NOVEL SIMPLE While the young cleric flew back up to the surface as fast as her legs would carry her, the succubus brushed off her second victim and sat on the rock. Keeping her main mouth closed, she looked over the dried up corpses of the two adventurers.
With the last of the torch running out, Sara sat alone in the darkness beside the underground lake. Her familiar’s crest glowed in spite of the void, her cup overflowing with mana.
“Whoa! I know you’re still mad at me, but I just got a huuuge surge of mana right now!” Sara’s gripping headache somehow got even worse, “Did you do the deed?”
The succubus wished she could smack the smirk off of the tiny witch she knew she had. Something told her that even if she did not reply to her master, Ashara was the type to just prattle on to herself while keeping the connection up. “Yeah…”
“What’s wrong? Wasn’t as good as you expected? That can happen sometimes…”
Sara said nothing, still catching her breath atop the rock. The bodies of the halfling and her former tallman student were husks of what they looked like while they were alive. Most horrific of all, it looked like their genitals were ripped to shreds by her monstrous anatomy.
“Hey, ya gotta talk to me, girl! If it wasn’t for me, you probably would’ve died there!”
The noxious sensation from the sending spell paled in comparison to the idea that she might even owe Ashara for yet another thing. With a sigh, she figured she had to ask, “What do you mean?”
“Well, you were already down drinking from the bottom of the barrel and then when I felt that spell from you?” If Sara could have ended the call, she would have, “‘Holy moly!’ I thought, ‘I need to pump some mana into her or she’ll just plop over and die!’ and I can’t have my precious familiar dropping dead on her first day out in the big world!”
“I thought you said you didn’t care if I died or not?”
The witch stammered, “I- I mean, if I can avoid it, then I didn’t really fail in raising you, did I? Besides, I couldn’t do much if something wanted to eat you, but resupplying you with mana was always on the table!”
Sara rolled her eyes.
Finally standing, she realized something for the first time ever since she awoke as a succubus: she felt full. All the meals she had before were never truly satisfying, but this was like partaking in a full-course meal after a three-day fast. Her tail felt heavier, bloated even.
“It’s a shame it came at such a high price…”
“What? It didn’t cost me much to get you back on your feet! Certainly nowhere near as much as I got just now!”
At this point, it was no small miracle the succubus’s eyes stayed in her head. “I wasn’t talking to you, bitch.” Picking up what she could salvage from the priestess’s torn robes and her own ragtag garments scattered across the loose rocks, she donned them as well as she could, covering up her more lascivious portions. She also picked up the shiv in case she still needed it. “Anyways, leave me alone for now. I need to get as far away from you as possible.”
“Sheesh! Who’s being the bitch now?”
Climbing back up out of the cave was a cinch. Between the clearing party of monster hunters a week prior and the young scrappy adventurers traversing down in search of combat experience, next to nothing existed in the caverns. Coupled with the perfect dark vision her main body provided, she reached the entrance in half the time she expected, roughly four hours.
The sunlight felt warm on her skin, something the witch’s artificial light failed to replicate. Golden hues danced between the already vibrantly warm colored leaves barely holding onto their branches. Sinuous clumps of moss found their winter homes at the base of birch trees, holding close to their source of moisture before the first snows blanketed everything nearly an elf’s height.
Crisp zephyrs danced in the last rays of the sun, rustling the makeshift clothing Sarakiel brought with her outside of the cavern. Her only worldly possessions.
Sitting at the base of the mountain, where she began her last journey as Samuel and emerged anew, Sara’s mind raced. “I need to head home to see what is left of it…”
Dreadful thoughts of finding only her family’s skeletal remains or worse devilishly teased her. Worse still, would be running into Merle’s goons on the hunt for the monster who arose to avenge Samuel Proudmane at the forewarning of one of their Deacons who escaped the devil’s grasp.
Sara shook her head, still trying to piece together that whole ordeal.
A monster’s instincts were unlike anything she was used to. Starvation is one of the most powerful motivators for any creature, but toying with her food in such an inhumane manner was not something a cat would do if it found a mouse while starving. And yet, no matter the excuse, she was the one who committed such horrible acts.
Looking down at her form clothed in old bed rags and scraps of a cleric’s robes, her figure showed through enough to turn heads. “Damn these massive tits…”
She did not genuinely mean it, those were certainly the best part of her new form she felt, but it was certain those will get her into some kind of trouble again in the future. Placing her hand on her curved horns, she knew those would get her into a worse kind of trouble yet again.
“If only I can at least hide the way I look.” She knew of mages who could glamor themselves into appearing differently, something she envied during her past life, but she needed someone to help her figure out how to do such a spell. A magic less intuitive than her ability to charm men.
That was another thing in need of understanding.
Tempted to call the witch for a simple explanation, she hesitated. The headache and nausea was not worth it, having just barely got over the physical effects of the last conversation. With a sigh, Sara figured she would have to work off of assumption.
Succubi are known for their ability to charm men, that much was easy to understand. In addition, Ashara kept bringing up how her new familiar was made for ‘mana compatibility’, still avoiding the word ‘bred’. So with the pure water mana nearby provided by the lake, she tapped into it somehow?
“That makes no sense, I wouldn’t have to have eaten those kids, then…”
She tried her best to recall the ordeal. Sara went into the lake, she felt the lake’s mana, she came out of the lake. Then, when trying to relieve herself, she was interrupted by that traveling party. Right as she was about to get beheaded, which in retrospect she remembered that it would not kill her since her main body was fine, she stopped the halfling by… Charming him?
She knew she charmed them, having seen it time and time again on the battlefield. It was the best method of extracting information from prisoners of war. Typically, however, an incantation would be necessary, much like how she needed one to levitate.
Mana flowed out of her, which flowed into the guys, much like how the water mana before flowed into her. But where was the spell? Was the transference of mana the spell? Was it because she was a succubus? Sara scratched her head as she felt something was missing.
“Fuck magic,” She spat, deciding to give up, “I’ll never get how that shit works.”
After a brief rest, Sarakiel took to her feet once more. Still sore and not suited for manual labor, her legs burned, but a simple relief was that she was not too far from her ancestral home.
A weathered path laid before her, the caverns were a training spot for adept adventurers due to its proximity to civilization and relatively low level of dangerous creatures. Approximately 5 leagues separated her from the neighboring town of Georges, which led to a short hike of another few leagues away to her home in Thistlebrook, probably two days of walking.
With her massive breasts always in her periphery, she mumbled to herself, “I’ll need to stay on the side of the road and outside of towns.” She lucked out that the young party seemed to not know what a succubus was, but any monster hunter worth their blade knew what one looked like without a doubt, “But have they ever seen a dragon-succubus-turned-human?” She rubbed her horns once again.
Gingerly stepping barefoot through the forest, the path still within sight, Sara enjoyed the final bird calls for the day. As the moon began to rise above the deciduous trees, the chirping of crickets arose in chorus. Life blossomed outside the stony halls from which she emerged, having returned to the land above. She was now a stranger in the midst of this world, but one who missed it dearly.
She was returning home.