To Save a Friend (HoT)

Author's Note:  I've been playing with the idea of making an adult text game, and this is my first story in a collection that I'm writing which I hope will develop the world.  I've come up with the premise, and call it "Heroes of Time' (HoT), so I'll be hopefully be able to put out some kind of rough demo of that at some point in the future.  I have a lot of work for the next while, so no estimates when that will actually be.

***** *****

Clang!

"And now turn it again" I instructed, waiting.  "Now strike."

Clang!

"Good, good.  You're not as incompetent as people say" I joked.

My apprentice turned his head to me and gave a sarcastic grin.

"Now quench it, and keep going like last time."

He nodded and got to work, seeming almost as natural as I had been in my own youth.  He was a good apprentice, but smithing was a hard craft.  While it strengthened the body and moulded it to what many (such as my wife) considered near-perfection, being wrought into an ideal form was as tough on us as it was on the metals we worked.  Many shattered under the pressure, and it was my job as the teacher, as is my job as a blacksmith, to prevent such structural failure.

Throughout the day, I continued to joke and prod and condition the man who would one day be the master.  The aristocrats in Castle Highpoint may claim that great and powerful men are born, but the king knew better, and so did I.  He knew that great men are forged in heat and fire, and must be struck and doused and shaped to become all that their potential holds.  The king was a great man himself, gods rest his soul.

As day's end drew nearer, I found myself thinking of the recent turmoil that seemed to be spreading across Loraea.  Such grave events had taken place, starting with the death of the king and his sons.  The world was in a dark place, with the resurgence of fears that had not haunted our thoughts in a generation, and it seemed as if the sun was still setting.

But even as my thoughts began to darken, I heard a soft voice call my name.

I looked up to find one of my newest and most favourite customers, Shana, standing before me, wearing her customary smile and bearing the signs of great relief.  She was a very loyal customer and she had become a close friend, though she was always a bit short on gold.  Luckily, I didn't mind being charitable from time to time.

"Shana" I said, smiling back at her as best I could.  "What brings you back so soon?"

Even before the question left my mouth, however, I began to pick up signs that she had been in a fight.  Her dirty-blonde hair was messier than usual and had smears of mud and grime all down its two-foot length. Her soft red lip was marked with a fresh cut, and I could still see a trace of blood trailing down from the split.  Even her hands looked off.  Though never clean, they had never been as rough as they seemed now.

Instead of answering, she hesitated.  I could see her whole thin frame, which was usually so firm and feminine, slowly sag in a display of fear and shame.

"Are you alright?" I asked, though and answer was obvious. 

For a fleeting moment, I considered that I might be too concerned for her.  Shana was an adventurer of a few years and she had trained for many more before that, and while I was ten or eleven years her senior, her twenty years of life had been filled with challenges that were far more varied and daunting that those of my average life.  I knew that she had been taught the skills that would give her the best chance to survive, instilled with a toughness that was beyond most people...  yet, I reflected, there was only so much that a person could prepare for -- and the world is an inventive adversary.

"I need to talk to you... urgently..." she managed, sounding more winded than she looked.

I moved to the side and gestured for her to sit on my work stool, but she didn't budge.

"Is there somewhere else to talk?" she asked, glancing at my apprentice.

I nodded. 

"Of course." I said, turning to my apprentice.  "Can you keep an eye on things?" I asked him.

He gave me a nod back, and I moved to the back of the shop, where a doorway lead to the back room.

"After you" I said, opening the large door and gesturing through.

Once the two of us were inside, Shana turned to me and I saw tears forming in the corners of her rich brown eyes.

"I feel so stupid..." she said, lowering her gaze to the floor as the tears began to trickle down her face.  "I don't even know what to say..."

I quickly reacted, taking her arms in my hands with a gentle firmness.

"It's alright, Shana.  Here, take a seat and start at the beginning."

I eased her onto a rolling hill of soft leathers, letting go of her and taking a seat beside her.  She shifted slightly, and I could tell that she was uncomfortable.

"Sorry, that's the most comfortable seat we have back here." I said with a twang of humour. "Now tell me, what happened to you today?  You seemed fine when you set out this morning..."

 Shana twiddled her thumbs, pausing to collect herself.

"It all started this morning, before I saw you..." she began.

"I knew that it would be really hard to make it to Riverfall by tonight, and it was such an urgent quest, I decided to take a shortcut.  After I saw you, I cut through the edge of the swamp just south of here, and I was so happy because everything was going so well and I was saving so much time..."

"I had made it half way through, and there was a Varana there.  I don't know where it came from, but I couldn't get away so I tried to fight it.  I thought I was doing okay until it knocked my sword away and..."

She paused, obviously finding it hard to describe.

"I tried to grab my sword, but it hit me from behind and I fell down.  When I felt it on my back, I thought I was going to die..."

I could appreciate her fear, having faced Varana a few times myself.  People called them 'lizard men' for good reason, having many features in common, including their lack of concern for human life.  They were a lot smarter than the other lizards of the swamp, and some people claimed that they were 'civilized', but that was a moot point.  Civilized or not, I was surprised that Shana was alive after being defencelessly pinned beneath a large bipedal lizard.

"I was so sure that it was going to kill me and eat me... I almost wish it had..." she continued slowly.  "I didn't understand, but then I felt it moving and I could feel two long slimy things rubbing on my thighs...   and I remembered hearing that lizard men have two..."

Shana looked up at me, and I must have shown my surprise, because I could see her face falling as she hastily looked away.

"I swear I didn't want it...  I was just so relieved that it wasn't going to hurt me.  Everyone said they're stupid lizards, so I thought if I stayed still it would keep going like that until it was done and then leave me alone..."

I stayed silent, waiting for her to continue.

"When its scaly hand went up my skirt, I thought it was an accident... but then it tore my linens off, and pulled my legs apart... I tried to get away from it, but it was so strong and it held me down.  And then I felt it pushing its slimy lizard penises up my skirt, between my legs, and I couldn't stop it..."

"Did it?" I asked, cutting myself off.

Shana nodded slowly, staring at the floor.

"I wanted to fight it, but there was nothing I could do...  so I just stayed still and let it have me...  even when I felt it throbbing and I knew it was about to breed me..."

I took a deep breath.

"You don't have to feel ashamed." I said, hoping to comfort her.  "You didn't do anything wrong."

I could see her struggling to say something, trying to muster the strength of will.

"I didn't want to let it put them in me..." she began.  "But it felt so much better than the boys I've been with, and it's my fertile time.  So when it started spilling into me, I let myself cum with it..."

My face was hot, and I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, wondering why she was telling me such explicit and personal things.

"You should go to the midwife" I suggested, but she shook her head.

"I came straight here after I saw her." she said.  "She knows I haven't had the money to buy herbs in weeks... so she was worried when I told her about what happened, since she says that Varana men are potent and my body wants to conceive.  She told me that she could have helped me if I had resisted, but that cumming with him pulled his seed too deep inside...  so I'll be pregnant by morning."

I swallowed hard.

I had heard of adventurers giving birth to monsters and half-breeds, but I never imagined that it would happen to an innocent girl like Shana.  She wasn't particularly 'pure', but she had a charming wonder to the way that she looked at the world and the people in it, unlike most adventurers I'd met in my thirty-some years of life.  Somehow, despite the banal horrors of the world, I still couldn't reconcile the idea of such a thing happening to her...

"I wish there was something I could do for you" I said genuinely. 

At that, Shana seemed to perk up.

"Well..." she mumbled.  "I came to ask for your help..."

I raised an eyebrow, wondering what help I could be in such hopeless circumstances.

"I don't want to give birth to Varana...  so I begged the midwife to tell me how to undo my mistake.  She told me that there's only one way, and it has to be before sundown..."

I looked through the small, barred window near the ceiling of the room, through which I could see the first whispers of the sunset.  If I was going to help her, it had to be now.

"Well?" I asked.  "There's no time to waste then, so tell me what I can do."

And without a pause, she did.

"You can put your child in me." she blurted out.

Caught off-guard, I felt my face flush with blood as another surge of blood flowed lower.

"Why come to me?" I asked, still shocked by the proposition and uttering the first thing that came to my mind.  "You know I'm a married man..."

Her face curled down into a slight frown.

"I know, but you're the only man I trust... and besides..." she trailed off.

I could sense that she was on the cusp of asking again, and I could feel my body warming with the anticipation of what it could drive me to do to her, so I desperately pre-empted her request.

"My wife is a good woman, Shana.  You've met her, spoken with her, come to know her as a friend."

Shana looked uncomfortable, but I could tell that I hadn't dissuaded her.

"That's why I knew you could help me..." she explained.  "She told me how much pleasure you give her, more than any man she's been with...  and how easily you gave her a child."

I felt a rush of pride, but tried to fight it down and stay focused.

"The midwife told me that for this to work, my body will have to pull a man's seed as deep as it did the lizard's.  It has to be a man who I trust, who knows how to pleasure a woman, and who's as potent as possible.  I knew it had to be you..."

I sat there silently, trying not to give her question even an ounce of thought, but the harder I fought the idea the harder it became to stop thinking about it.  I watched her moving closer to me, leaning toward me and inching her face closer to mine, her lips glistening in the dimming light of the fading sun and the flickering of the wall torches.  I knew I had to say something, but I couldn't muster the resolve.

"Do this for me, and I promise that she'll never know..." she whispered, the breath of her words gliding over my mouth.

When I felt her soft lips press against mine, I pulled back slightly, but she pressed forward and forced our mouths together in an uncharacteristically vigorous kiss.  She began to move her mouth on mine, and I found myself kissing her back, knowing that I was sinking down a dangerous slope.  I would never want to betray my wife, but my friend was in such desperate need.  Was it truly so wrong to help her, if it was just this once?  Was it wrong to give her my seed, if denying her would be taking away her only hope?

How could I say no to her, and condemn her to such an awful fate? I thought, allowing my hand to reach out and grip her soft thigh.  It's not about wanting her I assured myself, even as my erection swelled at the thought of what I was considering.  It would just be about helping her, as a friend...

I felt a tug on my pull-string belt, and looked down in time to see her pull it undone.  No amount of self-denial could refute the pounding in my chest, or the thrill I felt as I watched her hand slide into my pants and grab hold of my swollen rod.  I watched her eyes go wide, and her familiar smile return to her face.

"It's so thick" she said, sounding as shocked as she was pleased.  Once again, I fought down my pride and stayed on task.

"I'll help you" I said, my face chilling as I uttered the words.  I wondered for a moment how I could agree to such a thing, but the thought faded as I felt her firm grip moving up and down my shaft.

My attention moved to her chest, which I had long since given up hope of seeing and feeling, but which was now within my grasp.  My hands looked so large against her slender frame, moving up from her thighs and gripping the clasps of her chest piece.  Once it was out of the way, I would finally be able to touch and taste her tender breasts.  They were smaller than those of most women I'd been with, including my wife, but the breasts of a barely-twenty-year-old had a certain appeal all their own.

"Not yet" she said, pulling my pants down and grabbing hold of my forearms.    With a gentle suggestion, she moved my right hand back down to her thigh and placed my left on the cusp of her round butt. 

"You can do whatever you want to me, once it's inside" she teased. 

She lifted her far leg toward me, and I compliantly pulled it up and over my body, which left her sitting on top of my legs.  As she moved up to straddle my cock, I watched her skilfully unfasten her skirt and pull it off, tossing it to the side. 

I looked down to the crux of her legs, and felt my heart begin pounding faster and harder than it had since I was a young man.  I examined the bare flesh there, her exposed vagina capped by a thin vertical streak of dark hairs, and recalled that she had lost her underwear to the lizard man.  Her womanhood was so different from my wife's, with thick outer lips that looked soft and smooth, tempting me to touch them.  While my wife's would have been spread wide open in the same position, with the bright red folds of her inner lips framing the length of her slit and encircling the wet hole at the bottom, the only sign of where a man could enter Shana at all was the fact that her inner lips, only barely visible from her nub down to her opening, split apart slightly at the very base of her puffy lips.  As I stared at her, the memories of the girls I had been with, the excitement and freshness of each one, all came rushing back to me. 

Even in those first moments, I could tell that Shana was not shy about men and sex.  The way she moved, the way she looked at me, the way she knew how to tease me.  Lowering herself, she pressed the side my shaft into the wet groove between her lips and trailed her juices up and down its length from base to tip, moving back and forth until my cock felt as hard as rock.

"I think you're ready" she whispered, sliding forward until the head of my penis brushed past her nub and nestled into the warm furrow between her legs.

She reached back and gripped my manhood, rubbing its tip between her engorged lips and up to the dripping mouth of her passage.  I could feel her begin pressing down against me, the pressure building against me as her tight opening slowly stretched open despite its attempts to refuse the substantial invasion.

"It's so big" she moaned, desperately trying to force it in.

For the first time in ten years, I felt the warm folds of a woman besides my wife spread open to encircle the very end of my cock, then surrender to thickness of what was entering it, stretching wider a wider until it managed to slide down and envelop my entire head.  Shana panted and moaned, her warm passage enfolding me deeper with each moment that passed, and her fingernails dug into my shoulders as she steadied her shaking body.  I could barely remember the days when my wife was so tight, but I could remember how the women before her had been equally frenzied by the task of taking my girth.  Finally being inside her, I revelled in the pleasure being  within such a young woman.  As I worked deeper, I could an unusual wetness within Shana, and I felt a sudden spark of arousal at the realization that it must be the gelatinous semen that the Varana had left in her this afternoon during their mating.

I looked down as Shana forced herself down onto the last half-inch of my shaft, finally burying it from tip to root inside of her.  As it went in, I watched the Varana's thick green gel  slowly oozing out from inside her taut passage, driven out by the sudden pressure within her depths.   I watched her glance down at the thick manhood that was now resting deep inside of her, admiring how wide her lips had stretched to accommodate it, and watching her fluids and the Varana's viscous semen seeping down to the base of my cock.  When she was certain that it was all the way in, she leaned forward and rested her head on my shoulder.

"I can't wait any longer" she whispered in my ear, and I felt my mind slipping away from the safety of hesitation and into the frenzy of breeding.

I reached around her hips and grasped each leg with a strong hand, wrapping my fingers around her upper thighs with a sturdy grip.  My arms pulled and lifted her up, depriving her of the fullness of my generous invasion for a moment before shoving her down and jamming the full breadth of my cock back inside of her.  At the same time, I began to drive my hips up in fast and shallow motions, pleasuring her with the resultant blend of deep and shallow thrusts.

"Oh gods!" she cried, overwhelmed by the sudden increase in stimulation.  She pulled back from my chest and sat upright, which only allowed my thrusts to push deeper, and I could see in her eyes that she would not last long before crying out in pleasure.

I knew that the exhilaration of her story and the freshness of each other's bodies had driven us nearly to the brink of orgasm before our coupling had even really begun, and that this rabid thrusting was fated to last only as long as was needed to push us over the edge.  We could only resist so long, our minds urged by the overpowering array of sensation pouring over to let go and fulfill the biological imperative that had compelled us this far.  We basked in the feeling of each desperately forceful thrust,  the wet sound of each time I drove into her, and the moaning that filled the room from our own mouths.  Even the smell of the air, which had reeked of tanned leather for years, was now full of the scent of sex.  I could tell that we were close, my cock furiously pumping into her and her moans becoming louder with each thrust, lost to anything but our need to consummate our pairing.  Despite the temptation, I held back with the ounce of strength that I had left, knowing that I needed to wait until she had taken all she could...

Each second, each thrust, seemed like both an eternity and an instant, tormented by the need inside of me, waiting for the moment when I could surrender to it.

Then, after I know not how long, that moment finally came.

I watched Shana let her face fall, tensing her entire body and clutching at my shoulders.  Her mouth gaped open in a unspoken roaring wail, silently crying out to the gods for giving her such pleasure.  I tried to hold off a few moments longer, wanting to hear it from her lips, but the sensation was too much for my drained will.  Her passage felt like it was throbbing around me, rhythmically contracting as it tried to milk me of my seed.  Between my continued thrusting and the sudden tightness brought on by her orgasm, I gave in and felt the tingling pleasure in my penis grow to a deafening roar.

"I'm cumming..." she managed to softly moan, hoping to incite me to join her, though I was already too far gone for it to have mattered what she said.  Before she could finish uttering the words, I felt my cock swell and a surge of pleasure cascade through my body as a first thick jet of my semen sprayed from its tip and coated her depths.  I thought about all the lizard semen already within her, now joined by a fresh supply of my own, and revelled in the wrongness of it.  I pressed her hips down with my hands, trying to get as deep in her as possible as a second spurt erupted from my cock and bathed the mouth of her womb in cum.  With each pulse of pleasure, I knew that I was immersing it further, flooding her channel until it overflowed with my rich cream. 

"Yes..." she whimpered, feeling how much I was giving her and how readily her body drank it up. 

With a final twitch, I felt the last drops of my virile juice flow into her and the pleasure of orgasm fade into a feeling of quiet satisfaction.  Her passage was still squeezing me, but what had been powerful convulsions had become little more than a rhythmic trembling as her ecstasy subsided.

I stared into her eyes and watched a smile spread across her face.  She looked so relieved, but also pleased in a much more base way.  Despite the fact that I was still deep inside of her, I was slightly surprised when she leaned forward and pressed her lips against mine, kissing me slowly and passionately.  It felt so intimate, loving, and genuine, that it felt out of place with what we had told ourselves we were doing.  Yet, despite the conflict inside me, it also felt incredibly right.  I found myself gently grasping the back of her head and breathing deeply, kissing the woman in my lap.  As she gradually ended the embrace and smiled at me, I felt my heart thumping in my chest.

She leaned down to my beating heart and pressed her own against it, wrapping her arms lovingly around what she could grasp of my frame. 

"Thank you." she said peacefully.  "I don't know how I could ever repay you for this."

As she laid there, resting herself on me, I tenderly encircled her with my strong arms. 

"Don't worry, Shana." I said reassuringly.  "You already have..."

Somehow, I knew in that moment that it had worked.  Something inside me was telling me that it had, as if I could feel it with some sixth sense that I never knew I possessed.  I couldn't put in words, but I was certain.

For the next few weeks, I saw no sign of Shana, leaving me to wonder where she was.  I began to doubt myself, doubt that I had succeeded in saving my friend from that terrible outcome.  After three weeks, however, Shana appeared at the shop without notice.  I could see the intensity on her face as I led her back into the store room and closed the door, as if to prepare me for the news she brought with her.  We sat down where we had made love only a few weeks earlier, and I wrapped one arm around her to rest on her opposite shoulder.

"I'm pregnant." she announced abruptly, looking at me.

"And?" I asked, my heart pounding.

The seconds passed, and I could feel the silence wearing me down with every moment.

"The midwife used magic to look inside me, to be sure, because of what happened..." she explained.

"And?" I asked, my tone becoming more desperate.

"You didn't give me a baby..."

I felt my heart stop, crushed by the sudden shock and growing sense of loss.  I felt like I was going to faint, until I saw a Shana's beautiful smile spread across her face.

"Oh, no, I'm so sorry, I didn't think you'd be so upset" she said, her voice full of sympathy.  "I never meant to make you worry."

I swallowed hard, and she gently caressed my face with her soft young hand.  I hadn't let myself feel how badly I wanted her until the moment that I felt her slipping away.

"I don't understand how you can--" I began, but she cut me off with a finger on my lips.

"You gave me twins." she said, beaming at me.

Without thinking, I grabbed her in my arms and kissed her, not willing to let her go, never wanting to lose her the way that I thought I had.  I had promised myself that I would leave that night behind, refuse to look at her or touch her the way that I had, but my heart knew what it wanted.  I kissed her deeply and passionately, her mouth embracing mine with the same longing that I felt for her.  When our lips finally parted, she nestled her head into my chest and rested against me.

"Can I stay with you, like this, just for a little while?" she asked me, despite knowing the promise we had made ourselves.

I smiled, gently rubbed her back with my hands and squeezing her in my arms.

"You can stay for as long as you want."