Other Place

Chapter 23

Adrenaline was most of what carried me as I forced myself to walk past the safety grounds of the University. I was not quite as frantic or emotional as I had been before, but that didn't mean that those feelings were gone. It meant that I was functionally managing to keep them suppressed so that I could move one foot in front of the other. This sort of feeling was not one that was entirely new to me. It was the same as what I had felt when carrying Zolreya out of the cave. I was just in a position where I wasn't allowing myself any other option than to be utilitarian in my actions. For the moment, I supposed this to be enough.

My shaky feelings of unease reminded me of when I had left ... well ... other places I had once thought of as home. Leaving for college with the knowledge that I could never go back to my family. Only a few years later-screaming, a fist beating at my door. A frantic phone call with the abuse hotline. Being kept up all night by the unbearable stomach pain during my first night at the women's shelter. Driving to the home of friends who offered me a place to stay ... a thirty-one-hour drive away. Making the entire drive without rest because I was too terrified to stop my car.

Though I tried hard not to remember or think about the specifics of my past, the flashbacks were sometimes impossible to escape. I shook my head and forced a sigh-my coping mechanism for the flashbacks. I muttered to myself, "It's a hallucination. It happened, but it's not real anymore. You're here, walking toward the Other Place. You're not in the past, you're not in a scary hypothetical future, you're right here. You're okay, you're alright." I bumped my hand against my side a few times, until the combined effort of all of these brought me fully back to the road I was currently walking.

From his ranch, the rooster-riding imp I'd seen before gave a friendly and languid wave.

I waved back, the motion feeling good even if forced and a bit unnatural at the moment. Then I continued to walk in silence.

Without Daava here keeping me company, the journey seemed quite a bit longer than it had before. I ... very much did not like it, but forced one foot in front of the other. Though time crawled by miserably, the minutes did eventually add up.

Eventually, I made it back to the Temple of Kavtagro-where I had first gotten my robe and sandals. For a moment, I felt the temptation to go inside the temple and look around. However, I knew without thinking too hard that this was just delaying the inevitable. I glanced down once more at the scar on my foot and began down the other path I could have taken.

I was not particularly surprised to find that the path to the Other Place was downhill, unlike the University. Whether from ham-fisted religious or societal allegory, it seemed exactly the sort of lazy worldbuilding that I had grown used to from Kavtagro-the slothful deity of this realm. I decided to just consider myself lucky that the sides of the path were not empty desert lands overtaken by ads for tacky sex shops and strip clubs.

Instead, it seemed to be mostly rice fields-looking almost like wetlands surrounded by red clay soil. The people working these fields were of various races-just like the ranches and farms uphill-and plenty gave a pleasant wave as I walked by.

For as scared as the new scenery made me just for not being something familiar and comfortable, the new sights made the walk feel not nearly as long and tedious as before.

I was a bit surprised when I saw the outline of a familiar building. Just like the auditorium at Kink University and the Temple of Kavtagro, this third structure was a duplicate. Like the others, it could best be described as an attempt at ancient Greek temples but done entirely in black stone, gargoyles on top. I'm sure it was a mixture that would leave any expert on building techniques wanting to gouge their eyes out.

Shorter buildings surrounded the third of the duplicate temples. The surrounding area was much larger than the school. The buildings were bigger and many more in number. What immediately struck me about them was how tremendously varied all these buildings were. While I would have hardly characterized any of them as mansions, there were some quite large and ornate buildings scattered around. Each of these was surrounded by neighborhoods of nicer-looking buildings-made of brick, stone, cement, and painted over in all kinds of colors. Outside of the neighborhoods were a number of shanties-tiny unornamented buildings that made me think of outdoor sheds more than of dwellings. While whatever this seeming inequality of wealth or class was, it brought an instinctive feeling of disgust. However ... the chaos of it all felt nice on my eyes. There were no neat grids or orderly aesthetics; it was literally just a free-for-all-with paths weaving in a mess of trails between the colorful houses.

As I drew closer, I noticed the first signs of this being the sort of place described to me by the students of the University. Along the path, I was reaching a place where wooden crosses lined the road. While certainly more than a little Roman, these crosses were not just those shaped as crucifixes. There were X-crosses as well, large wooden circles aligned either vertically or horizontally, pillories, and even just phallus-tipped poles sticking straight out of the ground. Though these were certainly not all in use, there were a number of people-masc, femme, and androgynous-bound to them. Purple mist swirled around these individuals-particularly around their erogenous zones. By the way the bound people moaned and gasped with the movement of these colorful clouds, my guess was that these were enchantments meant to stimulate them.

For half a moment, I thought of asking the bound people whether they needed help. However, none of them seemed to be in any particular amount of pain, they seemed healthy, and they weren't paying me much mind except for the ones paying me thirsty looks.

"Don't mind the losers," said an orange guplium, stepping out from behind a wagon wheel with a man tied to it. They were carrying a piece of rope, which they dropped as they returned to the road to pick up a clay pot. He took this clay pot to a human woman who was wriggling blissfully on one of the poles sticking right out the ground. It was forcing her to stand as tall as she could-aided by a pair of ballet stilettos strapped to her feet. The guplium glanced at me again as they poured some water in the woman's mouth. "These devices will keep their abilities on lockdown until they are released-terms of whatever bets they took last night to land them here for the day. If you're not from around here, though, I would be more concerned with being inside the city. Lots of folk will want a first shot at a newbie."

I nodded appreciatively and continued walking. It was good to know that the Other Place at least had some sense of safety and sense. The worst thing for my nerves would be to find out that the people here embraced kink-styled capital punishment. The forewarning was also useful in reminding me that I still had no idea what my strategy was here. My thought so far was to just walk around until someone decided to battle me. From that point ... well ... I just hoped that winning enough battles would serve to teach me something important about my magic. I also figured that I stood a pretty decent chance of winning-given that my healing magic made me much more durable than most others.

I soon passed the first shanty; there were no more bondage devices holding prisoners in place. There were people ... but most of those didn't pay me any mind. If anything, they were preoccupied with their own business. Some were opening fruit-carts, others were walking to what I assumed to be work in a plethora of maid, barmaid, and bunnygirl outfits. This really was a city ... nothing like the University whatsoever.

As I walked, I kept my head down whenever people were near. Even if they didn't seem overly interested in me, I didn't want to provide any extra temptation. So I jumped when I heard a rage-filled shout to my side, and covered my face with my arms.

No blow came to me ... but I did spot an elven woman on the ground-her face contorted in absolute hate. A small bit of blood trickled from her mouth. In front of her was a satyr-topless and with a fist covered in leather. He smirked, blew on his his fist, and then opened his hand. When he did so, the leather covering peeled back like it had been sheathed within his skin. I knew enough from class to recognize this as minor self-transmutation. The satyr reached into his pocket, retrieved what looked like a collar attached to a leash, and approached the elf.

What the satyr did not see ... and likely could not from his vantage point in front of her ... was that the hand she held herself up by was no longer merely resting on the dirt. It was beneath it! Suddenly the earth opened by a small crack that traveled nearly imperceptibly toward the quickly approaching satyr. The hole caught his front hoof and then snapped tightly upon it-sending the satyr falling head-first into the hard dirt path.

This moment stunned was all the time the elf needed. She twirled from her position on the ground, cartwheeled over the satyr, landed on him heavily, twisted the collar out of his grasp, and then fastened it to him.

The crowd cheered and began to chant. When they were finished, the satyr looked down in defeat. Was it an audience that decided who the champion of these matches was? It certainly seemed so.

"Should have learned your lesson last time. Back to the auction with you," the elf said and gave a sharp tug on the leash, so that the satyr let out a yelp and fell in line behind her.

The crowd dispersed, and I followed suit. As I walked-trying to do so as casually as everyone else-I tried to be observant of how the people carried themselves. Honestly, I had kind of expected a mad-max sort of situation. And while I certainly wasn't interested in staying here any longer than necessary, I honestly was not as put off by the Other Place as I had expected. I supposed that even for me there was a certain appeal in living in a place of consensual-nonconsent and limitless hedonism.

As I people-watched, I noticed another difference between myself and them-my robes. Of course, many of the people here wore the same robes that I did. But whether because of constant battling or just stylistic choice, their robes were all quite altered. Many were patched with other materials, some seemed purposefully adjusted to be far more revealing, and others were just left shredded over other clothing or nothing at all. I thought for a moment about damaging my own robes as part of a disguise, but the thought of doing so made me feel sad. Besides ... wasn't attention and the opportunity for battles something I wanted?

I heard a yelp and shifted my attention to the nearby housing. It seemed I had reached the nicer part of a neighborhood without quite realizing. Here, the houses were more ornate. Not only that, but they were all surrounded by walls. I looked around-through the barred front gates of the property, until I spotted the person who had yelped. She had blue skin and delicately crafted features that made me think of Hyrranesus. Maybe she was a water nymph?

I wasn't sure why she had let out a yelp until I spotted a tendril of green snaking its way around her leg. After another moment, it was joined by several more. These began to peel each individual piece of fabric from her body until she was left naked. Half the vines then seemed drawn to all her major holes-her vagina, her ass and her mouth. They began to fill these and then quickly bloomed into blue flowers that matched her skin. It almost seemed like the plant decorated each place it had conquered. Only once this was done did the vines drag the writhing nymph toward a large trellis. Once there, the vines began to recede into the soil-in a line with several other flowered plants of various colors. It was only once everything from the nymph's shoulders to her abdomen were doubled over and buried that I realized that the other plants were also other people-each of their flowers matching something about their bodies. A green flower for an orc, an orange flower for a human with red hair, and so on.

Standing near them all-already watering her newest acquisition with an old-fashioned metal watering can-was an older-seeming lady with features that reminded me of a cat. She turned and glanced at me with a wicked grin and beckoned me with a single finger while she reached under her shirt and revealed to me an amulet with an amber gem-its power obvious all the way from where I stood. Was she ... daring me to come and steal it? Was that why the nymph had been in her yard?

Despite how tempting it was to try to take something of that much power, my inner alarms of danger went off immediately at the idea of attacking such a powerful sorcerer, especially with an artifact and on her home turf.

Unsure why, I smiled politely and waved my hand side to side in polite refusal. I began walking away even as the cat-person gave an exaggeratedly crestfallen frown.

I had only taken a few steps when I ran into someone I could have sworn not to have been there before. "I'm so, so sorry," I said and looked up.

But the person facing me did not respond in the least. This seemed to be a woman-tall and with exaggeratedly strong and chiseled features. Silvery scales covered her body, though they were far smoother than the ridged, lizard-like scales of Mr. Spleck. Two horns jutted straight from her slightly crested forehead-just like a triceratops or chameleon. In her beaked mouth was a bit, exactly like what was used for horses.

The jurassic-looking woman merely stood at attention, with her arm folded behind her naked body, and her eyes staring blankly ahead. Behind her stood a myriad of other women-each more exotic than the last. There was an elf of a species I had not yet met, which gave off a slight bioluminescent glow, two identical cat-girls, a purple woman with a tentacled mouth and feet, and a brown-feathered harpy.

All of the women stood at attention and did not even dare to glance at me. I couldn't help but notice that their naked bodies were all identically pierced at the labia, nipples, left nostril, and left eyebrow-all with matching gold rings featuring a red stud. Resting on the shoulders of each was a padded metal harness-connecting them two-by-two in rows.

Behind them all-sitting on a chariot that seemed powered by these women-was a snake-person in pristine black robes and a prominent red scarf. If I wasn't mistaken, he was a naga-a creature with the upper body of a man and the lower body of a snake. The skin of his upper body was of an olive complexion-with no hair to be seen even on his head. His serpent-like lower body and tail featured smooth golden-brown scales.

The naga glared down at me with a beaming smile on his face, and said, "My, my, a cute little cow. And what a fine addition you would make to my ... collection." He twirled his fingers, casting a small arc of blue electricity to dance between them.

I swallowed; this was it.