It was liquid volatile magic, condensed by the blight into a corrosive downpour.
"Wait!" Rhea cut the wolf's teeth in a flash effortlessly. She gathered the moss fast and bag them with the teeth. Her movement were precise and fast.
"Run!" She screamed, grabbing his arm.
They scrambled through the woods. The rain began to fall harder, hissing as it hit the stone trees. Every drop that touched their skin felt like a bee sting. Nnael stumbled, his stamina bottoming out. Rhea didn't let him fall. She hauled him up, her arm around his waist, carrying him.
"The cave!" she shouted over the roar of the wind. "By the ridge!"
They threw themselves into a narrow fissure in the rock face just as the heavens opened up.
The cave was small, barely a crawlspace that widened into a damp, cramped hollow. It smelled of wet fur and limestone. Outside, the world turned into a waterfall of hissing violet rain.
They collapsed against the back wall, panting.
It was pitch black, save for the occasional flash of mana-lightning outside.
"Are you burned?" Rhea asked, her hands frantic, checking his face and his arms.
"I'm fine," Nnael wheezed. "Just... tired."
But they weren't really fine.
The temperature dropped. The Mana-Storm sucked the heat out of the air. The cave became an icebox within minutes.
Rhea was soaked. Her tunic was plastered to her skin, transparent in the gloom. She was shivering violently, her teeth chattering.
"C-cold," she stuttered, wrapping her arms around herself. Her Constitution was high, but her mana was critically low from the fight and stamina from the run. She had no internal fire to keep her warm.
"Come here," Nnael said.
"W-what?"
"Body heat, Rhea. If we stay apart, we freeze."
He didn't wait for her to argue. He pulled her toward him.
The space was too small to sit side by side. Nnael sat with his back against the stone, and Rhea, driven by instinct and hypothermia, crawled between his legs. She curled into him, her back pressing against his chest.
The contact was a shock.
This is nice, yes, curl into me dear sister. Nnael had this thought as habbit.
She was freezing on the surface, but underneath, she was a furnace of muscle and blood. Nnael wrapped his arms around her, locking his hands over her stomach.
"Closer," he whispered against her wet hair.
I really must build this body up, damn you Reaper, this is not body, it's a stick, shit. He cursed inside his head, I must train and getting stronger. How can I even want to seduce the goddesses with this body. I must get stronger and I have to done it fast.
Rhea shuddered. She pushed backward, trying to burrow into his warmth. Her heavy, bound breasts were crushed against her knees as she curled up, but her back... her back was pressed flush against Nnael's chest.
He felt everything, the thick leather bindings of her chest digging into his ribs. He felt the curve of her spine. This firm, powerful muscles of ass, felt like marshmallow, shit, I want to squeeze them hard. His head dived into more filthy thought, his cock began to throb as Rhea settled into the cradle of his hips.
And Rhea also felt him.
She felt the hardness of his crotch. It was huge. He was thin, yes, but he was still a man. And right now, pressed against her lower back, there was rigid proof of his gender, something no amount of cold could suppress.
Rhea gasped, her breath hitching. She should have moved away. But instead, a bolt of liquid heat shot straight to her groin.
Her body betrayed her instantly. The friction of his chest against her back, the way his arms caged her, the urge to feel the huge hardness of his crotch... It all triggered something she desperately craved.
"Nnael..." she whimpered, her voice tight. "You're... you're hard."
Hehe, you don't know how huge it is, sister. His lustful instincts roamed unchecked, but not now, first, lemme get stronger, then you can suck my cock deep in your throat, He talked inside his mind, even as he tried to rein them in.
"Ignore it." Nnael said steady, betraying nothing as his blood roared beneath the surface.
But she couldn't.
She shifted her hips, a microscopic movement, grinding her ass backward against him. It wasn't a conscious decision. It was an itch. A deep, maddening itch inside her that screamed to be scratched.
Her nipples hardened into painful points against the wet linen of her tunic. They rubbed against the leather bindings with every shiver, sending sharp zings of pleasure-pain through her nerves. She felt heavy between her legs, a wet aching throb that made her thighs clamp together involuntarily.
She wanted to turn around, to straddle him. She didn't know why. It was wrong, yes, that was she thought. He was her brother, yes, but she also need his touch.
"I... I feel weird," Rhea whispered, her head lolling back onto his shoulder. Her neck was exposed, the wet skin pale and inviting. "So hot... but cold..."
She arched her back, pressing her breasts out, her body seeking more contact, more pressure. Her hand drifted down, fingers brushing her own thigh, inching inward toward the heat.
My gosh, Rhea, ugh, I really want burried my face on those boobs. Nnael felt her ass pressed against his hardening crotch. The sensation was pure ecstasy, sending shivers down his spine. He smelled her arousal, a thick, musky scent that mingled with the rain.
He could take her. Right now, yeah, that what he thought.
And she wouldn't even stop him. She would beg for it.
But Nnael was once an Emperor, a conquerer, not a scavenger. He didn't take broken things. He broke them, fixed them, owned them, and make them their queen.
"Rhea," Nnael whispered, his voice dropping an octave. He tightened his grip around her waist, stopping her hand. "Breathe, Rhea."
He closed his eyes.
His Pore-Breathing was still active back from the forest. It costed him 1 mana hourly, but the intent he used his pore to breath was to inhaling raw and toxic mana, yet he needed to refine them. He'd learn. He learned fast
And now, he didn't just breathe the air. He pressed his chest against her back, and breathed her.
He opened the pores on his torso, visualizing the excess heat radiating off her feverish, aroused body as mana. It was a chaotic energy generated by her lust.
He inhaled it, drawing the heat out of her skin and into his own depleted circuits.
It was like drinking warm honey.
Rhea gasped, her body going rigid. The sensation of him pulling the energy from her was intense. It felt like his skin was sucking on hers, a thousand tiny mouths latching onto her skin. She felt incredibly arroused, overwhelming.
"Nnael!" she cried out, her hips jerking against him. "What you... doing?"
"Saving you," he gritted out, channeling the energy, taking the violent mana from the storm, "stay still." He filtered it through the heat of her body, and pulled it into his marrow.
He felt his mana ticking up.
Faster than the cost required to activate the skill.
He siphoned the fever from her blood.
She slumped against him, her head resting heavily on his shoulder, her body limp and pliable in his arms.
"You're warm," she mumbled, her eyes fluttering closed. "So warm..."
Nnael held her there as the storm raged outside. He looked down at the Laborer's Brand on her wrist.
It was flaring a dim pulse.
But as he looked out at the violet lightning tearing the sky apart, he saw something else. Deep in the woods, illuminated by a flash of mana-light, the ground wasn't just wet. It was glowing.
A faint pulse of copper light was beating beneath the roots of the trees, leading back toward the village, to their cottage.
Nnael could feel it.
He smiled in the dark.
...
...