Exploring the Undiscovered Lands with a Slave Harem, Chapter 8: Exploring The Forest
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With another day of listening while under the effect of Irendar's little potion, I now had a passing understanding of the local language - and I was happy to start trading. I'd brought a few more interesting items with me to sell to the southerners, and Kitran seemed like the place to unload. A big old bag of marbles. A six-pack of Pesicore Blue. Spare small monster cores. Lighters (and lighter fluid). A carton or two of pure grade iodized salt. A box of nails, and another one of needles. Things that were cheap and mass produced up North, but rare and labor-intensive to the point of absurdity down here.

I didn't sell everything I had brought for those purposes, but those items all sold for quite a pretty penny - exotic delicacies from the Far North, strange and useful devices, and copious amounts of salt. The salt probably had the biggest change in value, I think being worth somewhere around a hundred times its purchase price. Maybe the marbles had a bigger variation, but I sold them one-by-one so it was hard to keep track. I was pretty quickly the most popular man in the market, with items like that, and I made plenty of money. More than enough to live down in Kitran for years, if I stewarded the money well - and I had amenities seemingly no one else had, back on the Swordfish: refrigerators, washing machines...

There was a thought that came to mind, that I could just never go back North, maybe only go north and south once every few years, keeping the money, living a life of leisure like some merchant king... but probably, other trade goods would start making their way south in the not so distant future, and then I'd have to make my money.

Besides, I didn't want to just laze around. If anything, the time I'd had to spend, in this strange and new and wild land full of strange things - such as the giant floating pearl, almost perpetually visible in the sky, for one prominent example - just doing boring work like selling excess goods or learning the language was simultaneously achingly dull and drainingly strenuous.

So, armed with my newfound knowledge of the language and money, I started asking around for any interesting rumors or sites to see. There were temples to the local gods - I visited and paid my respects and gave a small but appropriate offering, just out of an abundance of caution - and a handful of truly venerable structures in the city. Thick concrete towers seven or eight stories tall, looming over everything around them, apparently having been built by a "giants" in a "previous era". The fact that they were made by another people was strongly suggested by the way that they had some type of waterproof material draped over the top and secured in place, their very highest stories having been destroyed quite some time ago. What use giants had for buildings with rooms that were about eight or nine feet tall, on the other hand, is left as an exercise for the reader.

The buildings were interesting, if not for their contents (by this time, they were repurposed as housing). In the north, we have our own dead civilizations, but they're almost all ruins long since reduced to foundations and buried, cities scraped off the surface of Kersh by long-forgotten weapons or magics, and the like. The concrete towers didn't look that special - maybe a lighthouse or something, in a previous era - so it was curious that they'd lasted long enough for people to come back and rebuild them. It wasn't like it was the deserts of Sofdurj, where a giant structure might have only had to deal with the occasional sandstorm; this was a coastal town. Surely storms would have wrecked it, if it had been left alone for millennia? I took some notes on the design, just in case there was some secret hidden in it that would answer that question, and moved on from there.

I was incredibly interested in getting to see the insides of the giant floating rainbow pearl, but unfortunately, it was forbidden for humans to enter - and some speaking confirmed that only the quendi (the race that Irendar belonged to, apparently) were permitted to go, so sending in my slaves on the argument that they weren't human was a bust.

I did start to hear rumors about some sort of cult living in the forest - worshiping demons (the mythological type, not Azanaga's type) and devils and dead witches and the like. To my ear as a northerner, it sounded like a bunch of superstitious bullshit... but the South was supposed to be where superstitious bullshit was actually true.

"You heard there is an evil cult of evil people living in the woods... so you decided that you want to go to the woods?" Azanaga asked, giving me her most cold, deadpan expression.

"Yes," I replied, succinctly. I didn't have to argue the point.

"Why?" Azanaga asked, sounding annoyed at merely having to ask the question.

"You know why. I came South to see the sights and learn the things going on down here. If you didn't want to come with me, you could have pretended to be a terrible civil engineer, and I would have had to resell you at a loss." Azanaga's eyelid twitched at that. "That didn't occur to you?"

"We demons are an honorable people," she said, with a sneering note to her voice that did little to disguise the fact that she obviously didn't think of that.

"Can I pretend to not be a capable summoner to avoid going into the forest with the demon worshipers?" Pichi prompted me.

"Please do not call them demons, I am a demon, these people are worshiping fanciful evil spirits, if they even exist, which they probably do not."

"The word in their language is ythraul," I told her. "But it means demon, in the sense of an evil spirit who lives in Hell."

"It is common for cultures to claim that outsiders and subaltern peoples are actually doing terrible things, out of allegiance to evil forces," Eshenesra offered. "Especially in the forest, which is traditionally a place full of wild animals and bandits and other dangers."

"I'm not sure you understand what a demon is," Voasary said, a frown on her lips. "Or a ythraul, I guess I should use that word, since apparently Azanaga is a demon?" She just stared at Azanaga for a few long seconds. "Demons and devils... ythraul and ynshuen, in Kitran," she clarified, not knowing if the North also had a people known as devils, "have the job of purifying souls of sin before reincarnation," she explained. "Since a soul is immaterial, they tempt it with vices it can't indulge, until the impulse is reduced. They aren't evil."

I was... less than certain that Voasary's religious opinions were the same as the locals. "Then why do they talk about devil worshipers like they're evil?" I asked.

"Demons and devils aren't evil, but if you acted like them, you'd be evil." She spoke like I was an idiot. "If you eat a huge scrumptious feast in front of a starving child, just to make him drool in want but not satisfy that want, that would be an evil act; but demons do that in Hell to work the gluttony out of gluttons, as souls can't eat food. Well," she paused, "that's what I hear. I don't know the exact details, since I've never been to Hell, or spoken to an ythraul or ynshuen."

That was a rather theologically specific interpretation of demons. I decided not to argue with her, given arguing people's religion is almost never a good idea, and instead simply nodded in response. "But what Eshenesra said still applies, doesn't it? They're evil for working with demons. So they're made up to slur whoever actually lives in the forest."

"I guess that's possible," she said in a tone of voice that said she guessed no such thing. "But I'd be ready for violence if you go into the forest just to find demon worshipers."

"I'd have been ready for violence if I went into the forest for any reason," I told her. "Really, I'm very ready for violence no matter what, especially with Jutaana."

"Mhm! I am protecting Master from any violence," Jutaana said, having had rather less to contribute to any sociological or theological discussions than the rest. "And Eshie can be helping too! She can be healing if Master is somehow being hurt," she explained, smiling brightly at Eshenesra, who just blushed.

"Right. Let's go, then," I said, and the girls followed me, including Voasary.

I did catch Eshenesra muttering to herself as we left, though. "Eshie...?" I didn't mention it, though Jutaana's ears twitched so it was probably a safe bet that everybody with huge ears (so, everyone except me and Voasary) heard it.

* * *

If you were to have me make a list of what I expected to find in the forest, the top thing would probably have been trees. If you were to say that you wanted a real list, and that I knew what you meant, then I would have added bears, or perhaps some kind of weird dangerous animal that was loosely like a bear, or bandits, or even real witches.

I would not have expected the first thing that I did see there: a deer that looked like it was made of plastic.

It looked as if you had flensed a deer completely bare of its skin, leaving all the red-raw muscle exposed - but then replaced the muscle with grey plastics, which warped subtly as it walked through the forest. The ears atop its head swiveled. It had little circular glass panes where eyes should be, and tilted its head to look at the group of us, staring at us from a distance. After a few seconds, it twisted its body around so that the head faced us, then began galloping backwards in a manner that I was pretty sure normal deer could not do.

"Did you see that?" I asked, halfway wondering if my gaze had misinterpreted what I'd seen.

"If you are talking about the naked deer with grey blood, then yes I was seeing it!" Jutaana exclaimed, seeming excited by the sight of it.

"Yeah. You stopped and gawked with your mouth opened," Azanaga said. "Weird. Guess that explains why there's no meat here in Kitran. I wouldn't want to eat something made of that."

"I could be hunting it down!" Jutaana offered.

I considered it, then shook my head. "Nah. If we want parts of it, we can probably buy some from the locals. I'd rather not risk running out in the forest after the monster."

"Ah, that is making sense, Master," Jutaana said, nodding. "Money is being amazing in how useful it is!" Azanaga made mocking motions with her mouth, copying what Jutaana had said.

I just shot Azanaga a dour look, and she responded by giving me a probing one, as if to say, What? "You know I don't have to fuck you, Azanaga."

"Ehhh?" Jutaana said, before Azanaga could even complain herself. "Master... I know it is being different with humans, but... it is bad for men to be having sex with women, and then cutting them off!"

"Yeah," Azanaga agreed.

"She was making fun of you," Pichi said, half to defend me, half to 'get' Azanaga.

"That is being okay, I am making fun of her sometimes too. I was calling her a dumb succubus whore for human cock a while back!" Azanaga seemed less happy with this form of defense from Jutaana, which of course made me smile.

Voasary frowned at the word 'succubus' - but our journey through the roads on the forest came to a halt as I saw a number of squirrels in surrounding trees. Only, just like the deer, they had no flesh: just grey, plasticky musculature, exposed and subtly shifting as they moved around in the trees, camera eyes seeming to zoom in and focus on us.

"Those are quite creepy..." Eshenesra said, fidgeting in place as she looked up at them. "Should I... kill some?"

"I don't think so," I said. "Not unless they attack us." As I gestured, we started to walk again, and it became clear that the squirrels didn't just happen to surround us - they moved with us, following us with a completely silent coordination.

Eventually, they gathered enough of whatever data they wanted, and skittered away - just moving out in random directions, as if losing their will to do anything at all, some crossing right in our path while others just leapt from tree to tree away from us. It was definitely more than a little spooky, but I hoped the weird forest-spirit-robot-god-thing was satisfied with what it had seen.

The deer spotter and the squirrel swarm had come remarkably quickly, on entering the forest - but now that both had ended, I realized how dead the forest sounded. There were no chirping birds. I didn't hear grasshoppers, or cicadas. The silence was almost deafening, but thankfully began to dissipate as various animals made their way through the forest as if we weren't there. There were still no cries of birds, but there was the occasional flutter of wings or movement in the underbrush.

We were following the road that went from the capital inland, but it was increasingly clear to me that very few people actually followed this road at all. It was made of many small stones, layered tightly together, without any sign of mortar but nonetheless not cracked anywhere. I began to wonder if it had been made by the same people who made the towers back in the capital itself - or, in other words, that it was only present because some civilization a thousand years ago had wanted a path through here, and thus any use it got today was purely coincidental.

By extension of the road's isolation, it was the most likely place for any secret witch cults to be... and also had no hunter or logger's houses for us to ask to put us up. It was getting late in the day, and I definitely didn't trust the local wildlife to not attack us while we slept, so I turned to Azanaga. "Well, it's time for you to do your thing." Azanaga blinked a few times. "Jutaana, Pichi, and Eshie would all be happy to help"

"Are you... saying you want to fuck my mouth right here?" Azanaga asked.

"Ah!" Jutaana actually raised her hand to her mouth before I could correct Azanaga. "Doing it beneath the open sky is being very romantic!"

"No," I clarified. "I am saying, you can build us a base camp. Since that's the thing you were purchased to do, and I only fuck you because you explicitly asked."

Azanaga's mouth worked at the air for a few seconds, her cheeks pink, while Pichi sniggered in obvious delight at her accidental self-humiliation. She cleared her throat at that. "Right. Must be that my Almerese is rusty," she lied through her teeth. "I'll get to work. Pichi," she said, making the pekina woman stop laughing, predicting work was coming. "...actually you pekina bitches aren't even good as manual labor," she huffed, shaking her head and enlisting Jutaana and Eshenesra instead.

Jutaana gingerly rubbed Azanaga's back and offered her condolences for Azanaga not getting fucked.

I did decide to at least slightly make it up to her by fucking her first. In the mouth, as 'requested.'

* * *

Jutaana woke up before me, her ears swiveling as she bolted upright. I followed her into consciousness immediately, my subconscious trusting her implicitly. Pichi and Azanaga both sleepily roused as well, their eyelashes fluttering as they took in the fact that it was still night, almost no light reaching us. I swiveled my hand, a blade snapping out in its place, and gingerly exited the tent. The surrounding darkness loomed around us, seeming to have an almost living presence, like some gigantic black slime aiming to swallow us up.

Voasary sat with a knife and a small chunk of wood, which she had been whittling, and looked up as she saw me emerge from the tent. "Something the matter?" She chose Almerese for that line, and I nodded in response.

"Jutaana heard something."

"Ah, yes," Jutaana said, having her sword in hand as she exited the tent, still naked, her eyes running over the surrounding forest. "It was sounding like humans?" She stilled, her ears spreading outward for a moment, wide and attentive like a radar dish. Her head swiveled sharply towards the source of the sound, raising her sword. "Be coming out now, or I will assume you are attacking us!"

"They don't speak Almerese," I pointed out to Jutaana. "My wife," I said, in the local language, "said that you should reveal yourselves so we know you're friendly."

There was a silent lull - and then a figure stepped out from the darkness.

She was a quite visibly inhuman figure, with long, curved horns, and vast, batlike wings. Her long ears sloped upwards and didn't stick out much. A long tail, with a spade shape at the end, flowed out from behind her. Her skin was a slightly-off shade of pink most places, but along her arms, large, webbed purple splotches stretched out, looking utterly natural. Cool purple eyes met mine. I did have to give her her due, though - she was also quite simply sexy. Curvaceous, with large, full breasts, and a nice round ass to boot.

Voasary stumbled back in shock at the figure, though I mostly just kept my blade up and ready. She spoke in a rapid-fire version of Almerese that was scarcely comprehensible. "Ohgodsitsademonohfuckanactualdemon-" and on like that.

The woman just sniffed the air, tail idly whipping through the air behind her as she contemplated the group of us. "Mm..." She licked her lips, her tongue visibly forked. "Yes... quite the little nexus of lust, here." She paused, sniffing the air again. "But not all just mortal lust. I sense an ythraul's lust," she said, her wings batting at the air with ambient energy. "Do you have a sister of mine? Haa... there's no reason to be so frightened, mortal," she said, her gaze falling on Voasary. "Your lust is a cute little ember. Maybe one day it will grow mighty enough to excite my hungers, but for now, it's the two in that tent that interest me."

I glanced back behind me at the tent - and Pichi interpreted that as a request for aid, because Akamarina formed shortly thereafter, her gaze somewhat irate as she saw Jutaana's state of undress. Then she spotted the presumed-ythraul. "Another spirit," Akamarina said, stepping towards her. "I am the great Akamarina; and who are you, to dare demand my summoner for whatever strange fornications you wish?" It now fell to me to translate her words.

The ythraul chuckled softly at that. "I am known by many names, among mortals. You may call me Whips," she said, her tail snapping through the air and producing a very sharp noise as it briefly moved supersonic. "I do not wish to fornicate with your summoner. Is she the ythraul? An ythraul summoning a spirit, quite the curiosity..."

"I don't have any ythrauls in my entourage," I told the figure. "My four wives are a leporagi, a pekina, an elf, and a demon," I said, using the Almerese words for the races, with small gestures in each's direction. I kept up the 'wives, not slaves' thing, for obvious reasons.

"Mm. So you call ythraul pekina up north? Or do you call them demons?" She just exhaled softly. Her language shifted, becoming something alien, unrecognizable to my ears. "Ahizpa! Zatoz nirekin hitz egitera! Entzuten dut hilkor batekin ezkondu zarela. Mesedez, istorio arraro honen berri izan nahi dut! Tira!" This also provoked no result, as literally nobody else there spoke her language. She hissed in annoyance when she realized it had failed. "So annoying... I'm so close I can almost taste it," she breathed out, her voice almost a whimper. "I don't want to fight. If you're my brother-in-law, then show me my sister," she whined. "A woman who has grown old and unambitious, but still full of eager lust, and an ythraul who sates herself on your lust... I want to see the ythraul. I can smell her."

Those descriptions were... well, quite accurate descriptions of Pichi and Azanaga, other than the fact that Azanaga was clearly not an 'ythraul.' I switched my other arm to a cannon, then stepped back slowly, keeping it trained on the ythraul. "Azanaga," I said. "She wants to see you. I don't think she's malevolent towards you,"

Azanaga had seen Voasary collapse and start scurrying away, so she hesitated. I wasn't going to order her out. But when the ythraul didn't do anything more than she already had, Azanaga at last, slowly, stepped out into the open sky.

Naked, because she slept in the nude. She stood up, uncertainly, halfway squaring off with the ythraul, who just stared in obvious confusion. Her gaze went to the horns, then to the rest of her body. At last, there was a sign of recognition in her gaze. "Ah! Not sister! Niece," she said, smiling warmly. "That's why she doesn't speak our tongue. Mm. Nor the local one, either," she added, with a small pout, crossing her arms. She placed one hand on her chin, one slender, clawed finger stretching up towards her cheek as she contemplated it. "My. How unpleasant. I wonder if this is quite what mortals feel, when they watch but can't participate?" She exhaled, then turned to Voasary and me, her gaze flicking back and forth. "You both speak this tongue, no?"

Voasary swallowed and nodded. I didn't say anything.

"Oh. I've made an awful impression on my... what is it when it's your niece's spouse? Nephew-in-law? I must come off as ever-so-scary," she said, with a plaintive smile. "Please forgive me. As I said, you can call me Whips." She idly flicked her tail at the air, slower this time. "I'd offer you my body, but I can't imagine you'd take me up on the offer. Yours is a pitiful lust, unable to tempt. Even that one's-" she gestured towards Jutaana, making Jutaana raise her sword an inch or so, "-could more easily lead one to ruin - not that I am ruin, of course. But you hardly know that." She sighed. "Ahhh. Mm. Dearie me. How frustrating!" She stamped her foot, then bit her thumb. "Four wives and the lust of a monk. You must be a terrible husband for my niece."

"If you mean sexually, I have been making her come quite a bit."

"Come?!" The ythraul looked honestly half-horrified. "My word... girl... ah, I could learn the language with just a mite bit of coitus..." She fidgeted, tail flashing back and forth. "Dear. An ythraul isn't having sex for orgasms. Sex is first and foremost a spiritual phenomenon."

That was similar enough to what Azanaga had said that I actually believed she was genuinely trying to help me fuck her 'niece' better and had special insight. I decided to go along with her - it wasn't like talking meant she could eat us now. "I mostly degrade her race."

"Yes? That sounds quite spiritual. You could hardly call a race a physical thing. Can you point to it? Not a member of it, but the thing-in-itself? Degrading the race, hmm." She started to pace back and forth. "Oh, that is quite the fascinating dynamic, yes. I might have to try that in Hell. Or here?" She added, flashing me a ludicrously coquettish fluttering of the eyes - something completely at odds with her nature and behavior. "Give me some lines, dear."

"Uh... the Nyzhraga empire only existed so that it would be hotter when demon bitches like you were made to bounce on human cock."

"Oh my!" She raised one hand to her mouth as if shocked. "My, my my! That is... a truly intoxicating blend," she breathed. "Haha, if she dies with that staining her soul, oh, what sin would it even be? Is it even lust at that point? Envy is so strong in there, pride, my-oh-my, I did think my niece didn't smell quite like a succubus..." She licked her lips. "Oh, yes, there's wrath too! Oh, do you do sloth? Say things like, You must do all the work, I'm feeling lazy? I bet she'd quite like that, yes. It fits with your whole dead fish aesthetic."

"I'm not a dead fish," I replied. She gave me a look, like, Who are you trying to fool? "Look, obviously I can't trust you, given the circumstances of our meeting, and the fact that you're an ythraul," I told her.

"Mm. Mm..." She sighed. "But you're my nephew-in-law! My niece may be my grand-niece, perhaps, but she's still family! There's hardly any family, this far from Mt. Suhandia," she explained. I just quietly shook my head. "Mm. Tch." Her wings unfurled more fully, seeming to darken the whole region, and she simply leapt upwards into the sky. For a few brisk moments, she swirled in the air - then she departed, and I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding in.

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