NOVEL SIMPLE Chapter 23.1 The Other Side
Rick was having the time of his life.
While not one to typically enjoy watching fights or even sports in general, the shows the students of Mya University were putting on seemed to scratch an itch he didn’t even know he had. While Sade naturally put on the best kind of displays in his obviously biased opinion, the gap between his betrothed and the rest of the student body wasn’t as wide as he first assumed. Some even surpassed Sade in both skill and power.
Granted, those were all top ranked third years. But the fact that anyone could reach the lofty heights Rick had placed his lover on was downright impressive. He was biased, not blind.
“Rick! There you are! I’m glad I finally found you!”
He turned around in his seat to spot Hattepa heading down the stairs towards their position, skipping two or three steps at a time in her haste to close the distance faster.
“Oh hey Hattepa, glad to see you!” Rick said while giving the coyote girl a friendly wave. “I have to say, you were pretty impressive out there.”
“Fuck yeah! We should spar sometime. None of these losers specialize in battlefield control like you do.” LIlie shouted while jumping onto Rick’s back.
“Oh… uh, thank you?” Hattepa replied, unsure how to take the boisterous shaytoni’s comment and subsequent offer. With a jolt, she suddenly remembered why she sought them out with such haste in the first place before pleasantries derailed her train of thought. “We can talk about that later. Everyone, we need to get back to Sade. Something strange is going on.”
To their credit, not a single member of the hunting party hesitated in standing up and following their friend back into the relative quiet of the stadium hallways. After the debacle with Ariwyn’s parents, every one of them was on guard against some sort of retaliation. None of them, not even Daniela, knew exactly what would happen next, so they simply kept their senses sharp for anything unusual to crop up just in case.
“Care to fill us in on what’s going on?” Rick asked once the din of the crowd had dulled into a slight murmur.
Hattepa looked around nervously. “I don’t know if it's safe to talk here.”
“There’s nobody within earshot.” Tyr announced.
“And no nearby wards or spells for eavesdropping either.” Daniela added.
The beastkin woman stared at the odd pair with a look of utter confusion. “H-how would you even know all that?”
“Elf.” Tyr said simply, pointing to the sharp points of her ears.
“Thief.” Daniela said proudly while jerking a dainty thumb towards herself.
Lilie gave a musical giggle at the lost and mildly incredulous look her fellow student was giving the two troublemakers. Rick palmed his face in exasperation. “As odd as it may seem, I trust the instincts of those two implicitly. If they say we’re alone enough to talk openly, then we are. Although, I would prefer to move as we talk.”
“R-right!” The coyote girl said with a stammer. She began to lead the group down the hall and back towards the contestant’s lobby.
“Someone poisoned Sade before our match.”
“WHAT?!”
The force of all four of the hunters' shouts caused Hattepa to jump nearly a foot into the air. Her fur was standing straight up and she leaned against a nearby wall to catch her breath. Rick wanted nothing more than to rush in and demand the frightened girl to spill everything right that very moment. With great effort he held himself back and waved for the others to back off, less they overwhelm the poor student.
“Hattepa.” Rick said with as much forced calm as he could muster once the nature mage no longer looked like a frightened animal. “Could you please supply some critical details?”
“R-right, sorry…” She coughed and straightened herself out. “After our match, the dean ordered Sade to go to the healers. Once she was all patched up, the mender on staff mentioned that she had pretty strong drugs in her system before the magic cleaned it all out. Sade suspected it came from the mana potion she was given right after her first fight today.”
“Well… At least we know she got cured.” Lilie sighed in relief. “The healer say what those drugs were?”
Hattepa’s cheeks grew slightly pink at the raven haired woman’s question. “She said they were… aphrodisiacs. Really, really strong ones.”
“Oh.” Lilie said succinctly. She was most certainly not expecting that answer.
Daniela cupped her chin in thought. “That’s not a bad idea honestly. Force someone to think more about coito than the fight, and no lasting harm to the body.” She looked up to see everyone else staring at her and she quickly held up her hands and shook her blond head. “N-not that I condonar such a thing! E-especially not to our friend!”
Rick sighed. “We know. You’re not that kind of person Daniela.” He raked a hand through his shaggy black hair and picked up his pace. “Small kindness or not, someone still slipped something into Sade’s drink in order to sabotage her performance in the tournament. We need to get to her before they try something else.”
“That would be best.” Hattepa agreed. She tapped her chin in thought and looked at the others. “Do any of you know why the drugs had little to no effect on her? The only explanation she gave was that she was quite sexually active.”
“That’s putting it mildly.” Tyr said with a snort.
LIlie sidled up close to her fellow student and wrapped a pale arm over the smaller girl’s shoulder. She leaned in close but spoke in a stage whisper so everyone else could hear what she was about to say next.
“Let me put it this way. My aspect is to constantly get stuffed in every hole I can manage and drain my partners dry, and my insatiable thirst for dick pales in comparison to that curvy queen when she gets into the mood. I’m no better than a succubus and she can outlast me and a fucking forest elf in bed at the same time.”
The coyote girl’s face flushed a dark pink at the horny healer’s words. “H-how does t-that explain anything?”
“It means my wife-to-be is used to dealing with a libido that puts wildfires to shame with its intensity. Combine that with her monstrous willpower, and I’m not surprised mere horny drugs were enough to affect her all that much.” Rick clarified.
They made it back to the lobby and immediately made a beeline towards the doorway leading into the competitor area. In their haste to reach their friend and lover, the entire group failed to notice or even take into account a certain barrier preventing them from reaching their destination. One that made himself known the moment they passed by his desk.
“Only students still competing in the tournament are allowed beyond this point.” The attendant said sharply from where he sat.
“We are with Sade of Kanho, Hattepa here was asked to bring us to our friend in the infirmary. Since all her fights have concluded for the day and she is unable to come to us in her current condition, we have elected to go to her instead.” Rick shot back, doing his best to come off as diplomatic.
Sadly, the attendant was the type of person who seemed immune to kind words and logical arguments. “Those who are not contestants or event staff are not allowed beyond this point. No exceptions!” He stood up and physically barred their way with his slender body.
Rick was about to go off on the man but before he could get a single word out, Tyr placed a large hand on his chest and stepped confidently forward. The attendant gulped visibly as his eyes were forced to look further and further upward to meet the elf’s emerald orbs.
“Hey, aren’t ya the guy who made Sade show off her tits?” She asked with a fanged grin.
The ludacris question caught the attendant completely off guard. His face flushed a bright red and he started to sputter and cough. Tyr wrapped a giant arm around the man and gently patted his back. Well… as gentle as she was capable of anyways.
“Oh don’t be so shy about it!” She said in a singsong voice. “Not a man or woman alive can blame ya fer wanting ta gaze upon those magnificent peaks. So full and impossibly perky, with just the right amount of sag ta show off their weight. And the way they jiggle! I could sit all day and watch them funbags sway to and fro with just the slightest movement!”
The poor man’s face grew an even deeper shade of crimson while Daniela and Lilie were both nodding their heads in agreement. At the edge of his vision, Rick saw Hattepa have a faraway look in her eyes and a small trail of drool beginning to form from the corner of her mouth. He couldn’t really comment on the situation. While he lacked the ability to wax poetic so eloquently about his wife’s chest, that didn’t mean he disagreed with his wild lover’s assessment of those glorious assets.
Before she could continue to play around with her new toy too much, Tyr’s head suddenly shot to attention and zeroed in on the door behind the attendant desk.
“What is it?” Rick asked quickly.
The huntress didn’t answer. She just unceremoniously dropped the man and ran forward with a look of fierce determination.
“Hey! You aren’t allowed!” He screamed from his position on the floor.
Tyr reached the handle and nearly ripped the door off its hinges in her haste to get the thing open faster. “And I just heard screams. Let's go!”
Without another word, Rick and the others dashed over the prone attendant and chased after the elf. She led them through the twisting maze of corridors and connecting tunnels, occasionally stopping to listen or sniff the air before sprinting off once more.
The whole situation felt eerily familiar. A mad dash through tight passageways, Tyr using all her skills to find the correct path, and a friend in unknown peril at their destination. Rick’s chest tightened with worry. While they were under the trappings of civilization this time, it didn’t mean the danger was any less potent. And unlike the situation under the mountain, Sade was alone.
Rick poured more energy into his legs in an effort to run even faster. They will make it. They had to.
“There’s the healer!” Hattepa shouted from just behind the group. If Rick wasn’t so distracted with everything, he would have been quite impressed with her ability to keep up with them.
They all rounded on an older human woman who was staring blankly at a room across from her, her hands covering her mouth in shock. Rick and Tyr shoved their way through the open door and took in the scene before them.
The room was small, barely big enough to house a couple simple beds in the center, with a space on one wall housing several shelves filled with various jars and bottles. One of the beds was messy, obviously used by someone previously. A corner of the white sheets was dyed pink from where it lay against the floor, slowly absorbing color from a small pool of blood.
Aside from the blood, the room was empty. Sade was nowhere to be found.