Divinity Rescue Corps
128- It’ll Be Our Secret

Searching for bluegrass took me out and away from the town, and away from the others. I sensed myself being followed, through Eromancy, and thought it best to return my attention to the ability. I hadn’t played with it like all the new spellcasting skills and the really dirty abilities, like Man Enough.

Eromancy III

(Special Ability, Heroic, Active)

I- You automatically detect arousal, passion, erotic thoughts and feelings, and their points of origin, to a range of Affinity x10 feet. You may spend a Token to home in on those thoughts and experience them. Targets will immediately detect your presence in this case. Unwilling targets use Psychic Resistance and Durability to force you out, versus your Pheromones and Likability. The subject may spend a Token to eject you.

II- Spend a Likability Token: You may bring a target you are touching into your mind, to experience a psychic delving of your choosing. This could be memory or imagination. The target will know truth from fiction instinctually. The subject may exit your psychic projection at any time.

III- While inside these fantasies, you may influence them or take control. Spend a Token to begin shaping these thoughts, daydreams, or dreams. You may attempt finer control using additional Tokens or by Pheromones and Likability checks. As before, the subject may spend a Token to oust you from their mind.

I whistled a low tone for a moment, and read over the ability again. Just like Blissense, there was definitely a sensing power for sexy thoughts. Some people had a spider sense for detecting spiders, I had a horny sense for detecting horny old goats.

Chuckling to myself, I kept on. This power wasn’t limited to sensing though. It gave me the power to enter people’s daydreams or fantasies and get my fingers all up in their business.

This was going to make Stave Off even more important.

More pressing was the line of desire stretching toward me. I was pretty sure Jacoby and company were closing in on Archie, Blake’s rogue second in command. They had been trying to bait him into coming to take the anti-magic drug that kept you from transforming into a Nakamamon. I hoped they had succeeded… it would be bad to have another Blake out there.

Although Jacoby might want to watch me get freaky with someone else, she prioritized her work over anything else. It wasn’t her, and it wasn’t her people.

Also, I would’ve felt the Affinity signature of the person from my own team. It was a mana thing, like how my personality influenced the type of mana I had. If I cast a spell, people could sniff around it and tell that it was mine, or recognize me by that Affinity aura if they found me later. Trent’s mana signature was dusty, solid, earth colored, and smelled of damp earth to my third eye. Cinzy hardly used any mana at all, but hers was fluffy like cotton candy, sweet in a cloying and bright way, like it was difficult to look at directly. It also smelled of jasmine but only to my mana senses.

It’s the best day I can describe this sort of thing to a non magic user.

Anyway I knew the aura signatures of Vellenia (soft and smelling of rain) and Shakindria (purple and like you were having an allergy attack in your sinuses), and the others. This wasn’t them. 

“You can come on out,” I said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Unless it was Archie. I didn’t want it to be Archie. Ugh, I wasn’t ready to do literally all of Jacoby’s job for her.

Something moved near a bush, that slowly stood. It resolved into a creature I’d seen during the big push to resurrect our guy, the God of Productivity. The Shrubber-nee!—no idea why it had an exclamation point on the end—was like a tangle of vines and leaves with a pair of huge, unblinking eyes in the middle. When it stood, some of the vines had to be its legs and body, meaning a semi-humanoid figure began to emerge. It had wide, pointed ears and a somber expression.

“Oh, hey,” I said. The write up hadn’t mentioned anything about them eating people or being dangerous. Instead they photosynthesized most of their food direct from the sun, and gathered up moisture to drink. They were also vegetarian if they had to be, eating fruit, nuts, or vegetation.

“Do you have a name?” I asked.

The creature slowly shook its head.

“Do you want to come along and help me hunt down some bluegrass?”

It cocked its head, and the drawing in of the vines made it taller, and also made it appear more humanoid. More female. Leaves were hair, though it seemed to have a lot of arms. And nice curves, if I was being honest. Barky curves, but curves anyway.

“I’m searching for bluegrass… it’s a shorter type of grass that’ll be in a sunny meadow and further away from trees.”

The creature’s leaves all shook at the same time, a bit like a dog shaking itself when coming out of the water. Then it hunched down into its shrubbery-looking form, with only eyes and the tips of ears peeking out of the greenery. Otherwise it just looked like a mass of vegetation.

It started galumphing out away from the town, looking like a shrub version of Cousin It from the Addams Family. It didn’t move very fast, and I just marveled at it as it went. A whole lot of it was little more than vines and leaves. In fact, aside from the head, I didn’t know that it had a body in the conventional sense.

I thought I knew where we were headed, but the Nakamamon veered into a tough section of woods. It obviously had no trouble flowing in, under and around all the thick vegetation blocking our path. What I couldn’t slither, stoop, stomp, or sidestep around, I had to slap side. On my way through I received plenty of scratches for my trouble. Entirely too many s-words for my liking.

“Saber!” I muttered, a little testily, in a Sean Connery accent. Getting upset with this thing wouldn’t do. Maybe it didn’t understand me, I thought, pulling a bough up so it didn’t clothesline me. Maybe it made a different gesture that I didn’t get.

But the minutes wore on, and my grumpiness grew. I had work to do. There were ingredients to collect and then to plant, tend, grow, pick, dry, boil, distill… lots of processes.

I sighed. “This had better be—”

I was just regretting not investing more points into the Ranger skills from the weeks of travel, scouting and ingredient hunting we’d done together, when the vegetation fell away and I was left with a secluded waterfall cascading off a sheer cliff some fifty or more feet above. The roar hadn’t registered, I was ashamed to admit, because I’d been too preoccupied swatting branches out of my face and trying not to fake curse.

Instead I beheld a picturesque pond ringed by exotic flowers I hadn’t seen elsewhere in this world. The trees gave way to a nice even spot of grass, bluegrass of course, to either side of the creek’s bank. The whole place radiated calm.

“This is… amazing!” I said, hopping up and down, and bending to pick a flower here and there, and a big sample of the bluegrass I needed. Not only was the bluegrass here, but tucked back in the hollow of the falls, I found some purple morpheus as well. With one of those in hand, I beamed giddily at the Shrubber-Nee!

“Thank you so much,” I told it. “I shouldn’t have groused at you. That wasn’t cool.”

The creature rose up on its vines until its face appeared, and a shy smile spread across it. The two glowing eyes regarded me with serene warmth.

“It was very kind of you to escort me here,” I said. “Will you do me the honor of helping me find my way back?”

One vine reached up, forming into a hand of sorts. Four branchy fingers appeared, with some leaves on the outside like the fine layer of hair on the top part of my arm. It raised the hand up to about shoulder level.

“Uh…”

For a long moment I wasn’t sure what it wanted, until I remembered it had been brought out of its god-induced slumber just yesterday. It had been there when we finally brought the dead god back to life, and we’d been celebrating. A lot of hugging had gone on, along with a lot of high fives.

I slapped the vine hand, smiling cheerfully, and the whole thing shuddered in delight. The leaves gave off their shush sound as it jiggled.

It formed another hand and stretched them out to either side.

On the one hand, I was alone and this thing was utterly silent. It had only been helpful so far, but… oh, who was I kidding? I didn’t need to be afraid of a walking vegetarian bush in a world that didn’t have violence before Blake had gone and created the whole aspect.

I walked into its arms and gave it a hug.

The sensation was surprisingly pleasant: hugging a tree is something I’d heartily recommend. It had glossy, cool leaves and the branches and vines were just as flexible as they appeared. It fashioned a vine-filled body for me to press tight against.

“Thanks again,” I told it.

Once we’d broken our embrace, the creature rustled again, making its leaves flutter and dance. It seemed incredibly pleased.

“We’ll have to get back so I can plant these and grow them in my garden. Could you help me find the way back?” I wasn’t entirely sure where we were.

It shivered again and headed back the way we’d come.

I ended up being gone for some three hours all together, and people were wondering where I’d gotten off to. Vellenia was sadly nowhere to be found. I thanked the Shrubber-Nee! again and asked it for a high five, which it readily did. It then raced forward and wrapped its whole self against me, a good twelve arms and legs in total, nuzzling its face into the hollow of my shoulder.

“Somebody made a friend,” Ivy said.

I cocked a thumb. “You could bond yourself a Nakamamon,” I told her. “You’re practically the same, you know? It’s basically made of ivy… you could call it viny. Or Ivy Junior!”

Her face was a mask. “You’re looking to get punched.”

“Come to think of it… why don’t you bond one?”

“Eh,” she said, shrugging and snapping out of her mild annoyance. “Not really my thing. I’ll keep an eye open. I’d like a loyal companion or something to aid me in my abilities, maybe, but it seems weird pressing something into servitude.”

“Makes sense,” I said, though really, it didn’t. You could have a giant frog that spit lightning. Why wouldn’t anybody want that?

“Besides, Isabelle is always jonesing to get back here when we’re on R&R. We can’t hardly fly around the world and see everything with Muppin miserably waiting next to the portal, you know what I mean?”

That made a lot more sense. I certainly couldn’t envision leaving Vellenia at HQ where they would be swarmed by gods-knew-who while I was nowhere to be found. People like Timmy or Blake were at HQ… as well as people like Rus, who I liked a lot.

Ivy followed along and made small talk while I planted the bluegrass and the purple morpheus I’d just collected, then watered and got them tended.

From there it was on to manufacturing a whole lot of sundrinker oil. The sundrinkers we had were all blooming, but the recipe for this cure called for a fracking gallon of the stuff. I’d gotten several cups out of the Transmutation spell.

The spells drained stamina along with mana, leaving me tired after each casting, and recovering. Workers came and went. The townsfolk were volunteering to help, or put up temporary shelters, lug water around, wash the laundry, empty what needed to be emptied and cleaning what needed to be cleaned. The whole town itself was abuzz with activity.

“Hey Ivy,” I said later. She was lounging around in the camp chair outside the house she shared with Isabelle.

“Boss?”

I was too embarrassed to ask outright. “Is, uh… are you and Isabelle looking to, uh… what are the chances you and Isabelle might, you know, need a third?”

She smiled lazily. “Honestly, if I had my way we’d be in the living room right now with me bent over the sofa and you just railing me.”

Her legs slowly opened and scissored closed again, and I could see the lust rise.

“Izzy’s on the opposite guard schedule right now, so she’s with Larelle. So she’ll be back, and it’ll be my turn to replace her.”

“That’s no good,” I said, already trying to hide an impending erection. The mere thought of just heading into Ivy’s house and folding her in half before getting down deep into her was making my mouth water.

“Can’t though,” she said. “No Izzy, and no agreement, no Fletcher. That’s the rule.”

“I get it,” I said, shrugging.

She tapped her foot against the ground and her thighs parted once more, only to close again. She bit her lip and looked around.

“Maybe we could… just this once. You know, she wouldn’t know, right?”

She popped the button on her shorts and dragged the zipper down. Black lacy panties came into view, and I lost the fight against my erection. It was doing its thing despite my mental protests.

Eromancy was giving me choices in my UI, and I dutifully ignored them.

“I don’t…” I said, and trailed off when she stuck a hand down her pants.

She kept biting her lip, and staring at me with such intensity that I swallowed. Her hand started working between her legs, setting off a flush of pink.

“I could just suck your cock a little, and then you could just ream me out for a little bit.”

“Ivy…”

“She doesn’t have to know, Fletcher. Neither of us are gonna tell her.” She gasped at whatever she was doing to herself, and grunted. “Nnn… fork. I could use a big stiff cock right about now.”

“You’ll get in trouble,” I said, watching her hand move under her panties. Her other hand had drifted up and was squeezing one breast.

It would be cheating. That wasn’t okay. We were always on the razor’s edge with this… arrangement, and I liked Isabelle. I didn’t want to be the one to break her heart.

“I’m already wet,” she told me. “Five minutes. Just a quickie.”

“We can’t,” I croaked. We could. There was a house right there.

“I want you inside me, Fletcher,” she said.

“I know,” I breathed. I wanted it too. She had a rocking body, like a bodybuilder, and her tattoos were so badass. When I was with her, it was almost like I was a cool biker dude too.

“Fle-etcher,” she said in a sing-song tone, “You’ve got a girl begging you to do her. She’ll even open wide and take your load all over her face. You can watch me shovel it into my mouth and lick it all off my fingers.”

Beneath all this, the UI was giving me pretty good rolls on my Persuasion + Durability, with bonuses from Stalwart.

I coughed, apologized, turned, and fled. She called after me, indignant, but I didn’t look back.

Not long after, Tara returned from her patrol. She dismounted Airaconda, gave her bond mate a companionable pet on the scales, and told it to go play.

She’d taken two steps toward me when concern crossed her face. “What’s the matter? Do you… have a gigantic boner? Holy shirt balls you do have a gigantic boner. Fletcher you and I need to have a chat.”

This is Fletcher about to have a chat.

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