They went up, ever further into the mountain range as the meandering trail began to narrow and the higher altitudes contrived to make it a colder experience. Roland was glad he had brought a thick enough cloak to throw about his person that he didn't notice it much. When he offered a spare to Kelsea, she merely shook her head, "Succubi don't need to stay warm." She said. The purple woman wasn't wrong; she was a furnace in his arms. Carl Hale had accepted the spare soundlessly, his eyes dull as he took the coat without a word. Roland was unnerved at his trancelike state.
He mentioned this to Kelsea over the campfire that night, huddled beneath an overhang of rock just next to the road, where pictographic cave paintings had been scrawled in some unknowable language by the Beastfolk who had once lived in abundance in these mountains, centuries ago. "The Carl Hale I knew was a preening, vain cunt. A talker." He said to her from across the flames. She looked up at him, her face serious as he described their companion sitting next to them like he wasn't even there. "When are you going to release him?"
"Whenever I feel like it." She replied, her mouth quirking into a joking smile which died when she got a glimpse of Roland's hard stare. "What do you want me to say, Roland? I don't know how long it takes to make him safely fall under my spell. I'm not going to risk him 'cutting our throats in our sleep,' like you said, till I'm sure he's not a threat."
It doesn't take long.
He thought, remembering his own demonic entanglements.
Only enough till you're panting inside at the very thought of being with her again.
Roland elaborated: "He's glamoured, completely under your direction till you break off this spell locking his mind inside. D'you think he's going to be all that friendly if you keep him like this for a month and
then
free him?"
"I don't care." She said, her voice defensive as her tail swished about her. "By then we'll be over the mountains and we can cut him loose."
Roland laughed, a bitter spasm that echoed in the overhang and made Kelsea's red-rimmed eyes look away. "There's no 'cutting loose' from a demon, Kelsea." He said, standing up and moving out of the cave, suddenly very claustrophobic in the confines of their camp. "Once you've worked your magic on them, they're bound to you. Forever." His head lowered as he turned his back to her, striding out into the late afternoon fog. "Whether they want to be or not."
The red-maned mercenary strode out across the rock-pitted trail upon which they'd been walking for nearly a week now. His breath was heavy as he saw plumes of white fog drifting and curling across the sharp inclines of the mountaintops. Down beneath the trail, there was a steep valley of winding canyons, speckled with deciduous forests and a wading stream deep in the seam of the hills, flowing down in rough-cut waterfalls into the plains behind them. Higher up on the ranges, tall, needly alpine trees stuck up like matchsticks in individual rows and stems, perforating the jawline of the snow-capped peaks with flashes of dark green. The mountains seemed to stretch on forever, and in some unfathomable distance Roland knew there was the ocean, an unending flow of water larger than the grandest lake. He had never seen the wondrous thing, and doubtless never would.
It was irrelevant anyways, their little band of the damned was crossing the range in the direction of the Magelands, a hard, mountainous realm far from the sea and its strange allure. Roland had originally intended to seek work in the local cities, perhaps cleaning up after some fool conjurer's summoning errors or heading north to the border forts, fighting off the beastfolk who occasionally migrated down from their homelands in the wild country. Now... now he didn't have a plan. His plan was to keep moving, to make enough money to live a day longer, and to suffer through whatever torment he had willingly placed himself in by putting his nob into a Succubus' fuck hole.
Roland's fist clenched in his hand, the teasing command of Kelsea's words flitting through his mind like a firefly's budding and varying shine. He moved further up the trail, his sight passing away from the overhang as he aimlessly climbed higher into the hillside. Had he the presence of mind to stop himself, he'd have taken his weapons and arms with him. As it was all he wanted was some fresh air, and a clear head. At least he'd get
one
of those things on his walk.
Something had changed. Something had shifted in the precarious balance of his own will and that of the Succubus. He had ignored her once, a pestering fly on his shoulder whose promise of momentary pleasure outweighed her corrupting influence. How had he been so stupid? Nine years he'd been slaying monsters, learning to exploit their weaknesses and tricks to dodge their more murderous strengths. Nine years of collecting minutiae and forcing himself to learn to read, that he might better access the knowledge of those learned folk who had studied the beasts he was paid to dispatch.
Roland stepped off the beaten path, his hands grasping against the sharp incline to the left of the road and pulling himself up the damp earth, using half-buried rocks to pull himself up. He shivered in the cold, his cloak doing little to repel the moisture of the humid air, and keep it from seeping into his bones like an unearthly chill. The fog was thickening. As he reached the top of the embankment, the incline softened, allowing tall, leafy trees to jut out above the rock overhang over which he now stood. He could feel Kelsea's presence beneath him, like a dull heartbeat heeded just on the edge of hearing. As he panted from the effort, wiping at his legs with his muddy hands, the mercenary paused to consider the breadth of his bestiary knowledge, wondering how he'd gone wrong in its application.
Roland knew that a manticore's venom was so potent that a frontal assault was suicide. You had to sneak up on it, or - barring that - use a bow or a sling to strike at it from a distance. If
forced
