc stretched and twisted, and then went back to the edge to help Ivy and Katsa finish their climb.

"Tha' was the price 'e paid fer a free ride up tha mountain."

"Whoa," Ivy said, as she came up into the cave and looked back. The C word was still too thick to see through, even a few thousand feet higher into the air, so very little of the path they'd taken up the mountainside was visible. More objects appeared out of the C word and floated into the cave while others moved toward them as if on rails. "Neat!"

Katsa immediately stopped nodding in agreement when Val looked at her, and began sulking. "What?" she hissed defensively.

"Is there more God stuff going on up here?" the Thief asked.

"Aye," Mathilda said, nodding. "Li'le bits 'ere an' there."

"I've heard ghost stories of Arcane spells being put into permanence," Katsa said, "but nothing on this scale."

The cave was enormous, expanding outward beyond sight. Objects were piled everywhere, and though it at first looked like the biggest dump any of them had ever seen, some semblances of order began to present themselves. It wasn't all one big pile, but hundreds and hundreds of small piles. They watched as a rolling pin seemingly dredged itself up from the bottom of a heap of women's clothes and hurtled through the air toward the mouth of the cave.

"Can I help you?"

Everyone turned, with varying degrees of surprise, at the resonant voice. The man was tall, if not quite so tall as Val. His long white hair and beard flowed in the light breeze that seemed to permanently flow through the cave. Great bushy eyebrows highlighted sharp eyes. Val and Mathilda stepped forward while the others moved behind them, adopting a fairly standard formation for Terrible Company.

"We're... um..." Val cleared her throat harshly. "We're looking for a... a boy?"

"Ticket number?"

Val turned around, looking nervously at the others. "She... we didn't..."

Katsa looked back and forth between the Orc and the Dwarf. Val was sweating bullets, and the others looked little better.

"We don't have that?"

"Then I don't know how I can help you," the man said simply. He came to a stop in front of them, and even Mathilda felt compelled to take a half step back. "I have too many objects in storage to bother keeping track of any one thing."

"Yeah, but—" Katsa cut off when the man turned his attention toward her, and swallowed hard. "It-it's a boy. How many boys could you possibly have?"

"Sometimes none," he said, shrugging slightly. "Sometimes dozens."

"Dozens?"

"Oh absolutely! The Cloud provides universal all-purpose storage, up to and including 8 square feet, for free. Extra space is allotted for a small fee."

"And they can jus' put' wha'ever they wan' inta tha' space as long as i' fits?"

"As long as it fits," he said simply. Mathilda shivered. "I'm hoping to get that base free amount up to three square yards per SHEEP."

"Sheep?" Val snickered.

"Shared High-Efficiency Entrepot Patrons."

"That's a fancy word for warehouse," Ivy whispered. Katsa shot her a dirty look that Ivy seemed oblivious too.

"You call the people who put things up here 'sheep'?"

"I forget I can't tell people that," the man said, rolling his eyes. "That was the working name I gave them, but the... people down there objected to the term. I had to bring in an image consultant when I was trying to get out of the beta phase. It was a whole thing." He flexed his hands and smiled. "Let's try that again. Three square yards per Patron."

"Ah be' they like tha' be'er."

"Why wouldn't they? It's an extra foot in every direction."

Mathilda dug her thumb into her brow and sighed as the Arcanist cleared her throat again.

"Can we look around?"

"Why?"

"The boy's mother is frantic."

"What boy?"

"Some boy that's up here somewhere," Katsa said impatiently.

"Ticket number?"

Terrible Company gave a collective groan.

"What about a SHEEP number?" Then he shook his head and added, "Sorry. Account number?"

Another groan, and a few of them shook their heads.

"Very well. Let's have a look." The man half-turned and paused. "Pardon my manners. It's been so long since anyone came up here of their own accord. I am the Wizard of the Mountain."

The Wizard turned and walked away before Terrible Company could ask any further questions, or introduce themselves, and they had to hustle to keep up with him. Ivy bent low as she walked, testing the structural integrity of her blouse more strenuously than ever before.

"He's floating," Ivy whispered, upon standing up and leaning toward Katsa. "He's walking an inch above the ground."

"He can also hear you," Katsa whispered back. Ivy nodded in understanding, and ran the tips of two pinched fingers over her lips to signify them as 'zipped' per article 8 section 4 of the Terrible Company bylaws.

The five of them followed the Wizard in varying degrees of awe. The further they went, the more the cave opened up . Katsa noticed two vertical shafts, with objects coming up from one and going down the other, and she shook her head.

"How many floors are there?" Val asked.

"Four main levels and two sub-levels."

"And they're all this big?"

Katsa looked around, seeing nothing that looked like a wall in any direction save the one they came from.

"The sub-levels aren't quite finished yet, but eventually I should be able to hollow them out the rest of the way. There's room to have eight levels without bringing the mountain down on myself."