The Creators Ch 03

Chapter Three: The Earth Former

ASTRID

The Gratoran Wall was nothing but a blue haze against the sterile desert sky, its amorphous outline split violently by Droktin's Pass, whose geometric strangeness dwindled to a murky sliver with each agonizing minute. I watched as the tallest peak of the range, Iona, my homeland, faded into the azure blandness with the rest of the mountains until it disappeared completely in the sweltering air. The wheels of the slave cart squeaked, and the metal bars singed my skin. My wings ached behind me, bound together roughly by the orc's vicious knot. A nymph girl sat in the spot across from me, her eyes downcast, her ram-like horns dusted with the debris of the churning wheels. Her face was girlish, with full cheeks, a soft chin, and big forest-green eyes. Her skin was caramel, I thought, though it was hard to tell with all the sand that covered it. If her skin was caramel, it meant she was a young nymph; the older ones didn't age with sagging flesh, but with a lightening off their complexion until it was a green hue, and a darkening of their hair until it was turquoise. As far as I could tell, her hair was a dirty-blonde, but once again, that damned sand covered everything in its brownish coat. The nymph was draped in what looked like a burlap sack, though it could have once been a cloak. Her hands were bound to her ankles, and she appeared to be staring at nothing at all. I pitied the girl; she wasn't made of the hard stuff I was.

I am a valkyrie, a winged-warrior of the mountain, the pride of the snow and cold, the sword of the highlands, and... and... and a captive to three fat orcs. Great Creators, I'm an embarrassment.

"Hey," I said to the girl, "how come you're so far from the Arbortus Forest?"

She didn't answer.

"That's what; three-hundred miles east of the wall?" I asked. "Doesn't your kind always stay in the trees?"

No response. I sighed, and leaned back into the bars, trying to acclimate my skin to the searing temperature.

This is what I get for going on a foolish quest looking for impossible answers. They'll rape me tonight; me and that girl, and there's nothing I can do to stop them. My chastity, my pride, and my honor will be stripped of me, and then they'll clip my flight feathers, and sell me off to some orc-lord. Maybe I can kill myself before that happens. Is there any hanging rope in here?

I searched around the cart, seeing not a single slicing edge, nor a loose spike to slit my wrists with. I contemplated smashing my head against the bars, but realized that would just leave me unconscious. I resigned myself to at least another hour of rest before I contemplated suicide again, and tried to stare vacantly like the nymph girl.

A black rock popped out of the sand, inches from the cart. It just... jumped right out of the ground like a breaching trout in a stream. I shook my head, unsure if the desert was causing mirages, or if I was losing my mind. Another one popped out, this one a bit bigger. I blinked, thinking I must be going insane, but then a third rock surfaced right in front of the left wheel. The cart jerked, reassuring me of my sanity, but the orcs seemed to take no notice, and we kept rolling.

"What in Creation..." I whispered, looking between the bars. "Hey, did you see that?"

The nymph girl just kept staring at the floor. Her green eyes weren't vacant anymore, but seemingly fixed in concentration. There was a vein protruding from her forehead, and her hands were shaking.

"Hey," I asked, "hey, what's wrong?"

"Too much sand," the woman finally said through gritted teeth, "too much fucking sand!"

A blood vessel burst in her eye, the vein in her forehead throbbed, and her body trembled with the strain of something, as though she were trying to lift an impossible weight.

What in Creation is wrong with her?!

I thought to myself, cringing back as spittle shot from her clenched teeth,

Is she rabid? Should I ask a guard for help?

Another blood vessel burst in her eye, the vein in her forehead seemed to beat with its own pulse, her face was growing purple, her entire body was wracking with spasms; and then, she stopped. She looked up at me, and the biggest, shit-eating grin I've ever seen in my entire life appeared on her face.

The cart shot into the air, lifted by a slab of obsidian twenty-feet by twenty-feet, perfectly square. The slavers screamed in terror, and I screamed with them, but the girl just laughed manically. Then, we stopped, and began to tilt. The slab slowly eased on its side, sliding everything but the cart into the black vacancy it left in the sand. An orc screamed as he fell, and then was sucked into the loose gravel, his upraised hand trailing his body before disappearing. The other two orcs clawed at the glossy onyx surface, but their fingers found no purchase, and they too fell into the quicksand below. The rock tilted ever further until my binds wrenched against my wrist when my weight caught on the bars. The cart was stuck to the side of the slab, facing directly downward. The cubic rock rested on the hole it had left, sealing the orcs beneath the sand, and then the cart was slowly ushered down its side. I looked out of the cage door in horrified fascination as I saw the rock deforming from its glossy surface and gripping the cart's wheels in toothy gears that rolled us downward on obsidian tracks before we finally stopped with the cart's front resting in the sand.

"Holy shit!" the nymph girl laughed. "I've never done anything like that before. Did you see that? I didn't even have to touch the stone!"

I gawked at her. Sitting before me, was the answer I had sought. The quest I'd pledged my life to, the holy crusade I'd embarked on, the epic voyage of a lifetime, fraught with peril, burdened with strife, an odyssey the likes of which bards would sing of for generations, had taken me a grand total of one day and three hours to complete. This had to be a new record.

"Good thing the bedrock was shallow here," the god said, "or we'd have been good and fucked. Fucking sand, man; can't do shit with it."

"Your holiness," I whispered, bowing my head, "great Earth Former, goddess of mountains and rock; I am not worthy. As a winged-warrior of Iona, it is my sworn-duty to serve you. I have oaths I must—"

"Ah shit," the young woman groaned. "You're a Creationist?"

"Um..." I said, still bowing my head, "...yes."

"Valkyrie, huh?" the woman said, studying me. "I thought you people worshipped men with magic hammers and horned helmets."

"No, your holiness," I said, still prostrating myself. "We are sworn devotees and protectors of the Devine Trinity. Our patron god is the Earth Former—or matron god, in your case, and—"

"What's your name?" she interrupted again.

"Astrid Skyborne," I responded.

"Well, Astrid," the girl said, making a sharp piece of the obsidian slab curl from its geometric form, and reach into the cart to cut her binds free, "you're going to pretend you didn't see me, then you're going to fly off back to your mountain and never tell a soul. Your god commands it."

The rejection stung me to the core, and it took all the resolve within me not to burst into tears.

Of course she doesn't want you!

I thought,

She'd be a fool to take a protector who was captured so easily.

The goddess cut my binds, and awkwardly pushed up on my chest as my legs swung below me until my feet landed on the front door of the cage. She turned away, and a hand of black rock reached into the cart, and ripped the bars from the studs. She stepped out onto the sand, and I followed behind her, keeping my head bowed in reverence even though I stood a good foot taller than her. The nymph looked in one direction, then the other, and saw nothing but sand for miles and miles. She put her hands on her hips and let out a sigh. I dared to feel a flicker of hope.

"On second thought, Astrid," the young god said. "I think I might need you."

WILLOWBUD

Astrid was six-feet of nordic perfection. Her statuesque frame was encased in tight-fitting leather armor that expanded at the immense protrusion of her bust, narrowed through the flat stretch of her abdomen, widened at her hips, cupped tightly to the supple form of her ass, and then narrowed into legs that went on forever. Her limbs were thick and muscled, her skin was golden, her hair was a cold-blonde braided intricately about her crown, and her eyes were steely blue. Her face was structured with high cheekbones, a cut jawline, a subtly-pronounced brow, and a pointed nose whose bridge drew seamlessly into her forehead. Her stoic portrait was decorated with lush frowning lips, a thin scar that lined a taut cheek, and piercing eyes that seemed to stare with constant defiance from their shadowed sockets. And

she

thought

I

was the goddess! I knew I was pretty, I'm not an idiot, but this woman... this woman looked like a fucking marble statue. Like, this is the kind of broad you'd see carved into the bow of a warship. I felt like a violin solo should be constantly following this woman. Oh, and I forgot to mention, she had a set of fucking

angel wings

that spanned seven feet in either direction.

"What would you have of me, Your Holiness?" she asked, her annoying devotion brimming from her face.

"Well, first thing," I said, "is to call me by my name, Willowbud."

I held out a hand, and she looked at it for a moment, then got to one knee, bowed her head, and kissed my knuckle as though there was a ring there. I rolled my eyes.

"Shake it, Astrid," I groaned, "it's not your mother's cunt."

Astrid started in shock, and I grinned internally. I had spent my childhood aboard vessels with the foulest of sailors, in bars with dock workers and gangsters, in brothels with whores, and the past year jumping from caravan to caravan. Needless to say, my vernacular was quite extensive.

Astrid stood up, the sting of my words and the awe of my 'divinity' stretched across her beautiful face. She shook my hand like a woman should, and I firmly shook hers back.

"Good," I said, pulling my hand from her grasp and looking over the horizon. "I need to get to the Tentigo Tropics, do you know where that is?"

"Two day's flight southeast from Iona," she replied, pointing to the highest peak of the mountain range. "Though I think I should take us there first, my people would—"

"We can take supplies from that cart," I interrupted, walking past her and sifting through the wreckage. "I don't need any more worshipers, thank you very much."

I pulled out the orc's provisions, and a length of rope that had been tied to the back of the cart. Astrid came next to me and searched through the supplies until she found what she was looking for. A six-foot long, two-handed sword decorated with rubies on the cross-guard and engraved with intricate designs about the hilt. The blade itself had been bent in half under the weight of the obsidian cube. She held the weapon with as much annoying reverence as she had given me, and then she bit back tears, and dropped it to the ground.

Ah, shit,

I thought as I placed my hand over the ruined blade,

if she was annoying before, she's gonna be so much worse now.

I righted the weapon before her eyes, and then sharpened it just for good measure. The whole act took less than a second; the blade springing back into place, and then shearing itself sharp in a spray of sparks. Astrid, predictably, dropped to her knees, and started another sermon.

"Oh, Great Creator," she said, her eyes welling in tears, her hands holding the sword aloft, "who hast re-forged the Blade of Iona, the heritage of my people, the—"

"Astrid," I said, placing a hand on her bowed head, "shut the fuck up. I'm not your god, I'm a person, and if you're not going to treat me like one, then you can fly your pretty ass back to Iona."

Thankfully, Astrid ceased her worship. I got out the rope, made a make-shift harness for myself, and then tied it to Astrid's torso. I felt foolish stepping into the leg-loops while she knelt awkwardly in the sand, but the ergonomics of our bodies didn't lend to graceful interaction. When my chest was tied firmly to her torso, and I had made a cozy pillow out of her massive tits, Astrid stood up, my weight seeming to mean nothing to her, and she launched us into the air with a powerful stroke of her wings.

ASTRID

Seven hours later, I landed on an outcropping of the Gratoran Wall. The sun was setting behind the desert hills to my west, casting long shadows across the golden dunes and plateaus. Willowbud was snoring loudly into my chest. Her pretty face was distorted in slumber; her lips spilling drool, her eyes pinched tightly, and her nose snarling with each thunderous snore that lowered and raised a droplet of snot. She looked very undivine, but I still treated her with all the gentle reverence I could muster in my exhaustion. Willowbud was not what I expected for a god, I'd admit, but I rationalized that her holiness was only strengthened by her humbleness. I gently untied the knots that bound her, and then draped her petite body onto the ground. As I looked down at her, I had to shake myself from the euphoric realization that this was actually happening; I was the holy protector of a Creator! This was the honor all valkyries dreamed of, but few ever actually achieved. It had to be fate that I was captured by orcs and then thrown into that cart, it just

had

to be!

It couldn't be because I'm a terrible warrior and an embarrassment to the Iona Guard.

I shook the thought from my mind. My youth had been filled with arrogance and self-assuredness for too long, and the first great adversity of my life had left me shaken. I was the very best; possibly the best ever. My only failure had led to my greatest triumph. I looked fondly down at the sleeping divinity.

I will protect you,

I thought,

you will come to no harm while under my care, little god; I swear you this oath.

I lied down beside her, careful not to get too close, and then folded my wings over the both of us, and fell asleep to the comforting roar of her divine snores.

When I awoke, she was gone. I shot up in a panic, looking from left to right, cursing myself for my carelessness. I ran across the outcrop, and then found her, and breathed a sigh of relief. She was bathing in a pool of water, showering her naked form with the gentle stream of a cliff-side water fall. Now that the sand had washed from her, I could see that she was indeed, caramel of skin. Her hair, however, wasn't the dirty-blonde it appeared to be when it was covered in sand, but a pure white; starkly contrasting her darker complexion, but blending with the ivory of her horns. Her girlish face was full and rosy with youth, and did not match the womanly curves of her body. Her breasts were petite, but well-formed, her back was lined with lithe muscle, her torso was toned with soft creases, her glutes swelled alluringly from her sloping back, and her penis jutted thickly from her... wait; what in Creation?!

"Oh, hi Astrid!" Willowbud called merrily from the pool, brushing wet hair behind her curved-back horns. "I bet you didn't expect

this,

did you?"

I tried not to gawk, I tried to keep my composure, and I failed. I stared with wide-eyes at the long smooth piece of man dangling from between her thick legs. I had never seen one before, and its presence was a magnet to my eyes. It was... fascinating.

"My grandfather..." Willowbud said, stretching lasciviously for the falling water to splash upon her caramel breasts, "...was an incubus. They tailor their appearance to match the desires of women they lust after, and somehow, that trait passed to me as interchangeable genitals. I can control it, of course, but if I ignore it, my body naturally changes itself to match the desires of those around me." She gave me a little wink. "So that morning wood I woke up with was a blaring signal of your heterosexuality."

She stepped from beneath the waterfall, and walked toward me, her thick member swaying between the sultry gait of her thighs, her rich body dripping and glistening in the dawn sun. I finally collected myself, and forcibly averted my gaze, feeling my face flush in embarrassment.

"Oh no," Willowbud laughed, "are valkyries prudes about nudity? I always assumed a bunch of women living together in the mountains wouldn't care about these things."

"We don't care of such things," I said, looking away as she laid next to me, drying her body in the sun, "but the nakedness of a man is something we... are not used to seeing."

"It's just a dick, Sweetheart," Willowbud chuckled. "How do you breed if you don't see one every once in a while?"

"When a valkyrie seeks the joy of mothering a daughter," I explained, still looking away, "she may find herself a mate amongst the mountain men to the north of Iona. They are fearsome warriors who make excellent seed-givers. She sends an emissary to request their strongest man, and they bring him to her for a single night. She will give him her virginity, and he will give her a child, and then they will part ways."

"That is incredibly romantic," Willowbud said dryly. "So you only fuck once in your entire life?"

"The desires of the flesh are a weakness that a warrior woman must overcome," I said, steeling my resolve to keep my eyes forward. "She may relieve herself with her hand or a tool, but she may not put herself beneath another for pleasure."

"You flying broads sure put a lot of stock in your twats," Willowbud snorted. "Us nymphs, we run around Arbortus buck naked and give it away like candy; we're a horny bunch." Willowbud took an indulgent moment to laugh at her pun before continuing. "I left before I could join in the fun though, damn shame; I would have been

very

popular."

"Why did you leave?" I asked, relieved that the conversation had veered away from sex. For a moment, I had feared that Willowbud would ask me to lie with her. I didn't know much about sex, but I did know that the penis had to be hard for it to work. From the corner of my eye, I could see that it was still lying flaccidly in her lap. She did not desire me; that was good, but why did I feel disappointed?

"The elven emperor started poking his head around," Willowbud said, "and Mother feared they'd invade if they found out the Earth Former was a nymph, so she sent me to live in the Tentigo Tropics; there's a nymph colony in the rainforest there. I left thirteen years ago, when I was five."

"You've been traveling to Tentigo for

thirteen years?!"

I exclaimed.

"No," Willowbud said, her expression growing dark, "I got sidetracked. Things happened, plans changed..." her eyes grew distant for a moment, "...people changed..." she muttered, but I got the impression that she was no longer talking to me. "But," she said, shaking herself out of her contemplative state, "you don't need to hear about any of that shit. After thirteen years, I'm only two days from Tentigo, and it's all thanks to you."

I felt a swell of pride bursting in my chest.

The Creator finds me useful!

I thought with glee.

"I will not let you down," I said firmly, trying to conceal my smile. It didn't work. Valkyries are terrible at deception. We cannot lie, and we are awful at hiding emotion, so my grin showed from ear to ear, and though I was looking away from Willowbud, I knew she could see it.

"Oh, someone's feeling pleased with herself," Willowbud chuckled. "You really are that devoted, aren't you?"

"The valkyries of Iona would do anything for you," I replied, and then added, "I will do anything for you, Willowbud."

There was a silence between us. I suspected it would be an uncomfortable silence for most people, but valkyries don't engage in uncomfortable silences. There are simply times for talking, and times when talk is not needed. To my mind, I had said what needed to be said, and Willowbud was simply contemplating the depth of my words. I took it as a sign that the conversation was over, so I began to peel off my armor. The cool air caressed my flesh as piece after piece of stifling, dirty leather was pulled from me. I let the strap that wrapped my groin fall to the rocks, and felt the freeing sensation of nakedness through my legs. I stretched broadly, jutting my chest forward and arching my back, craning my neck and spreading my wings to their full fourteen-foot span bask in the sun. Then I stood up, and walked into the water. The cool surface of the pool beckoned me welcomingly below its depths, and I felt all the dirt, sand and grime wash from my flesh. I dunked my head beneath the surface and then flung it back, letting my blonde hair whip in an arc behind me as the droplets that clung to my braided strands sprayed upon my naked breasts. I dipped the tips of my wings into the glassy surface, and watched as ripples permeated from the feathers. I ran my hands down my sides, loosening the taut muscles of my back and abdomen, stretching my torso to the sky and splaying my wings to catch the warmth. I turned idly to the side and—Willowbud was watching me with wide eyes. She sat upright, her jaw hanging open, her arms pinned to the ground behind her, and her penis curving backward with engorgement. My wings closed around me in a second, my heart jumped in my chest, and my face flushed furiously. I stood in my protective wing-shell, the light of dawn shining a cream-colored hue through my translucent membrane of feathers, my cheeks burning with redness.

Had I... did I just make her... was she... oh, Great Creators, what had I done?!