Once again I sneak into the kitchen at midnight and steal the last of the cake! Xera is another of Mr. X’s great creations and one of my personal favorites of his non-powered Aphrodite gene heroines. She seems to have been almost exclusive to the first incarnation of DangerBabeCentral and as the aforementioned site is back and better than ever and as I am up to my twitching eyebrows in mainstream projects full of shadowy sprites and sorcery swords and such it seemed a cool notion to bring her a long for a little jaunt in the thick and twisting forests. Oh and did I mention she is a slim cute red head with breasts the size of beach balls! Giddy up! Oh an extra bouncy buggy and a dark and winding wood! I hope our reputations can survive this! For I swear one of us is up to no good! Rook.

 

Xera Amazon Princess

In a time before time, in a land of ancient ruin and brand new wonder, there lived a young warrior princess, an Amazon named Xera…

The great mountain, shear and impassable, shrugged and lowered its shoulder into barren rolling hills of scrub and tundra grass whose crunchy ice pocked rocky soil slouched down into a leveling mire of brooding swamp thick in dark twisted shattered trees and a perpetual fog.  Into this murk and mud the three day hungry small figure plunged.

These woods were dark and dank. Heavy brows of moss brooded from every twisted tangled branch. The shambling trunks ringed in angry red briars leaned in morose silence in seemingly endless ranks. And the small thin lithe figure moved with tired hungry caution around gray bark-less bleached bones of a once mighty forest drowned in skittered pools of murky foul oily scummed water. All motionless and still before the eye and all slithering at the corners of the same, where splashes and ripples and small undulating waves set drift wood bobbing and windless limbs creaking in shadows wake.

Tiny quakes rattled the nerves as insects hummed and hummed in clouds amongst the few feeble rays of sunlight that slanted down like tired old men drunkenly sliding along the cracked crumbling walls of a flickering mead hall of memories lost and fading fast. The weak illumination only teased the exhausted mind into seeing things not there and not seeing things rampant in their solid state with contrasting focus of skinless clarity and edgeless singular brilliant glare.

So it was that the young girl, Xera, three days without rest or food found herself standing amongst the worn pitted large slabs of the stone ruins rather than a more cautious scouting from the ringing shadows. She had simply thought them to be a mirage of light and shadow.

Xera stood almost half dazed from her ceaseless wandering along the icy rocks of the foot of the mountain and the barren grassy scrub of the lowering hills. She had hoped to find berries or small game in the swamp but all was thorns and bramble breaks and without bow or arrow her lone sword was useless against the throngs of easily startled birds that cawed high overhead in the high reaches of the great dead wood.

The young waif looked about her at the great slabs of stone mitered and moss covered and gleaming white as serpents teeth in the large breaks they caused in the roof of the mighty towering trees; bathing iridescent in the gray sky’s glow like scales of isolated snow. She wandered sluggish around their toppled bulk her hand brushing their scarred pitted surfaces until she saw a lone staircase of stone rising up amongst the scattered slabs and broken pillars. Here was at least some dry ground and she slushed her way out of the knee deep water up onto the rough worn stair case and fell upon her knee and then ass and then back and slept her sword falling clattering for the first time in three days from her iron grasp.

It was still daylight when the princess awoke. She was hungrier than ever but at least the world was no longer red rimmed and her brow no longer felt feverish and swollen. She moved her stiff limbs slowly and rubbed them as she sat up from her uncomfortable stone bed. She saw her sword still caked in dried blood and retrieved it and laid it across her lap as she scanned the small clearing around her.

The stone had once been white though now it was more a mottled blue pitted and speckled and riven with lichen and miter and moss. She sat at the bottom of what once must have been a rather impressive stair case of stone the columns still stood in places around her and piles of rubble showed the terracotta roof that once had housed it from the elements. Before her the water covered in shallow depth a buckled floor of stone and only a few strides from the base of her steps another stair case descended down creating a deep pool which she had been lucky not to have sloughed into and drowned!

Here and there where the slanted leaning crumbled piles of walls some still showing friezes of intricately carved figures. That had once lined the sides of the building and along with the fallen pillars had once held up its roof. But now the whole structure was open on all sides and only the floor and stair case seemed to be roughly intact.

She stood up on slowly creaking joints and moaned as she straightened her young back. She needed more sleep and some food! She had collapsed from fatigue and though she had rested for what must have been a few hours of deep sleep it was hardly refreshing. She looked around her wondering if she could make a camp here for the night.

Her pursuers should still be far behind her. The group of would be assassins had surprised her as she had been camped along the Great Road and she had just barely escaped with her life leaving four dead of the seven who had ambushed her as she slept. Bought at the heavy cost of all her supplies and her horse she had fled with her life into the dark rushing as fast as her bare feet could carry her. She had thought herself safe with breathless daybreak only to see the birds kicked up as they continued to track her through the wood. She had thought to lay an ambush of her own; after all there were only four of them left. But as she lay in wait another group with a leader on horseback came out of the midday sun and almost stumbled upon her hidden in the brush. She recognized the leader, an Amazon from the house of Elaria named Varna, and she had slipped away and fled. Four days hence and here she was now in some nameless swamp hopefully having shaken off her murderous cousins.

Xena’s great-great-grandmother was the legendary mystic Xanna Queen of the Amazons and founder of the house of Xanna. She had been prone to powerful visions born out of time and from these she took the powerful tribe of Amazons who had ruled the wandering steeps and took them down the path away from their nomadic inheritance of generations to the alien strangeness of founding a city, Amazonia! A city built upon the mad queen’s visions. The Amazons had always captured men and used them to breed with and then sacrificed them to their God Amon, a warrior hermaphrodite who was supposed to have handed the Amazons their first set of laws and customs. But Xanna changed all of this. Now the Amazons would aggressively raid the cities ringing the steeps and enslave the men to use them to build their great new city.

And what a city! A marvel for all time! Built from the visions of Xanna’s slumber-less mind it was a city not of stone nor wood but metal! In an age where all used copper weapon she gave her tribes iron! She made great mills to capture the wind! And had a damn built to hold a river to run more wheels and gears of metal. She then captured the power of fire to make sky! Great copper tubs and iron vats roiling into steam! Compressed into more metal pipes to turn more giant wheels! And these in turn moved iron and copper to make loadstones spark lightning! The great walls of Amazonia were not of stone or wood or even slabs of metal but were of simple wire that hummed and hummed and burned all to death with invisible lightning if one dared to approach it! The city burned at night a glow to be seen for a hundred miles! Great glass spheres full of bottled lightning replaced the feeble torches of other cities and craned back the night upon its broken neck like a swan in a gators mouth.

And men died by the thousands in Amazonia’s rich glacial stripped tundra mines and laboring under their masters ever ripping whips until the cities ringing the great tundra where empty and Xanna sent her proud Amazon army shod in impregnable iron in marches to conquer more and more and more of the further cities of men. Until the iron shod stamp shook the entire northern reaches and men and women and children fled in howling fear.

It was then that the great coalition was formed and forty of the great cities born upon the fear and greed of their great merchant guilds marched forth and whipped out the rule of Xanna. The great city of Amazonia was pillaged and raped and erased off the earth. All mighty brought low by the cunning deceit of a lone young girl, an Amazon madly in love with one of the great princes of the great forty cities. She turned off the lightning and in came the men to murder all.

A few hundred Amazons fought their way out and escaped and others at distant northern outposts or out on ritual retreat upon the tundra survived. These few reformed out of the ashes a handful of the once proud great houses of the Amazons a new confederacy upon the open tundra and in the distant north mountains clashing with the dwarves and the lips of the great northern forests making uneasy alliances with the elves. Once again wanders once again traders on horse back the Amazons dwindled back into a hand full of houses or tribes on the cusp of civilization’s brow.

It was the recent war though not the long dead past which was the cause of the current world of woe. Though in truth the one bore and gave birth to the other. For after coming together to fight and remove the threat of Xanna and Amazonia the merchant’s guilds laden with the mindboggling plunder of that fantastical city decided they needed to keep the alliance together. No one trusted the new weapons of iron so powerful and each feared the other would unravel the great secrets destroyed so publically in the weirding glowing embers and ashes of Amazonia.

The first Great Empire was formed. Out of the forty great cities a new system of governance was accorded for the profit of all and with it a new age of shame was created; the age of politics, the age of lies, of backstabbing and open cancerous greed. The new scale of war begun to eradicate Xanna was promised never to used again, but the Great Empire was riven with constant civil wars the instant the first charismatic Emperor Changallian died suddenly and the young Amazonian betrayer now Queen Lena and her husband now King Belathar clamored their house/city-state of Anpolis as the rightful seat of power in wake of the childless Changallian who had lived in a tent with his small army traveling the lands in his rule as the first Great Emperor.

The various merchant guilds thought otherwise and several other houses coughed into their fists and made claims to title and lands. In the Great Waste of the tundra the houses of the Amazons were touched by this madness and the house of Xanna which had continued to shakily rule after the fall of the Amazons found it’s self suddenly under attack with the house of Elaria which had gone against Xera’s mothers orders to stay out of this war, made an alliance with Anpolis and its traitor queen!

Her mother imprisoned, her sisters poisoned, Xera had fled certain death, to wander the chaotic world a self-imposed exile. But now it would seem that this was not good enough for Lena and the vassal house of Elaria which subjected its self to Anpolis by which nodding grace it now ruled the tundra and all but a fitful pocket of rebel Amazons. Hellhounds had been set upon her heels and she would need to be quick and wary to survive them.

Xera turned her view from the long irregular hall of tall dead bowers and ruins and climbed further up the stairs to see where they once had lead. She could see the wall of creeper tangled limbs on either side creak and bow with courters curtsies as she walked up the steps but the upward angle was of such a pitch that she could see little but the blinding shafts of daylight of the overcast sky and the inky dark of the trees lining the small glade of stone. Still the steps though broad where not piled high and soon she was at their crescent and stood on an elongated platform of raised stone from which her vantage showed little else of awe other than the trees and swamps the lined the oblong clearing. The raised area was small and clear of debris and had apparently not been roofed over as the rest of the narrow long building had. A temple, perhaps, she mused. But where are the other buildings? Where were the houses of the people who worshiped here; the farmers, the woodsmen, the tanners, the bakers, the smithy, the fletcher, the mead hall, and the quarters for the servants and priests for the temple itself? The fields and pathways would have long been drowned like the trees that had evidently been here as a great forest before the water had come and remained in some great force for they were not of the kind of trees one would find in a swamp. They were the hardwoods of birch, oak, cottonwood, and maple and for the most part lay dead in the grass and briar with the lapping pools stagnate at their decaying roots.

The distance from the top of the stairs to where the forest closed in and swallowed up the ruins was much shorter than the long hallway of dead and verdant growth she had viewed from the base of the stairs leading in the other direction. There was nothing here, though the clear open raised elevated short rectangular platform the stairs had led to was perhaps a good place to make a camp. The three sides other than the sharp angled stairs fell off abruptly without balustrade in sheer walls dropping twenty feet to the buckled slabs of water covered flooring bellow. She could make a fire on the steps themselves and sleep with some degree of comfort and safety from the serpents that she knew must master such a foul swamp. If only she could find some food to go with that sleep things would be so much better.

Xera retraced her steps down the staircase eyeing the broad treads that seemed too wide for an easy gait and a bit short in the riser for a normal step down and made her way back to the bottom of the stairway. As she did so the ever dancing beams of light of the cloudy gray sky shifted and changed and she suddenly stopped as the dark pool of the sunken steps was cast in a broad beam of light and was revealed to terminate at a large metal door. The submerged door was richly decorated and obviously cast of metal perhaps bronze though the green and dark brown of its submerged pentene made this impossible to rightly guess. She also noted for the first time a large mound of rock and stone half buried in earth and tree roots that grew over its raised surface and she carefully gaged its short distance from the water filled stairwell and its dark door.

The teen princess narrowed her eyes against the glint and glimmer of the surface of the surprisingly clear pool of water and eyed the door before making her way down the last few treads and sloshing knee deep over to the sunken stair well. The buckle in the floor and the raised lip of stone work around the stone descending stair case seemed to have separated it from the murky brackish water around it. She bent and filled her cupped hands wearily and sniffed at it and then drank from it. It had a sweet taste like fast running river water and she drank her fill against her squirming empty belly. It numbed the pain but that would only last a few minutes at best. Still other than handfuls of snow it was the first clear clean water she had to drink since losing her water bags and her horse in the woods in her mad dash to escape.

Thirst slaked but stomach feeling queasy with hunger the young Amazon princess eyed the dark door just a few yards below the surface of the clear pool of icy water.  She looked at her sword in her hand and back at the glade around her, her quick mind impulsively rash in the best of times already having made up its mind to try and open the door.

She had no sheath for her sword (that lay back in her long abandoned camp tossed into the face of the fool who had tried to slit her throat while she slept and had been followed by his own dagger also left there in his face.) A very special sword for it was made for Xanna herself out of a metal even rarer than copper or bronze or iron. A metal called; steel. That took fires hotter than coal and billows to make. A fire fed by the secrets of the great turning wheels now just busted ruins swallowed up by the peat of the tundra and of urine of goats fed fennel and collected by buckets and of men who died by the thousands for Xanna insisted all her weapons for her army be tempered in the blood of living men. Thrust into their screaming chests; searing plunged time and again.

Xera held the sword in both hands in front of her to balance her descent and took several deep breaths before firmly stepping down into the flooded depths of the stairwell. The water was icy and it caught at the breath in her throat but she pushed and pulled and swam her way down the short flight of steps until she was before the bronze door. She wedged her sword into the crack between it and its stone threshold and pried at it. three times she had to leave the sword and swim up for air but on the forth descent the door gave with an odd underwater rusted squeal and it she used her feet and body to shove it open until it jammed a quarter of the way wide and froze their resistant to any further furry of shoves and pushes.

Xera returned to the surface of the shallow pool and climbed out to shiver in the sun with her sword in hand. It was difficult to swim weighted down with the weapon and if she was to squeeze through the narrow opening of the door with her busty ample build and then swim past it to make some kind of exploration of the room beyond then she would have to leave the weighty weapon behind. Besides two free hands would make the journey much safer and faster. She set the heavy weapon down where it gleamed just beneath the surface of the water at the edge of the first step and then plunged in head first into the cold clear water and swam rapidly toward the parted door.

The squeeze past the door was made all the more difficult as she was holding her breath so her ample chest was increasingly pushed out resisting the compact nature of the narrow opening. But after a few eye rolls and angry shoves she slipped past the door and found herself in a dark narrow hallway that was thankfully short and opened without obstruction into a large room. Here she found the murk giving way to quivering ringlets of light. She swam rapidly for them and burst up into a sliver of an air pocket. The air was stale and rank and the rough ceiling banged at her fore head as she treaded water but it was good enough for her to get her bearings and to swim awkwardly along until she had found what she was looking for. Another hallway leading in the right direction and with as much of the thin air as she could muster into her lungs she plunged down and swam rapidly through the door and down its twisting narrow hallway.

This opened suddenly into a round room and she thankfully rose up to the surface of the water which only filled the chamber up to a third of its height. It was the small mound of rubble and trees she had seen from the stair case to the distant left of the sunken stairwell and seeing as it was up above the rest of the swamp she had guessed it might be the roof of a subterranean room. It was a common building practice of the woodland verge along the tundra to dig large pits and line them with stone and then building up domes of stone over them with stone sheaved hallways connecting these buried chambers. These mound-builders used such rooms as cellars for salted meats and dried food and as crypts and as shelters from storms. With no other visible ruins on the surface around the temple and only a few tree covered mounds she had hazard a guess that even with the wooden buildings long since rotted away the tree covered mounds she saw might be connected to the sunken door and lead her to a useful trinket or two. She could really use a new dagger! And her clothes!

Xera tread water with her hands and arms until she could walk up the steps in the center of the room which held a raised stone platform similar to the one she had seen outside but this one was cluttered with relics and she peered in the dust mote strewed rays of light that filtered down through chinks and cracks in the stone dome overhead riddled with hairy roots and dripping whispers of occasional dirt showers. She continued up the stairs until she was clear of the water and then cautiously made her way up onto the raised dials itself. The cold stone was still smooth from its laborious polish of what may have been a hundred years ago? And her cold bare feet felt numb upon its surface as she tried not to step on the half decayed carcasses of wooden chests and rotted sacks of leather as she peered through the twilight and shadow.

Only the little island of cramped stone was above the water line and she doubted any chest or metal lying under its surface would be in a state of much use so she carefully prodded and poked amongst the litter about her. In the center of the pile of decaying chests and their spilled contents was a large black stone sarcophagus carved with horned figures and men with impossibly huge penises dancing madly about. She liked the look of the men and whished the real world possessed such proportioned studs but smiled at the imagination and lying boasting ego of even the dead as she continued searching the piles of grimy debris.

There were small gems here most the size of her pinkie nail or smaller but still valuable if she should ever happen upon a place of trade again. And there were gold in the form of long flat coins more oblong than round and pierced at one end so as to be held on loops but the loops were long gone and the coins had a gritty film on them and would need a good scrub before they were used to purchase anything. It wasn’t food of course and that is what she was desperately in need of now, but these handfuls of gold and gems would replace her horse and equipment if she made it out of the swamps alive.

Still for the here and now it was useless and worse than that it was dead weight and she had nothing to carry them in but her hands. She set the precious stones down along with the handfuls of gold coins and their oddly stamped horned faces and set about trying to find something useful amongst the shards of pottery and slabs of crumbled wood.

AH! A dagger! Now that is something useful! She unsheathed the blade which had been sitting dry inside an unbroken vase sealed in clay slip and which she had to break to open. The jar was filled with sandalwood and some pouches of brown gooey spice which smelled nice in the close air. The dagger looked well-made though it was of bronze it still must have been highly prized in its day when copper was the most advance tool at hand. More a dirk than a true dagger it was triangular in design and made to puncture not slice, still it had a good edge and the handle felt well in the balance and she needed a dagger. She slipped the dagger next to her small pile of gems and gold.

A lot of scrolls dry and still malleable in the next unbroken vases which she broke to search with a heavy lump of stone (which latter she realized was a heavy jade carving of a horse and rider and probably worth more than all her other findings put together!) She was certain the library at Bandiecox would pay the weight of her tits in gold for them; which is to say a king’s ransom. But she tossed them aside thinking perhaps she might keep a couple for that nights kindling if she could find some means of flint or dry wood to make a fire.

No for the most part there was sadly little else for the crypt to offer her explorations. There might have been a few more treasures lying about the rubble around her unshod feet but in the heavy shadow of the sarcophagus and the dim filtering light it was impossible to say. She did find a golden broach pin with a jade cameo end piece but the broach its self was missing. She stuck the clasping pin in a piece of her tattered garments for safe keeping and set to work trying to lever off the heavy stone lid to the sarcophagus. It was sealed fast with some kind of lead and she had to remove that in long pealing strands but once that was accomplished the lid slid aside easily enough if only partially. She was forced to reach into the blackness while swallowing squeamish fear and root around amongst the dry rattle of bone. Her brave hand plucked forth several items of note and a few macabre bits she quickly tossed over her shoulder where they plunked into the inky blue rippling water echoing its drips.

A beautiful hand mirror round without handle with chased silver on lacquered bronze and depicting a young woman pouring a vase of water into a stream. She slid that into her sword belt and pawed over her other finds. A circlet of gold and several odd gems she could not identify though the largest in the center was certainly a black opal. She slid that upon her forehead and found it fit snug and was heavy but left it there as she would no doubt need her hands for the rest of her haul. Another small dagger this one oddly curved in both the blade and the sheath. She had never seen such a design but the singular edge was very sharp and this dagger was made for slicing rather than piercing so it had more uses than the first one she had found. She set it with her pile of found treasure and looked at the last item from the sarcophagus. A small wooden box heavily and elaborately made over in pounded copper. She had to work at it a bit for though there was no lock it must have had a secret sealing device and finally she managed to pry it open snapping the hidden latch in the process. Insides the now worthless box she found several rich woven silks made shimmering with spun silver and rimmed in webs of ivory and pearl trimmings. Xera caught her breath as she held the transparent silks out over her outstretched hands even in the dim light of the crypt they shown like moon beams and she awed over them. For though she was an Amazon born and bred she was still a woman and her eyes watered and danced at the elegant beauty of the sheer garments and filled her mind with wondrous glee. She found some leather not too moldy and a vase more or less still intact and using the coarse stiff leather as a stopper jammed in all her horde of treasure and secured it against the damp of her swim back to the surface.

When the tired still ravenous Xera reached the surface and gladly plucked back up her sword with her odd leather wrapped jar under her arm she found night was setting fast and she dragged herself through the water sloshing back to the stairs and then climbed up them and dropped upon the raised manmade parapet there and gasped for tired breath as her stomach caused her eyes to tear and her side to cramp.

She would need to make fire if she dared sleep the night in a swamp. There were serpents in these places that could pull down and crush and swallow a horse! Let alone its rider. She had no desire to wake with one of those crawling across her torso in the middle of an inky night. The finding of dry wood was easy enough and the few scrolls she brought from the crypt made good kindling but it was laborious fashioning a small bow of bent green wood and wrapping it around a dry straight stick to roll and rub it rapidly between two stones. One stone in her hand and the other in the center of the ready dry grass and torn scrolls waiting for the heat to catch fire. She was use to the more civilized flint and steel of her own tribe and not these primitive ways of lowly man but she had no flint so here she was on her hands and knees blowing on a stick as she awkwardly moved the little bow forward and back rapidly to keep the spindle spinning. The small bow cracked and she had to make another one but this was always the way and after an hour of labor she had a nice fire going and spent another thirty minutes tending it and feeding it larger and larger pieces of dried wood until she could trust it and once again obsess about her hunger. She descended for another belly full of ice cold water to drink it no longer curbed the hunger but it made the pain of her stomach wall rubbing against her ribs go away for a few minutes.

She waited for the dark to set in and for the sound of the night to begin. Then she spent several minutes baiting and catching grasshoppers and crickets from the razor sharp saw grass which in turn she took back in her otherwise empty vase (all her treasures wrapped in leather on the upper stair platform) and setting it near the fire roasted them in it and ate them and then filled her vase with cold water from the stair well and retreated back up to her fire where starving with only a few dozen crickets and grasshoppers in her belly she spread out the size of her fire with large logs she had hauled and dragged up earlier so that the flames licked smoky across the whole of the connecting point of the stairs and the platform and putting her head on arms and the wadding of leather laid down in the starless night and fell into a deep exhausted slumber full of fell dreams and nightmares as often depicts the sleep of an Amazon princess.

 The moon had risen when she woke suddenly. And her fire still crackled loudly and popped and zinged with a good wall of flame just a few feet from her head. The fire drowned out all sight and she moved painfully sucking deep breaths against her cramping empty stomach but otherwise silently away from the spitting fire on her hands and knees with her sword in hand as she sought to see the moonlit glade beyond its blinding glare.

Something had awoken her she was sure of that but she had been too deep in dream to know what it had been. The swamp glade below was utterly still and silent. A few crickets chirped but they were too far away the nearer ones had fallen silent. Something had come into the glen she was certain of that but her senses could pick out nothing unusual about her. She backed further away from the fire. The fire was a low wall of ‘threat’ to any animal but not a real barrier against any that was hungry enough. Just about any sizable creature could easily leap over its knee high wall of flame licked braches and char trunks. A man would simply kick it away in one stride.

She inched her way back away from the ring of fire light gaining new sight into the dark grove and hopefully removing her from exposed sight as well. But soon her ankle and then her shin found the edge of the sharp precept drop off of the raised stone platform. It was a twenty foot sheer drop to a stone slab floor covered in only a few inches of water as safe as a twenty foot walls rising up behind her and she pulled herself back into a crouch near the farthest edge from the stair case and flames.

It was then peering into the dark around the descending stair case and squinting into the fire at its head trying to gauge any movement there in the shadows that she both felt and heard the large gruff-puff of musky breath upon her exposed back and neck. She turned as fast as she could though it seemed like a slow motion underwater turn of her upper torso. Her face no doubt frozen in shock as well as some real taint of fear for she was only eighteen years old and had never been a lone in the world before a fortnight ago, but there sticking up just rising past her upturned full firm round buttocks was the muzzle of a giant lizard. Even as she watched shaking slightly in wide eyed motionless surprise the beast breathed another blast of air snuffling up a strong warm wet gust right into her crotch! That set her in motion she quickly rolled forward and away from the lip of the platform as the large flat scaled head raised its self-up and put two heavily clawed paws upon either side of its head which it turned sideways now to regard her with an eye the size of her boob or a bit larger than her head!

The beast was a large lizard like creature heavily scaled and it with its front fore paws upon the lip of the edge of the platform it could just barely manage to set its head upon the dinner table top and gaze at its odd meal! It seemed to regard her with some degree of curiosity but when she moved slightly further back toward the flame it hissed loudly at her and snapped it huge jaws with such a sudden blinding speed and force that she staggered back out her crouch and fell on her ass with her sword clanging upon the naked stone.

As she fell backwards the giant lizard hissed again and dropped out of sight there was the scrambling frantic splash of water and snapping dry limbs and the sickening scrunch of water logged wood being squished and Xera scrambled madly back to the very lip she had just fled from just as the huge head and clawed feet rushed over the lip near the flames and snapped at the empty air that mere seconds before had housed her shivering crouched form.

The creature screamed its hiss at her again and vanished into another invisible clash of water and wood and Xera scrambled back to where she had been moments before even as behind her the large head reappeared and snapped again angrily at the open air! Again the beast hissed and vanished and more splashing followed and Xera started to scramble but this time gave up her crouch and standing up to shrink herself upright as much as possible made across the face of the fire wall and ran to the opposite side of the platform. The monsters head suddenly appeared this time right back from where he had dropped down from his splashing an intelligent ruse to cause his meal to run right back into his now snapping mouth. When he saw the teen breathing heavily not in his mouth or back at where she had been but now at a new side of the banquet table the creature seemed to grin and growl and it watched her malevolently for several seconds before this time very, very, slowly it descended down its great head and let go with its clawed paws and vanished silently from sight.

Xera quaked noticeably and with her body shaking and eyes wide danced in place for a few seconds. This thing had the head the size of a large lean-to or small coach or buckboard. It undoubtedly contained a brain the size of a donkeys hindquarters and she grimly realized was much smarter than your average jackasses’ ass but no doubt as stubborn! She looked about her, the raised platform was not wide enough for her to stand in the middle no matter how small she tried to make herself and not be in reach of those snapping jaws. Where ever it would pop up its head she HAD to be at the opposite side of the beast or be snapped up in an eye blink! Three sides to choose from each time it ‘submerged’ so to speak and a one in three chance for it to guess correctly and snatch her up in its jaws if she guessed wrong.

She didn’t like those odds as it was only a matter of time before it guessed correctly! The head leaped up back in the same spot and snapped blindly at the empty air she could feel the concussive force of the jaws steel trap snap and she hammered down with her sword upon the muzzle inches out of reach of her thigh. The blade jarred off harmless off the things impregnable scales and it snapped again as she nearly staggered forward into its maw of razor sharp teeth with the recoil of her blow. It had been like striking against a mountain side!

The head leered and vanished and she quickly leapt over to where it had just been even as her agile feet landed she felt the full brutal wake of anther snap of the jaws clamping down in the space she had just this instant leapt from. The thing was surprisingly fast! It zipped down and she leaped over to where it had just been and again the head re-appeared in almost an instant this time directly across from where it had been and again the jaws slammed shut on empty air with such a force that she could feel the unmortar stones of the platform shimmy and shake. The head lingered and seemed to smile at her and this time she definitely heard the monster chuckle as it slowly hissed. It was enjoying the game, for now.

When the head slipped slowly down and disappeared this time Xera ran forward and leapt over the low wall of fire and ran down the steps of the stair case. She dove head first into the water filled stairwell and swam to the door with her sword in hand and pushed herself through the quarter opened door even as the muzzle of the great beast slammed down into the stair well and ground the stone casings to grit. The great beasts nose rammed into the bronze door and wedged it closed with brutal force. There was no way she would be able to open that again she noted as the door sagged and buckled fast in its stone casement.

It was a struggle to swim to the open round crypt chamber with her heavy sword in hand but she did so making no effort to stop for the nearly depleted air of the first chambers sliver of head space at its roof. She clambered out of the icy water up the crypt steps gasping and fell upon her round bubble-butt ass with her back next to the robbed sarcophagus. She lay here only for a moment and then the roof began to cave in! The creature was digging expertly into the mound snuffing after her scent shoving its large elongated muzzle into the borough after her! Xera leapt to her bare feet and with teeth chattering from the cold and from the snarling now laughing coughing beasts head that had managed to wedge its self in far enough to see her clearly she jumped upon the stone coffin and swung her sword uselessly at the beasts snout as it snuffled and smiled and dug with its clawed feet faster and faster tearing through the stone and mossy dirt as if it were swimming in calm clear water.

As the creature scrambled faster the ceiling and walls of the round domed crypt and its encasing web of roots and tall trees began to tumble down into the room. The shower of rock and stone and wood soon became a deluge and Xera realized the creature was no longer in control of the avalanche and she raced by it, its sword like claws raking the air above and below her as she summersaulted through the midair and caught a root of a tree that spun on its axis and catapulted her up and away from the snapping jaws and in a split second she was standing on the topside of the collapsed mound with the creature almost fully buried in a pile of stone and dirt bellow her!

Only the great creatures tail stuck out of the dirt fully it was half draped lifeless over a shattered tree trunk and Xera strode up to it and with a furry beat upon the exposed anus of the beast with the flat of her sword while screaming, “eat me will you foul dragon! Eat this!” and she shoved her sword up to the hilt into the beasts asshole. Then the tail of the beast lashed and knocked her backwards upon her haughty backside tumbling her head over heels into the swamp with a splash.

Xera leaped to her feet and paused only to catch her breath as she could feel and hear the monster tunneling out of the suddenly quaking mound continuing after her now in rage. She turned away from the shivering sputtering pile of rubble and the lashing vehement tail and ran as fast as her legs could carry her all her precious treasure on the other side of the mound up on the platform and too dangerous to recover only her newly blooded sword in her tight grasp accompanying her on her frantic flight.

Daylight found Xera staggering out of the swamp and onto a sudden stone paved road. The only paved roads outside of the Great Cities were the emperor’s roads and this one seemed long in disrepair. There were green molds and grass growing between the once tightly fit flat tiles of the white paving stones and the once proudly level road set upon beds of tamped rubble now boiled and buckled and was worn with deep ruts of countless wagon wheels. The road ran for the most part level in either direction raised up from the swampy ground in places with arched stone bridges that showed the almost six feet of otherwise hidden thickness of the packed stone roads secret laborious costly construction. A stone raised lip of on either side ran shin high with occasional openings to allow rain water to pass off the slightly crowned course. The paved road was wide enough for two dog carts to pass with a horse and rider between them and had at every five mile span an extended stone patio blistering out with a numbered stone marker where the many scorch marks of traveler’s campfires could be seen. Such roads were designed for military use and to speed the travel of merchants but were open without toll to any being maintained by the empires taxes. This road was framed on both sides by heavy woods that lingered into great swamps and despite its long sign of disuse such as the cracked and over grown buckled stone paving and the numerous streams over flowing the road and flooding parts of it Xera was glad to see it even if it was little better upon her poor naked feet as the rough uneven swamp had been.

Roads meant people and people meant towns and towns meant food! Though she was penniless and had lost all her recently grave stolen treasure it was still a good sign to have found a road in all this swamp. She looked down at her muddy knotted hair and the naked blood caked sword in her clenched hand and the tattered remnants of her Amazon garments. She had been wearing the proper tackle and harness of an Amazon warrior, that being for the house of Xara an all-black ensemble of highly polished leather straps bound about her body with rings, rivets, and buckles. But most of the retaining rings were gone and the buckles as well snagged on brush and briar and now her garment hung about her like twisted tattered knots of leather which is of course what they were.

In fact she looked like a soiled motley beggar who of course is what she was though being and looking were two different things and looking like a beggar was not a good thing when one was a beggar. Even an Amazon princess knew that much about the world.

It was at this juncture in her miserable reveries as she tramped down the deserted over grown road that Xera made a slight uplifting discovery for upon her person were both the circlet of some value still clamped about her brow and stuffed in the scabbard-less sword harness and tattered remains of her costume were the silks she had taken from the small wooden box from the sarcophagus. She had prized these so much at first sight that instead of placing them with her other found treasures she had wadded them up and placed them in the natural security of her outfit. Seeing this she now pulled them out and mused how unspoiled they still looked and mulled over how much more impressive and finer a garment they would make than her current shredded harness and tackle.

Still it would not due to put on such fine clothes over a body bespattered with foul gray mud and so she folded them up neatly and returned them to the catches and folds of her harness and set her stubborn feet numb and sore to the task of walking along the endless road through the great nameless swamp.  She would occasionally glance behind her or into the bracken that lay about the road or stop and rest upon a fallen tree that obstructed the pavement and try to sniff the air for hints that the dragon or some other creature hunted her but there was only the sounds of the swamp buzzing and croaking all about her.

Xera once again found herself contemplating finding some kind of rudimentary shelter as the overcast sky began to darken with oncoming night or if she should tramp on to the next stone camp site built into the adjacent roadway. When to her utter open mouth surprise she turned a corner of the twisting road and found herself staring at a large towering tree. The kind of tree one only saw in the distant lands of the southern elves where they slowly and laboriously migrated through the great forests flocked full of the elven cities built into their mighty boughs. This great lone giant seemed pinned in place, fettered by great black chains scribed in sigil glyphs set in turn to large anchors not unlike ship anchors embedded in the paved earth, and fashioned into its base raised up and reached by a wide stone stair a lone building set squarely in the nook seated above the crevasse of two great roots where it sat firmly its iron barred windows dimly glowing like unblinking nocturnal eyes caught in sudden torch light. Further up the towering trunk jutted out windowed balconies and terraces hinting at an excavation of the tree with rooms carved into its heart wood. The entire mighty tree and its appendage building was positioned smack dead in the center of the paving stone road that widened out and passed it on both sides like a river around a small island creating a substantial opening in the swamp. Xera could see that in addition to the road she had followed running around and passing on beyond the mighty tree there was also another road that ran from her left to her right so that the compass points were covered in these two stone roads meeting in a crossroads of the great trees imprisoned roots. Somewhat dumbfounded and almost in tears of frail hope born out of hunger and exhaustion the young princess shuffled across the large open stone paved space that was thankfully raised up and dry from the many swirling treacherous rivulets that crossed the twin roads on either side with icy black water.

She made for the door at the top of the stone stair and was astonished to find it swing wide at her shaky touch. The door which was massive of hardened oak and strapped in metal bands opened directly into a large low ceiling room well lit with lanterns and two large blazing fires. It was an inn! An inn half built upon and half carved into the mighty tree its self!

She staggered over to the bar set at the back of the carved wooden room brushing past tables fashioned out of living knots of wood and fell upon a plate of fresh meats of swamp mule (deer) and brush fowl (quail) and swallowed down bottles of wine in loud noisy gulps so that it ran down her face and pooled in her frantic jiggling cleavage. The inn keeper a small man of portly stature raised an eye brow smirked and set a fresh loaf of bread at her elbow which she devoured so fast he wiggled his fingers to make sure they were all there. He set another bottle at her side and another plate of broken meats and some cheese and more bread and a slather of butter in a small wooden tub and some crockery filled with steaming vegetables which she poured over the meats and sopped up with the bread shoveling it all into her mouth with her dripping chin almost touching the plate and then she felt dizzy and collapsed backward dead to the world in sleep.

Xera woke lying on cot near one of the stone pit roaring fires with their odd twisting metal chimneys. She grimaced, her belly full and aching almost as much as it had when it had been empty, as she sat up and rubbed her throbbing head and belched loudly, the more polite way to relive such painful pressure. As her hands rubbed her brow she realized her circlet was gone. She looked up where the inn keeper watching her reached under the bar and held the tiara aloft and then placed it back under the bar as he whipped a wooden tankard clean. “For security until you pay up with coin for your stay,” he nodded and she nodded back.

There was laughter from a far dark corner of the bar. She looked coolly in the direction and saw large eyes glowing back at her. Elves. Female elves from the sound of it and apparently enjoying her antics mightily as they hummed and cooed and whispered like the trembling leaves of Ash on an autumn day.

She stumbled gingerly to her sore bare feet and shuffled her way to the bar keep and apparently the only other sole occupant of the establishment other than her and the small clique of elves laughing merrily away at her every move. Xera knew elves especially the females of the species and hated them. All they did was drink and gossip and dance and slit the throats of would be travelers in their precious glens.

The inn keep interpreted her scowl before she even mentioned a word. “They brew the ale and sprits for the inn back there in their wood beyond the swamp. As well as a stock of potions of healing for travelers though in truth I can never really tell them apart. I trade them trinkets and iron ingots that I get from the travelling traders from the large city Saragoth to the west of here. Sits at the foot of the main pass through the Great Mountain about three days journey along the road.”

“You get many travelers on this road? It seems a bit ‘unused’ from what I saw of it.” Her head hurt from the sudden intake of so much wine and the sudden food in her belly was giving her wind.

“With the civil war going on and all the houses shifting their allegiances one way and then the other the empire does not have the resources or will to tend to the roads. Seems the armies of all sides are eating up all the taxes, nothing left for the things that really matter. So the road is not as right as it should be and there are bandits in the swamp betwixt here and Saroagoth which has cut down my business considerably.  But there is a company of escorts who live in Sarogoth who for coin will bring a traveler safely pass the bandits and other irritants of the swamp to this inn and then on to the smaller trade port of Dellenmore. There was a time not so long ago that the road was choked with caravans from the port of Dellenmore to the mountain pass of Sarogoth, but now they skip the swamp for the most part and add ten days journey to the lower pass of the Great Mountain. No town there though and the pass has no road and bridges through it as the emperors road has through the Saragoth pass. You have to travel a river bed and chance a flash flood or drowning in sudden holes or who knows what but I guess it is better than monsters and bandits of the swamp of late.”

“Thanks for the food and the bed,” she whispered hoarsely and the elves laughed loud.

“I would have put you in an actual room but well the swamp mud is mighty rank and is hard to wash out the stench even with lye so er well…” the little short man scratched his head and shrugged.

“Yes I know I stink.” She smiled at him and rolled her eyes at the eruption of laughter from the dark corner with the elven women well drunk in their mugs.

“I have rooms with baths and plenty more food and drink and er well a few of my shirts if you needed something to wear? Do you have any coin?” he was setting more tankards to dry on the bar and turned now and then to baste a feral forest hog turning slowly over an open coal fire directly behind him.

“Ah no,” she now turned and sneered at the elves who were slapping themselves with laughter.

“Well…” the man bent down below the bar and retrieved the circlet and held it between them and gave it a careful look. “This could say pay for seven days stay room and board plus what you have already ate and drank easy enough. Of course if it is a family heirloom… well you have to understand I can’t keep such things here and I will trade it to the first trader that arrives with something worth its value. You understand?”

She nodded and the inn keeper nodded and said, “done!’ and he walked back behind the great open stone pit where the pig slowly turned on its spit and disappeared through a door and returned a short time later with an armload of towels and some cakes of soap and a few lose lien shirts and a pair of brown breaches. “First landing up to your right door next to the last, and don’t mind the elves they are always like that when they are drunk unfortunately they are drunk all the time. They should be gone by morning they usually don’t linger long.”

“Thank you,” she took the offered bundle and with the elves howling in her ears their cackles and guffaws she made her way up the large wooden stairs carved into the living wood to the rooms above.

It was a sham of course. That whole bit about not being able to keep the circlet for her to possibly pawn back latter. The short inn keeper with his oily black locks obviously loved his precious jewelry his fingers were covered in gaudy rings and his ears were pierced in several places and he wore necklaces enough to supply a harem on his open shirt hairy barrel chest. No he simply didn’t want to have to part with it considering he was getting it at such an enormous bargain.

But it was found goods and she had been in no condition to try and brass out a better trade. He was a funny little man, she thought to herself, as she raised up her smooth supple leg from the small brass bathing tub in her living wood carved single room. He had a funny accent and twisted his words around backwards often as he spoke in the common tongue. She wondered why everyone she met since leaving the tundra of the Amazon’s spoke in funny little accents. ‘They must have very poor teachers these foreigners,’ and nodded her head in agreement to this wise thoughtful observation.

Xera paused and looked around her at the cozy little room with its comfortable looking single bed and the drawers built into the carved out wall and frowned and blew at the pile of soap bubbles heaped up on her large bosom. She definitely felt like she was being watched. ‘A thief perhaps? Or termites?’ she looked around her at the bright reflective burnished surface of the walls and floors and ceiling of the carved niche of a room and could see no place anyone could hide in ambush to attack her. ‘Perhaps it is the lingering tension of the road and the long journey since being ambushed by those paid assassins?’ she continued to enjoy her long sudsy warm bath and it wasn’t until she was done with her delightful refreshing bathing and toweling herself dry that she noticed a lone knothole across from her brass tub and just a few inches above her bed. She eyed it and wondered if that might be large enough for a snake to crawl through? The swamps were full of such verminous beasts. She leaned over quickly and poked a finger into the hole. There was a brief warm squishy resistance and what she swore was a muffled yelp and hissing and she jerked her finger back for a second before poking her finger in again but now the hole seemed open and empty. She leaned down further and peered into it but could only see darkness. Shrugging she picked up a wash cloth and tamped it firmly into the hole. The last thing she wanted was some snake in her bed!

Xera descended the stairs wearing the white shirt and brown breaches that the inn keeper had given her along with her towels and soap. Her Amazon warrior harness was beyond repair and she could only hope to salvage some of the metal rings and buckles for further sale or personal use from the tattered garment. Though the young clever girl had managed to fashion an open scabbard-less waist belt from the tattered leather so her naked still rusted with dried blood sword hung on her proud hip ready to be yanked through its open thong loop for instant use. Her precious silks she had washed by hand and lay out to dry. For now she would wear the simple garments given her by the inn keeper, though they were a tad tight. In fact they were extremely tight and as she worked her way down the carved wooden staircase she began to realizes just how tight!

The flimsy open neck shirt was stretched precariously across her massive chest and so sheer in its tautness that her large areolas and ever pert nips were on promenading display.  The brown breaches did not quite ride up fully on her full round ass leaving a full quarter of her proud firm cheeks squeezed up and over spilling out for all the world to see, and despite her rail thin waist she could not do up the upper buttons of the garments front leaving a thick tangle of her rosy red thick teen bush on rampant display. The tight legs of the trousers stopped just short of her knees and she was still barefooted having abandoned her boots back with her horse and belongings several days before in the mad scramble to save her life. In all it was the sort of attire one would have blushed at but having been raised almost exclusively in the company of women who often went entirely naked in their homes and streets and considering her previous rented and damaged leather halter had left just as much on display, though in truth the mud had concealed much, she did not find her outfit too out of sorts with her present company of elven women and a lone male proprietor.

Still the pants and top were very tight and the walk down the stairs revealed this to her as her ample full firm breasts sought to jiggle and cantilever against the tight confines of her thin top treacherously threating the much strained seams while her legs ached against the deep bite of the trouser legs openings even as her long limbs and wiggling ass worked the brown garment further down her body so that by the time she reached the bottom of the stair case a full half of her round backside was pinched up and revealed and the front of the trousers had camel toed so deeply that of her furry red mound could be easily seen as well as a teasing hint at her ever hard clit.

Still once upon the even floor of the tavern the pain in her cut off knees abated and the lowered garment felt much more comfortable than when she had wedged it up so snug upon first putting it on in her room, so she resisted the impulse to yank her britches back up and instead walked coolly over to the bar where the inn keep was once again dressing a pheasant for the spit and placing mugs of spiced ale up on the bar for the drunken elven woman who had staggered out of the dark corner to claim another round for her and her sisters.

The elf gave her a large blurry eyed look up and down and began to snicker. Xera decided to ignore her after giving her a long hard cold look which only had the thin elf laughing out loud now. “Inn Keeper the road that runs west and east leads from Saragoth that sits at the base of the Great Pass and to the port town of Dellenmore respectively. But I espied another road running north and south where does that one lead?”

The inn keeper turned around displaying a black right eye that was swollen shut and answered her, “aye the road running south peters out into a dirt track once it reaches the fortified hamlet of The Lonely Mine. That is where I get my iron ingots from, in trade for elven spirits potions and salted meat, from the caravans that still dare to risk the bandits and monsters of the swamp. The empire needs the iron and all it can get for weapons and armor so there is a small camp of soldiers at the hamlet and they usually will send some men along with the caravan if the iron is bound to Dellenmore for imperial use. But the caravans for public sale are prone to bandit attacks so there are fewer of those these days. The road leading north passes deep into the swamp and through into the Dimmer Woods where the elves live and no one messes with them!”

Xera recoiled from the surprised black eye of the inn keeper and exclaimed, “What on earth happened to your eye? It was fine the other day!” She gave the suddenly laughing elves in the corner and the one at her elbow at harsh glance.

“Oh that, er, well I had a little accident in the smoke room with some hanging venison that’s all.” The man seemed generally uncomfortable and nervous discussing the matter so Xera simply nodded and left it for the moment.

“Where do you get all this meat from?” Xera politically sought to change the subject suspecting the drunken elves had done the poor man some mischief. They were like that elves always pulling pranks that caused harm to innocent people.

“Ah, that! There are two hunters, brothers named Dingle, who live higher up in the tree who earn their keep by bringing back plenty of game from the swamps and woods. They help me salt the meat and they make a good trade tanning hides and bartering them with the caravans who pass through. They also make bows and fletch arrows as well. I won’t allow a tannery in the tree of course, the smell! Disgusting! But it is nearby at the edge of the swamp. They have a small forged there too just the size for arrow heads and a few iron monger repairs, hinges, doorknobs, that sort of thing. If you need small arms or a scabbard for that sword of yours they are the men to see. I don’t trade in weapons or that sort of thing. Not good to mix spirits and steel. They are a bit er queer those two if you catch my meaning, (he tapped himself on the side of the head and tried to wink his bruised eye and winced) but you won’t find any others in such trade until you reach one of the settlements and those as I have said are several days’ travels in either direction. Though the elves are much further away than that and do not trade well with strangers.”

“Hmmm, I see,” Xera tapped her thick pillow lips and nodded thoughtfully. This caused the elves to roll with laughter and the one zigzagging returning with their fresh tray of mugs of ale to nearly drop her cargo as she doubled over in giggles.

Xera gave the dark corner housing the elves a dirty look and turned her sour attention back to the bar keep. “You wouldn’t happen to know of any… work in these parts? Would you?” it was only a horse whisper leaned in to the greasy man’s black oily locks but elves have ridiculously big ears and the started whispering and laughing even louder than before.

“Ah… work?” the tavern keeper whispered back equally horse and Xera noticed that in leaning in to confide with him she had placed her nearly naked breasts square in front of the short man’s face who was wide eyed staring at her jiggling huge mounds in rapt glazed attention.

Xera had never understood the hypnotic quality large breasts had on a man but she had noted its usefulness on several occasions as such she did not lean back removing her jiggling mounds out of the proximity of the man’s now sweating furrowed brow but instead looked down at her own heaving mounds and frowned at their strange powers. “Ah, yes, work. I find myself in need of raising some ready coin with the upmost haste. Do you have any leads in the matter?”

“Ugh, do er you have anything to sell?” the man seemed to be having difficulty keeping up his end of the conversation.

Xera ignored the now howling elves and leaned in further upping the ante of her breasts hypnotic powers by dragging them across the bar top so one firm large nipple popped it’s self-free and whispered in an even hoarser sultry voice, “I have nothing. I have only what you see here,” and playfully raised an eye brow as she parted her thick wet pillow lips.

But the man saw only the peekaboo nipple and he let out a sharp moan as his face went bright red and the tankard in his hand dropped and rolled across the bar and fell clattering on the floor.

Xera frowned and moved her breasts out of the way of the tankard as it haphazardly rolled by swishing soapy water out of it as it did so and glowered at the man. ‘What an idiot!’ she thought and shaking her head left the bar and bent over rapidly to pick up the escaping pewter mug.

As soon as she bent over there was a loud ripping and Xera blushed as she shot bolt upright and clutched at the back of her rented breaches! It was instantly obvious both by the feel of the cool air on her backside, the touch of her frantic hands, and the wide eyed shocked look of the now purple faced inn keeper that the entire seat of her pants had just rented open! As she arched back madly trying to pull the two sides of the garment together there was another loud tearing sound and she felt the huge pressure against her enormous breasts give way as the much put upon blouse finally shredded sending her large tits exposed into the tavern’s cool perpetual twilight air.

The inn keeper shot bolt upright stiff as a board and then his eyes rolled back in his head and with a wide smile on his face he fell over backward off of the single raised step built into the back of the bar he walked along in order to see over it. The elves went hysterical and Xera face red from embarrassment gave up trying to cover his tits and ass at the same time and fed up and now raging with indignant anger stomped over to the four elves in the corner and proceeded to pound them and beat them with anything and everything at hand.

When the inn keep finally came two he found Xera now dressed in her silks and the four elves still unconscious with various bits of vegetables and empty ale bottles shoved in their anuses and twats. That was the way with Amazons whenever they fought and defeated an opponent they would then humiliate them with shoving something into their bung hole or cunts. Strange lot Amazons, when they come of age they are stripped naked and given a knife and a girdle ringed in leather loops. Then they are sent out into the wastes forbidden to return until they find and mate with a man and then slice off his sex organs and tie them to their belt. Some Amazon girls do not come back until the entire belt is covered in bloody severed cocks. The more one returns with the more proud the reception for the now full fledge woman warrior. There was a reason sane men feared and fled any Amazon they came across.

The inn keep eyed the groaning elves upraised asses twitching draped over tables as he rubbed the back of his aching head, he had a nasty bump there, and then in a brief moment of panic looked down at his cod piece and gave it a squeeze only breathing again when everything checked out alright.

Xera looking radiant and majestically in her gossamer flowing see-through silk garments with her lone sword still held naked across her hip in a leather thong belt as she drifted up to the bar keep who recoiled slightly as he forced a lopsided smile despite himself and she spoke to him in as calming and indifferent voice as she could muster. “So now before we were so rudely interrupted by these slut elves, we were talking about some possible way for me to make some coin.”

“Er, coin?” the short man blinked and then suddenly came to himself, “Oh yes a job!” He suddenly froze in his smile and looked rapidly back over at the four groaning snoring elves and his hand shot up to his chin which he tugged at thoughtfully. “Say, you seem to handle yourself well. I have an idea. I have a customer, a lone gentleman, who keeps to himself. Has his meals sent up to his room. He has some crate he needs to take to Saragoth. But naturally he does not want to travel the road alone through the swamp and confront those bandits!”

“I thought you said there is a band of men, a company, out of Saragoth who escorts travelers through the swamp?” Xera now rubbed her own chin this was much better than what she was expecting she had fully thought she would end up doing dishes!

“There is, but they wait in Saragoth until they have several clients or a caravan to protect before making the journey to Dellenmore and then wait again in Dellenmore for another group to muster before making the return journey. Sometimes it is back and forth steady and sometimes it is weeks, but this fellow has been here for six days now and getting antsy to be on his way.”

“Hmmm, how is it he came to this inn then without an escort?’ Xera like how brilliant her practical mind was and she considered herself very astute when it came to business matters unlike the rest of her Amazon breather.

“He arrived with an imperial caravan coming back from Dellenmore after taking a load of iron ingots there from the Lonely Mine and naturally he stayed here when they went on back to the Lonely Mine as that was out of his way and would serve no purpose in going there.”

Xera dropped her hands to her proud hips and bent her body to one side having already made up her mind in this endeavor but wanting to make sure she had the details of it down. “So you are proposing I escort this man and his box through the swamp to Saragoth. Won’t this make those men in Saragoth angry?”

“I sure hope so! Those men have run up a tab as long as my arm and I am certain they have no intention to pay it! And er no, I was not suggesting you escort this man through the swamp. I was suggesting you and I go into business together where I would allow you to use my Giant Tree Inn as a center of operation for you to escort men through the swamps in any direction they care to! For which I will only take sixty percent of the take and of course a smidgen for your room and board.”

Xera thrust her arms crossed under her heaving nearly naked silk wrapped bosom and fumed at the smug little toad of a man. “And why should I have anything to do with such an unfair offer?”

“Well,” the short man leaned his elbow on the bar and fisted his chin as he broadly smiled. “What other services can you provide for on the open road to not arrive penniless in Sarogoth or Dellenmore. And beside how unfair is it?” He shot upright and began to aggressively swab out a pewter ware mug and then a wooden one, “where else are you going to find both room and board to make some coin just walking this way and that.” He leaned forward and whispered, “I’ll let you keep any tips… minus thirty percent! Now that’s fair trade!”

Xera dropped her hands to her side and rolled her eyes. It beat dishwashing and she could think of no other earthly way to make any money to replace her gear and horse.

“Great! It’s a deal then!” the short man was almost apomictic with red faced delight as he tossed the mug into the air and leapt down from his little bench behind the bar and raced to the stairs. “I will put everything into order with our new client! You leave first thing in the morning! Just leave all the business arrangements to me! You just swing that sword of yours and I will do all the rest!”

The next day found Xera outside the Great Tree Inn pondering the brand new wooden sign that swung now under the large main sign which read: GIANT TREE INN. This second sign was heart shaped with a shapely figure of a woman holding a sword above her head cut out of the center of the sign. The words: “Service Escort Xera” was carved painted on it. The word “SERVICE” being to the left of the cutout silhouette of the shapely woman holding a sword above her head and the word “ESSCORT” being directly to its right and the word “XERA” being directly below the cutouts feet. Xera frowned at the sign and stated flatly, “shouldn’t it be XERA’S ESSCORT SERVICE? And why is only the S-E-X capitalized?”

The short man scrambling down form the step ladder he had used to hang the new sign paused and then continued down his way angrily muttering, “Certainly not! Anyway it is done and I was up half the night working on it thank you so very much! While YOU snored in your room drunk on fourteen bottles of elven spiced ale!”

“Hmmm, say, how do you know I was snoring in my room?” Xera suddenly startled from eyeing the questionable sign.

“You snore very loudly. You kept half the place up all night. I have half a mind to charge you extra for that!”

“I will have the loony two brothers make me a bolt for my door,” Xera grumbled as she turned from staring at the back of the small man and gave the departing Elven women a sour look. The elves were mounting up on their large white deer with several other larger elk actin as pack animals, their wooden and leather saddle bags now empty of wine and ale but now full of iron bars and bangles of silver and gold. The elven women simply smiled at her and in a single heart beat the whole herd of deer and elk were gone in three large leaps in a white blur down the northern paved road. Vanishing in whirlwind of fallen leaves and a clatter of sharp hooves before she could even blink, ‘no wonder they do not have to fear bandits!’ she thought to herself.

“Well won’t see them for a month.” The short man rubbed his hands and set the ladder aside. “You had best wipe that frown off your face and put on smile as our patron will be out and rearing to go as soon as he finishes up his eggs and butter! Presentation! It is what makes the successful businessman and I expect you to learn that as my partner in the field! We at the Giant Tree Inn and Service Escort Xera (he made sure to say these last three words very clearly as he put his hands on his hips and spoke them with closed eyes and upturned snarling nose) offer only the top notch professional service and delivered with polished respectability!”

Xera nodded and forced a smile as the short man who only came up to her waist wagged a finger up at her from the shadow of her breasts and nodded decisively in turn back at her before laboriously climbing up the steep stone steps up into the inn of the massive tree.

The client was a graying slicked haired man not much taller than the inn keeper and though dressed in expensive raiment seemed to have only one other possession to his personage that being a box nearly his size which he insisted upon opening for her fidgeting with its leather straps and buckles until finally he proudly stepped aside to allow her to view the straw packed contents of a single marble statue of a man even shorter than either the inn keeper or the client who stood upon a wooden base posed proudly with chin up and with a chest full of carefully carved detailed medals. “General Gore! Fantastic likeness! Life-size too! From my mother’s side of the family.” Xera and the inn keeper had dutifully nodded with the inn keeper catching Xera’s eye and then rolling his own eyes and shrugging.

Xera had found the whole unboxing and then re-boxing of the statue a frustrating waste of time but kept her tight forced smile upon her face until she swore even her teeth hurt and her cheeks had gone numb. But eventually they had the box in a dog cart and loaded up outside hitched to a small donkey and ready to finally depart until the inn keeper had come rushing out shaking his head and ‘no! no! no-ing’ as he jostled himself breathlessly down the steps. A few minutes later the small box had been transferred to a wheel barrow, the donkey returned to his grind stone harness, and a fuming Xera found herself pushing the squeaky wheeled cart before her over the clattering paving stones while the client; one Mr. Grope related endlessly the significant tale of his distant great-great-grandfather from his mother’s side of the family General Gore and how proud he was to be delivering this recently commissioned statue to the city of General Gore’s birth Stonehummer just a few days journey beyond the Great Pass of Saragoth.

Mr. Grope, a name well suited for the lecherous bastard or Mr. Grabby Hands as Xera teeth gratingly began to call him under her hissing breath, in view of his perchance to ‘accidently’ bump or slap his hands into her nearly naked ass with ceaselessly regularity at almost every stride as he walked alongside her as she continued to struggle half bent over the cart shunting along the uneven paving stones. When the hand began to sit and linger and squeeze her buttocks she had decided it was time to stop the cart and take a breather while she counted to ten and then to twenty as the man kept up his incessant rant about his famous relative and his almost seemingly multitude of accidently bumping brushing hands that seemed to find their way to her breasts and buttocks with unerring precision.

“Ah so we have stopped have we?” Mr. Grope smiled widely and winked. “I was wondering how far we were going to carry this business?”

Xera who was well on her way to silently counting down her temper and nearing sixty slowed down her numbers and frowned at the disgusting man. “We are contracted to go to Saragoth?” Xera stated somewhat confused. She had left all the arrangements to the innkeeper and therefore couldn’t be sure where exactly she had been commissioned to accompany the man. ‘Surely not all the way to Stonehummer?!’ she thought in sudden dread.

The velvet, fur, and silk dressed man hummed and chuckled as he toyed with one of his rings. “Yes, of course you are ‘escorting’ me to Saragoth.” He smiled widely and winked and nudged her and chuckled again. “But really this whole thing of us having to leave the inn is rather peculiar? And I must admit I thought we were only going out to some nearby shed I had NO idea it was going to be so… rustic! I mean,” he looked around him at the walls of trees and the limb and leaf littered paved road. “Are we just you know I mean right here?! That’s so wild! But I do think we should hurry and get ready as it will be dark soon and we don’t want to have to rush it you know. I mean what is he your father that he makes you do it out here in the woods? Or is this some kind of Amazon Elf thing?” The man was hurriedly unbuttoning his jacket.

Xera looked around her it was indeed warm in the late afternoon sun but if he tossed that jacket into the wheel barrow and expected her to push it along with the crate he had another thing coming! There was a meaty thwacking sound and a surprised Xera found herself looking down at one of Mr. Grabby Hands aforementioned hands clamped firmly on her nearly naked tit! And the man’s trousers down around his ankles!

The innkeeper hurried through the tree up the twisting carved steps that paired off into doors or landings and branched this way and that until her reached a small tightly set door heavily paddle locked which he set upon hastily with a key of several such keys shuffled through from a chain worn around his waist so that it looked as if he wore a belt of keys around his portly waist. The room inside was dark and full of a clutter of goods piled in heaps. He hurried over to a cage and ripped the canvas off it and banged on the metal bars until a great black raven woke with squawks and flapping wings. The man opened the cage door and then unbolted the window of the small room and turned back to the large bird. “Look you make haste now to my bandit followers out in the swamp! Tell them that their leader commands them to way lay the lass and the man that will be soon passing their camp. Tell them to take the box and the statue inside as it will be as good as a ransom but do not harm the woman or the man for the man will pay anything to get his statue back safe and sound and the woman is an unwitting partner to our future enterprises! Give them a clout and send them on their way to Saragoth! Or back here to Giant Tree Inn but do not kill them and do not hold them!” the short man rubbed his hands together and squealed with delight. “That band of men in Saragoth has been cutting deeply into my lucrative business with my men robbing the travelers of these swamps. It was bad enough with the imperial soldiers moving into Lonely Mine and guarding the iron convoys to Dellenmore. That cut deep but those fools in Saragoth have all but strangled my trade of highway men. My men are no match for their mercenary swords being but tavern drunkards and riffraff and swamp rats, but they should have no problem handling a lone girl! As long as I can keep her here and foolishly leading travelers into ambushes the more profit I can once again acquire! And if the men in Saragoth take exception to her? Well that is between them and her and I am innocent of it all! Ha! What still here?! Go now you mangy rat with wings and tell my men to be ready to strike!” with that the large motley bird squawked and took wing out of the room and disappeared into the trees of the swamp.

The men were indeed waiting for the man and woman the large black bird had told them to expect but when they leapt out to ambush them they were a little puzzled to find the woman angrily pushing the wheel barrow with both the box and an unconscious small man in it. The dazed man had two black eyes and was missing some teeth and the woman was so distracted with her angry mutterings that she failed to notice the ambush until she had her sword yanked from her and her arms securely pinned to her sides by two large burly men.

“Well, well, what have we here? Two would be travelers out for a midnight stroll. Must be of the romantically inclined sorts I hear about in all those raunchy plays.” The tall muscular man, the only one wearing iron armor and not holding a torch and thus obviously the ring leader, took the woman’s sword that was offered to him by one of the others milling about smiling at the woman and laughing at the moaning man in the cart. “There’s a matter of a toll for using this here road, but looking at the condition of this sword I wonder if you can pay it? Or if we are going to have to take it out in… trade.” The dozen or so bedraggled lanky men most in ragged leathers and armed with bows and rusted daggers all laughed at this and the woman scowled at the large man in the iron armor. “Leave it to a woman not to know how to keep her blade clean. Is it even sharp?” The large man grazed his thumb across the rust hued blade as he grinned widely at her and then his face froze and his eyes widened and he fell stiff and stone dead upon the pavement his armor making an odd somewhat humorous clanking sound.

One of the men holding her arms let go of her and rushed up to the man and touched his neck. “He’s dead! Crippler is dead!”

Another man this one in spectacles and a robe with a goats beard shuffled out of the midnight shadows with a large wet ladle in his hands and gingerly picked up the blade and sniffed at her sword. He raised an eyebrow and looked over at Xera, “dragon shit… One of the most lethal poisons known to man. And very hard to come by.” He dropped the blade and adjusted his glasses at her as others around her muttered collectively. “A poisoned blade, now that is just low. Very dirty fighting that is. Tsk tsk, young people these days. I blame the schools I do. And it looks like she waylaid this bugger in the barrow here. And why is his pants yanked down? She’s one of them perverts on top of it all!” As the men shook their heads and frowned at her from their torch light umbrellas amidst the pitch dark night.

Xera yanked her arm free from the one still holding her but only crossed her arms defiantly under her heaving angry bosom as the whispering went on all around her. Suddenly there was a great hissing and snapping of brush and all looked over their shoulders past the ring of torch light where rapidly a great lizard came sharply into focus out of the murk as it raced across the open paved road and straight at them; or more pointedly straight at Xera as it ignored the others which it shouldered aside as it snapped its massive jaws after the fleeing young girl. Xera leapt off the road and into the ruins where the bandits had set up camp with the hideous beast hissing and dashing madly behind her!

The innkeeper bit at his thumb nail and drummed his fingers on the counter top of his bar. Daylight had arrived several hours ago but not his raven nor any word on how the ambush had gone? He just knew that oaf Crippler had botched the whole thing! No doubt raped the girl to the point where she would only be good to sell off to one of the many whorehouses in Sargoth or Dellenmore, and the man, what was his name? Grouper? Grouse? Whatever, he was probably dead as well and just some now worthless statue impossible to pawn left for his troubles and misery’s!

The door to Great Tree Inn opened and in walked Xera laboriously shoving a wheelbarrow before her! A pile of leather armor, iron armor, and an assortment of weapons, as well as lose wads of jewelry and bags of gold coin, all topped with a marble bust of General Gore, filled the wheelbarrow, with coins and gems spilling out onto the floor with each lurching bounce. Xera let the lot tumble as the wheel barrow fell sideways trying to transverse a wooden step and she sauntered up to the bar and grabbed a bottle of elven wine and polished it off in one swig and then belched loudly. “Well that is the take from the bandit camp in the deserted ruins aside the road. Afraid the dragon eat our client and most of the bandits.”

“Well I’ll be that bastard was holding out on me!” The innkeeper muttered as he stared wide eyed at the horde of weapons and gold and clothes and gems spilled out over his floor.

“What’s that?” Xera who was leaning with her tired back against the bar looked over her shoulders at the small barkeep and he only smiled and shook his head.

“Well, a profitable ends to a profitable day!” the innkeeper smiled and rubbed his hands as he set another fresh bottle on the bar and skipped off his small step and hustled around the corner of the bar to eye the loot. “Er, dragon ate him you say?” the innkeeper tapped his foot against the statue.

“Afraid so,” Xera popped the cork on the fresh bottle and began to guzzle it.

“Well, guess we can set it outside as a hitching post. Ah, what about the bandits? All dead?” the innkeeper turned and eyed her carefully. She got drunk so fast and easily.

Xera wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Naw only the leader and a couple of others the rest scattered into the swamp. That damn dragon is still kicking too. Left him stuck between some stone pillars after reapplying some er, oil to my sword. And say, that man Mr. Grabby Pants thought I was a whore?!”

“Wha?! Don’t know WHERE he got such a notion!” The barkeep fingered his open collar and gold chains and swallowed hard. “Well, you get some rest and I will sort out this lot.” He kicked at the piles of coin. “The brothers Dingle came back early this morning with a pack of pelts and several hare and quail and the news that there is a small party of monks coming from Dellenmore with some imperial soldiers arriving to replace the garrison at Lonely Mine and they should arrive here latter this afternoon.  Those monks are bound for Saragoth! This should be a much more profitable venture for ‘our’ escort service this time!”

“Mooks?” Xera looked bleary eyed around her in her tattered and ruined silks as the empty bottle clattered to the floor.

“Ah, yes just let me do all the talking! I will set everything up! You just take another bottle or two and head up to your room and be ready to go first thing in the morning! Alright?” the innkeeper gave Xera’s firm round ass which was even with and only inches from his sweating face a shove and slap toward the staircase. He shoved two new bottles into each of her hands (the elven women had been more than happy to add some sleeping/lust potions to a batch of their delivered wine with a smile for his new partner’s personal use in exchange for the jeweled circlet. He guessed wearing leaves and vines for adornments got rather itchy after a while.) And he watched her totter up the staircase like a winding down top to her room with its new iron bolt already absently groping at herself.

In her state he was certain she wouldn’t notice the two new holes he had made for ‘ventilation purposes’ to the walls of her room nor the special extra drawer he had made that had a false back to it to his secret hidden alcove. He rubbed his hands excitedly at the thought of the pleasures he would take upon her slumbering helpless horny body after putting the loot away. And then he suddenly paused, “poor Crippler. What a way to go, ate by a dragon no less. I suppose I will have to make that would be alchemist cook, Heimlich, the new leader as he is the only one left who speaks raven? I am sure if anyone got away it would be that slippery eel! I doubt a dragon would even touch his bony carcass! Oh, I wonder how much a monk will pay for a go with an Amazon teen?! Ha!” and the innkeeper of Giant Tree Inn threw back his head and giggled with incessant glee as he danced a jig kicking gold coins and gems around the room until he stubbed his toe on an iron breastplate and fell clutching his foot and cursing loudly as a raven began to peck and knock at his chamber door.

…THE END…