Game Night Chapter 3

Copyright 2024 by Otto26

Isla felt better the moment they stepped into the wall of underbrush and passed into the forest beyond. The dappled sunlight didn't have that burning aftertaste to it and the air smelled humid and alive. She dug her toes into the dirt and leaf mulch of the forest floor and walked slowly and sensuously.

She felt Akash approaching and quickly turned to face him.

"Easy, Isla," he said gently. "I'm going to get the restraints off. Just stand still and enjoy the forest and I'll get you out of these."

She nodded and turned to give him access to the locks.

"Where are we, Cooper?" Neil asked.

"North of the baile. We need to circle around to the west where the attacks were reported. An hour, maybe three to get there. Depends on how quiet we want to be," the ranger replied.

"How do we know Master Aidan will be where the attacks were?" Neil followed up.

"We don't. But it's the logical course of action unless someone has a better idea," Cooper said.

"Damnit," Akash swore.

"Problem?" Cooper asked.

"I don't have my lockpicking tools so this is going to take a while," Akash complained.

"I can help," Cooper said.

Isla turned and saw Cooper approaching with a dagger in his hand. The look in his eyes was determined, almost hateful, and she could feel aggression in every fiber of his body. She took a step back but his free hand reached out and grasped her hair at the base of her skull and pulled back slightly. The knife came up quickly and then slowed, inching between her skin and the leather strap of the gag. He pushed up and the blade sliced the leather.

Isla spit the bit from between her lips as Cooper released her hair and grabbed the leather-covered metal. He drew back and hurled it into the forest. He probably intended for it to fly off into the distance but it struck a tree ten feet away and bounced back to lay on the forest floor about six feet from them.

"I hate that fucking thing," he muttered.

'Because we can't suck on his cock when we're wearing it,' Nimfeach teased.

'Because he can't kiss us when we're wearing it,' Isla countered. She stepped forward and raised herself up on her toes, bending her head backward a little for that last bit of height that allowed her to kiss Cooper gently on his lips.

"Thank you," she said.

Cooper blushed.

'He's blushing because he likes the manacles on us,' Nimfeach stated.

Isla would have protested but she could see it was true. She pulled her shoulders back a little and slowly turned from side to side.

"Nimfeach says you like the manacles," she said coyly.

"Ah," Cooper stumbled, his blush deepening, his eyes following the movement of her nipples. "Yeah."

"So we should let Akash remove them instead of destroying them?" she asked.

"Please," Cooper said.

Isla and Nimfeach laughed and turned and extended her wrists to Akash.

"Pussy-whipped," Neil 'coughed'.

"You say that like it's a bad thing," Cooper replied, shrugging off Neil's teasing with a confidence that Isla found attractive.

It took Akash nearly an hour to remove the locks. The manacles were secured to Neil's belt and none of the men made eye contact with her as they moved further into the forest.

***

"Charcoal burner's hut," Cooper said.

"What tipped you off?" Neil asked.

Akash slapped the back of Neil's head. "Doesn't look like anything's alive. I can sneak in and take a look."

"Something's alive," Isla said. "Inside the hut. But just barely."

The men looked at her but Isla ignored them. She felt the pride and gratitude that Cooper was feeling towards her and enjoyed it as much as Nimfeach did. The nymph enjoyed his approval and Isla enjoyed the lack of jealousy; it was nice to work with a man that wasn't threatened by her competence.

The hut was made of branches and moss and covered a pit in the ground. The underbrush around it had been cleared and several small trees had been felled to create a sort of clearing. There were several piles of smoking brush scattered around which filled the space with a fog of smoke which was trapped beneath the tree branches and restricted vision.

"We spread out as we approach," Cooper instructed. "At least ten feet between us. Isla trails ten feet behind and keeps an eye out for anything that might harm us. I'll take the center and go to the hut."

"I'll have your back," Akash said.

"I've got overwatch with Isla and watch her back," Neil growled.

"Isla," Akash began, but Cooper put a hand on his shoulder.

"She's got it," he assured Akash.

They moved slowly out of the thicker underbrush into the ersatz clearing. The smoke eddied around them as their motion created air currents. It was impenetrable in places and then it would move and reveal the trees on the far side of the clearing for a moment.

Cooper moved in a nearly direct line to the hut while Akash and Neil looked to the sides. Isla took a back seat to Nimfeach, letting the nymph move in total silence while she analyzed what the nymph was sensing. As they drew close to the hut Cooper moved to the entrance and Akash closed in, standing to one side of the entrance. Nimfeach played a memory for her and Isla understood that Cooper would run out if there was a problem and anything following him would be attacked, in the back, by Akash. Neil had turned so he could see her and anything behind her. Nimfeach looked behind him as well.

Cooper hesitated at the doorway, listening, and then moved inside. There were sounds and Akash whistled to get Isla's attention. When he had it he made a gesture for her to hurry over. Her feet glided across the leaf mulch to the entrance where the smell of death nearly knocked her off them.

"Hang in there, Kent," Cooper was saying. "Nympho's here. It'll be alright. Hang on."

"Even on my deathbed you mock me with your strange humor?" a voice groaned and tried to laugh. The sound was more of a death rattle.

Isla spotted the man laying at the back of the hut and turned her head quickly so that the vomit didn't land on him or Cooper. When she had recovered she wiped her mouth with the back of a forearm.

"Come on, Isla. You've got to heal him," Cooper instructed.

She could feel the fear knotting inside him. But she could also feel Nimfeach shaking her head. She could see for herself that the man shouldn't be alive. His body was black with poison and the extremities were already maggot-ridden. Black skin crawled with the activity of the swarms beneath it and fat, black maggots dropped to the ground beneath him. The air stank of rot and shit and vomit.

"Cooper- Cooper, I can't. We can't. He's too far..."

"Your wood spirit is correct, friend Gareth," the man croaked. "I've only prolonged my pain this long for two reasons. First, your promise that when you leave you will burn this hut and my body within it. I would not become some husk in thrall to a dark power. Do you promise this?"

"No," Cooper said. "You need to focus, Kent. Don't let Aidan drive. We need you to wake up so we can all go home."

"Pay attention, boy!" the corpse boomed. "I have no time left for your humor. Give me your promise."

Isla put her hand on Cooper's shoulder.

"Yes," he said. "My promise."

"Good," Master Aidan croaked, visibly weaker, dying before their eyes. "Second, there is a small orb beneath my hand. There is an evil upon this land and it must be cleansed. Bring the orb to the heart of the blight and twist it open. It will... It will..."

Akash stuck his head in the door. "What's the hold up?" he asked.

"He's dead," Cooper said flatly.

"Kent?" Akash demanded.

"I don't know. Give me a minute and then we need to burn this hut," he instructed. He put his hand on Isla's. "Thank you," he said. "You don't need to wait around for this part."

"Oh, thank God," Isla gasped and backed out of the hut. The thick, smoke-filled air outside the hut tasted like a spring breeze in comparison to the death-ridden atmosphere inside the hut. She took several deep breaths.

"What's inside there?" Akash gently asked her.

"A dead man. The one we're looking for. Master Aidan. Except, I don't think it was Kent," she said.

"Damnit," Akash swore. "What do we do now?"

"I don't know," Isla said. "And I'm starting to get really scared."

"Me too," he admitted.

Cooper emerged from the hut, looked around, and then staggered over to a tree and vomited. This went on for a minute before he managed to say "Burn the hut. Don't go in."

Akash looked at Isla who nodded her agreement. He made his way over to one of the smoldering brush piles.

Isla made her way over to Cooper. He gave her a wan smile.

"Glad you sat in on the game?"

She reached out a hand to stroke his face, brushing a tear from under one eye.

"This kind of stuff is easier when it's just Kent trying to gross us out with a well written description. Actually seeing it..."

"Was that Kent?" she asked, avoiding the long discussion that could be had, from her perspective, on the difference between playing and living.

"I don't think so," he said. "I thought maybe Kent was lost in Aidan's character, but I think if Kent had been dying like that he would have asked for help, not died heroically."

"Could he have been hiding from the pain by letting Aidan drive?"

"Yeah, that's a possibility. In the end there's just no way to know. But if he's not Kent then what do we do?"

"Finish the adventure," said Neil.

Isla looked over. The dwarf had drawn closer to them. He was thoughtfully handling a woodsman's ax and seemed to have absentmindedly answered Cooper's question.

Akash came over with a branch that had been coaxed into flame and tossed it onto the hut. The dried moss caught fire almost instantly and fire snaked along those paths and the roof was burning well in moments.

"That brings us back to the Kent dream," Cooper said.

"Makes sense," Akash replied. "This isn't real so it has to be happening someplace. Kent's mind is the best explanation we've thought of."

"Jumanji," Neil said as he gave the ax an experimental swing.

Isla took a few steps away from Neil out of general caution. "You mean we finish the game and we get out of the game?"

Cooper shrugged. "I don't have a better suggestion."

"So how do we finish the game?" Isla asked.

"Find whatever was attacking the townsfolk and deal with it," Akash said.

"Deal with it?" Isla followed up.

"Kill," Neil muttered as he spun the ax in a complicated pattern.

"Usually," Cooper said as he and Akash backed away from Neil.

"How do we do that?" she asked.

"We need to find it first," Akash said. "Cooper? Can you track whatever killed Aidan?"

"Probably. Give me a few minutes," he said.

Neil's ax flew past them, lazily spinning through the air, and buried its head in a tree.

"Yeah, this'll do," he said to himself. "Sorry," he added as Nimfeach glared at him.

Akash tended the hut fire, adding more wood to it and generally ensuring that it burned well. Neil, shouldering his new ax, kept a watchful eye on the forest around them. Cooper walked in a spiral pattern centered on the hut, looking at the ground, and the trees. After perhaps half an hour of this he took a knee, one hand pushing beneath the leaf mulch to the dirt below, and closed his eyes. When he opened them a few minutes later he was frowning.

"Bring it in," he quietly called.

The group gathered around him.

"Status update. I don't think Master Aidan was Kent. Master Aidan was shredded by something with lots of small teeth. Maybe lots of somethings. He was badly poisoned and infested with devil grubs. I found his trail coming here and signs of a fight. But I didn't find any signs of what attacked him, so I can't trail them back to where they came from. There's definitely something infernal in these woods, I can sense it. But I can't sense the direction or strength or anything like that. Before he died Aidan told us he had a mcguffin that would do something to the evil in the forest." He held up a small silver sphere, slightly more than an inch in diameter, with ornate scrolling on it.

"He called it a blight," Isla added.

"Do you think he meant actual blights?" Akash asked. "They can move without a trace through the forest."

"Which would explain the lack of trail and the damage done to Aidan," Cooper said with a nod of agreement.

"What does the orb do?" Isla asked.

"Dunno," Cooper admitted. "He said take it to the blight and twist it and then he died before he could tell us what effect it would have. And we still have to find the blight," he pointed out.

"Isla can find it," Neil said.

"What?" said Isla.

"Oh, shit. I'm an idiot!" Cooper exclaimed.

"I forgot, too," Akash said.

Isla flashed a querying thought at Nimfeach who pointed at a memory from when they'd first arrived. Isla remembered the annoying fly in her perfection and, concentrating on it, felt it. She extended an arm.

"That way," she said.

"Told ya," Neil stated.

Isla looked at the dwarf's smug face and smiled. "I tell you what, Neil, if we make it through this I'll give you a blowjob that will leave you senseless."

"Really?" his face lit up.

Isla strutted through the two steps that separated them and gave him a brief kiss, tongue just barely flicking across his lips. "Only one way to find out," she teased as Nimfeach radiated approval.

"Well, alright," he growled. "Let's do some weeding!"

***

"Stop staring at my ass," Isla hissed.

"I'm trying," Akash hissed back. "Stop... swaying."

"I'm not swaying," she whispered back, "I'm just walking. This is how Nimfeach walks."

Cooper was leading the way with Neil following behind him. Isla was following Neil and Akash was following her. He was supposed to be guarding their rear but he spent most of his time watching hers. She could feel it when he looked at her. Nimfeach, predictably, basked in the attention. Isla was concerned that he, and they, would be taken unaware by whatever the blights were. She'd tried taking control of the body from Nimfeach, who hadn't even complained. All that had happened was that she got noisy. She didn't even walk any differently. It wasn't Nimfeach trying to be sexy, it was just Nimfeach being sexy. Isla had turned the body back over to the nymph so they could move silently again.

"You're supposed to be able to concentrate," she pointed out. "If I wanted someone watching my ass instead of the forest we'd have put Neil back there."

"Happy to switch places," the dwarf whispered.

Cooper raised a hand and they all halted and looked around. The smoke that had filled the charcoal burner's clearing had been replaced by a thick mist that limited vision and clung to their skin and clothing. The big ranger moved back to them, bringing Neil along. They gathered around Isla.

"One, stop talking, please. We're trying to be stealthy. Two, I think we're entering the danger zone," he said.

"Highway to the," Neil's quiet 'singing' was interrupted by a slap to his arm. "Sorry. Archer flashback."

"This area feels...devoid of life," Isla said, eyes closed as she concentrated, toes digging into the earth.

"Yeah," Cooper agreed. "I haven't seen or heard any animals, birds, or even insects."

"Everything fled? Like those giant centipedes?" Akash asked.

Cooper nodded. "What about the dead spot, Isla?"

Isla frowned. "It's not dead. It's... differently alive?"

"Undead?" Akash suggested.

Isla shook her head. "Nimfeach says it's not that. It's alive but not like you or me."

"Infernal," Cooper said. "I can feel that. So we're dealing with some kind of devil."

"Or devils," Akash added.

"Succubuses," Neil said.

They all turned to look at him.

"Kent," he said.

The other men reluctantly nodded in agreement.

"He'd do that," Akash agreed. "And the plural is succubi."

"But it could be anything," Cooper pointed out. "Which means the mcguffin is probably something that unleashes radiant energy or a banishment spell. With Kent's homebrew it could be anything."

"And we don't have our usual gear," Neil groused.

"Adventure format says we're due for a challenging fight to wear us down before the boss battle," Akash pointed out.

"Real life says someone tries to kill us before we get to the boss," Neil said.

"Same thing," Akash said with some annoyance.

"It's not. The pre-battle is meant to wear us down, forcing us to expend resources. I'm saying that in the real world every battle is a boss-battle which is life or death," Neil countered.

"Does this look like the real world?" Akash demanded.

"Boys, if you don't shut up I'm going to put clothing on," Isla threatened.

Both men looked at her, looked at each other, looked back at her, and then shut up.

"No need to overreact," Cooper joked.

Isla punched his arm as hard as she could.

"Ow," Cooper muttered, just a little too long after the strike to be a genuine reaction. "Remember, once we're past the encounter we need to move as fast as we can to the boss. And remember to protect Isla, she hasn't done this before."

'Neither have you!' she wanted to scream but didn't. It wouldn't help. Besides, she wanted to know why the tree ahead of them was moving.

"Why is the," she began and then little creatures came tearing out of the forest at them and she screamed.

They looked like anthropomorphic rose bushes. Green leaves with black veins covered them from top to bottom and braided strands of thorn-covered vines made up their bodies and limbs. It was difficult to judge their size as they sprinted using their legs and arms and those limbs seemed to expand and contract as needed. She thought they might be three or four feet tall.

"Boss fight!" Neil bellowed, springing forward with his ax to intercept the nearest creature.

"Vine blights!" Akash added.

"Two awakened trees," Cooper pointed into the forest beyond. "Ignore the minions and go for the heavies!"

One of the creatures approached Isla at a sprint, springing at her. She ducked and one of its arms literally stretched, elongating as it reached for her, the thorn-studded tips of it clawing at her arm but failing to gain sufficient purchase. Nimfeach snarled and pushed their body forward before Isla could think to stop her. The creature landed and rolled and turned its body to attack again only to find the nymph reaching a hand down to grasp it by what might have been its throat.

"Feoite," the nymph commanded, her voice unearthly as it resonated in multiple tones. The creature grabbed at her arm with its limbs, gouging deep, bloody scratches into her flesh. But the flailing attacks weakened and stopped as the creature withered, dropped its leaves and petals, and then crumbled to dust in Nimfeach's hand.

Isla felt a sudden surge of power and anger as the creature died. 'We don't have to be afraid of these things,' she realized. 'They should fear us!' She screamed a wordless challenge at two more of the creatures that were approaching her and they altered course, driving for Cooper.

"No," she hissed. She extended her arms while making a complicated gesture with her fingers and the green vines that marked her arms like henna writhed and extended outwards to grab the two blights and pull them back to her. She grabbed them with bloody hands and breathed "Feoite" at them.

"Taking the right," Neil grunted, his short legs powering him forward, his ax held before him, and his eyes fixed on the tree that was shouldering its way toward them.

"Got your back," Akash assured him, pulling a dagger to supplement his shortsword and targeting a blight that was slowly catching up to the dwarf.

Cooper watched as Isla dispatched the two blights and two more backed away from her. He smiled a proud, feral grin and shifted his aim to a blight that was making for Akash. He fired and hit, but the creature barely stumbled in its pursuit and kept on. "Watch my back, Isla," he ordered as he dropped the spent crossbow and shouldered another.