Redux: Lineage

After Angela had been filled in on the details of our hunt for Heimili, she was rearing to go. Her eyes literally sparkled with excitement, a faint yellow aura glowing around her and her body shaking where she stood. Angela seemed to be a bundle of energy and violence once she'd returned to her younger form, and she never seemed to stop moving, constantly shadow boxing or performing some kind of exercise to keep herself going. She finally dressed herself after spending twenty minutes wandering around the third floor as naked as the day she was born; Luna needed to remind her that she couldn't run around outside like that and dragged her into her wardrobe.

She dressed fast, ignoring a shirt entirely and deciding to wrap her breasts with nothing more than white bandages, doing the same to her hands and fingers, throwing around a long brown overcoat that she kept open, pulling on a pair of tight brown pants, and wearing knee-high leather boots. She once again crackled her knuckles, turning around to Luna with her arms held out by her sides and a wide smile on her face, getting an appreciative wolf-whistle from the ancient Alicorn before striding past her.

"Are we ready to go kill this Manticore or what?" she asked, bouncing back and forth between her feet as she started shadow boxing once more. "I haven't been this ready to fight in over two hundred years."

"Aren't we gonna need the others?" I asked, looking the woman up and down as I walked over to her.

"Of course not," she said, jabbing a thumb towards herself and grinning. "I'm all you need, kid."

I was silent for a brief moment, turning around to Luna with an open mouth and an outstretched finger before the older woman seemed to read my mind, answering my questions with a gentle chuckle.

"Yes, she was always this energetic, yes, you get used to it, and no, she never stops being like this," she said. "Is that all?"

"That covers it, yeah," I nodded, trailing my eyes back over to Angela, now occupying herself by performing two-finger push-ups on the floor with one hand behind her back. "Am I gonna need to do the same thing you do with an excited puppy?"

"Walk it until it passes out?" Luna asked. "Yes, almost definitely."

"Right," I shrugged, patting my leg and whistling. "Come on, Angela. Come here, girl!"

The woman looked at me with a very bemused expression, pushing herself up from her fingers with a mighty shove back up to her standing height and stretching her arms out behind her.

"Alright then, kiddo!" she said with a wide smirk, patting me on the back hard enough to nearly launch me off my feet. "Let's get us some hunting done, alright?"

"Lead the way," I said, gesturing with my hand. "It seems safer behind you. And a much more pleasant view."

"Keep focused here," Luna said, taking a seat in Angela's chair and propping her feet up on the desk. "I'll handle Guild Master duties while you're gone, Angela. Have fun!"

The 'fun' seemed to be nearly needing to jog to keep up with Angela's rapid pace, the woman smiling and waving at all the drooling men and jealous wives she walked past. Her coat billowed in the icy winds, but her strong body showing no signs of discomfort from the temperature. She trudged through the city, down the small hill to the forest where the Manticore had been spotted, and formulated a plan for us both.

"Look for any signs of damage, okay?" she suggested. "Broken branches, claw marks, upturned stoned, and foot prints. That'll help us get a lead on where it is."

"Yeah... I know," I said. "I'm a hunter too, remember? Luna trained me to recognise and follow that kind of stuff."

"Oh yeah," she said, scratching the back of her head with a sheepish grin. "Well, you'll have to excuse me. Memory's not what it used to be at my age... it used to be a unicorn."

"..."

"..."

"What?"

"What?"

"I..." I said, looking at her with disbelief. "Never... nevermind. Let's just start looking for the Manticore, okay?"

"Sure thing, boss," she smirked, getting an eye and ear to the ground and beginning to look around for any signs of where the creature could've been. I wandered around myself, keeping an eye out for any disturbances, while also pondering how different Angela seemed from before. True, I'd only met her sparingly before she'd become young again, but the way she acted then as opposed to now made her seem like a completely different person. I'd heard it was true that you slowed down in your old age, but I didn't realise that youth and vigour had the same effect on the elderly as three kilograms of cocaine.

I could hear her muttering excitedly to herself, discussing plant roots, geodes, and tree bark of all things, sounding rather much like a crazy person let out of the nut house. I made my way through the treeline, knowing that the Manticore was small enough to fit through the first line of the evergreens, but would be much too big to squeeze through the denser forests without leaving some kind of trace, be it broken branches or scraps of fur stuck to trees.

And scraps of fur it was, it seemed, as I found a large clump of golden hair stuck to a strand of torn bark over two meters above ground. That meant the Manticore was fully grown and male, as the golden fur clump came from the creature's mane and was at the right height for an average-sized male in the species. I looked around in the snow for any prints, seeing several of them stamped into the ground with the right paw missing two toes.

"It's been through the ringer, then," I said, noting the damage to its body. "Wonder what else it's got wrong with it..."

"So!" Angela exclaimed suddenly, having silently charged up behind me and nearly jumped onto my back, pressing her huge breasts into my spine and allowing her warmth to spread through me, snaking an arm around my waist and holding me close. "Guess what I just found?"

"Is it a reason to stay like that for a few more minutes?" I asked, rolling my shoulders to move and press against her breasts. "I hope it's that."

"You're so terrible," she giggled, ruffling my hair playfully before reaching behind her back. "But no, I found this!"

She pulled a large, withered stinger out from her coat, marked and stained with years of combat and use, only now to have dropped off entirely, as the fact that root of the stinger was still attached instead of it being snapped off. The fact that the Manticore's appendage had fallen off in this pristine, so to speak, a manner was a signal of one thing: it was drawing near the end of its life. Manticores only lived for around seventeen years, and as they get to their dying days, bits and pieces start falling off of them. Teeth come loose, hair starts to shed more frequently, and the stinger of their tail will just fall out.

"So that means-" I began.

"-this fight is going to be really damn boring," Angela sighed, tucking the stinger back into her coat and moving away from me, robbing me of the warm embrace of her arms and breasts.

"Surely that's a good thing?" I asked her, turning around and trudging through the mass of snow-covered sticks and rotting leaves.

Angela stopped for a moment, her hands on her hips and a heavy expression on her face, turning her emerald eyes to me with a look of disappointment.

"For a normal person, maybe," she said, nodding sombrely as she spoke. "But for me, there's no honour, no glory, in hunting down a creature that's too old to defend himself. There's no challenge, no struggle involved in it, and because of that, I can't count it as a notch under my belt. It's too easy, Richter."

She seemed genuinely downtrodden about this, as if some part of her soul or life had been snuffed out by the lack of a challenge in this hunt. I understood where she was coming from, though. I didn't hold any of the same beliefs about hunting, especially hunting monsters, as I felt that the easier it is to take something dangerous down, the easier and faster it is to save people. I didn't hunt for sport; I hunted to save people. But, even so, I could still empathise with her sadness.

"Hey," I said, walking over to her and putting a warm, supportive hand on her shoulder. "Why not see it as a warm-up for Heimili? A training dummy for the real deal?"

She was silent for a long moment, looking up at me with that same, sombre expression in her eyes, that fire she once had gone from them altogether.

"Come on, Angela," I said, giving her a supportive smile. "You're too beautiful to not smile. Cheer up, will you?"

A little bit of her excitement flared up once more, a small-yet-honest smile appearing on her face as she looked into my eyes, cocking an eyebrow at me before shaking her head, chuckling quietly and taking a deep breath.

"Alright then, hot-shot," she said, placing her hands on her hips and looking out into the forest. "Training warm-up, or whatever you want to call this little ego shield."

"If you want an ego boost, I'm sure I can come up with enough compliments to make you get a big head again," I shrugged, walking through the little trail of damaged ground and trees leading us to the dying Manticore. "They can be sexual ones, or they can't, if you'd like?"

"Make em sexual," she said. "Just don't get too gratuitous."

"Alright then, where'd you want me to start?" I asked, looking over my shoulder as she followed behind me.

"Start from the top and work your way down," she said. "Do your best."

"Fair enough, we'll start with your hair," I said, looking around at the damaged bark as I spoke. "You've got to have the most beautiful, soft-looking set of locks I've seen in a long while. That crop of gold on your head enraptures me and the softness of it is something that could keep me entertained for hours as we lay together, twirling locks around my finger while I planted kisses on your beautiful, plump lips."

"Ahhh..." she said, grinning widely and resting her hands behind her head. "My ego feels nice right now."

"As it should," I said, ducking under an uprooted tree that had gotten caught on the way down between two other intersecting evergreens. "The only reason I can't call you perfect is because it's not a human quality, but you're a halo away from being so."

"Aaahhh, nice and cheesy," she giggled, patting me on the shoulder.

I quickly placed my hand on hers, spinning her around and pulling her closer to me, our faces inches apart as she stared into my eyes.

"And don't even get me started on those gorgeous emeralds of yours," I said, being able to feel her breath on my nose as she shivered in excitement. "I could sell my crown, my castle, and my soul to a demon and they still wouldn't be worth as much those beauties are."

"Alright, Big Boy," Angela smirked, wrapping her arms around my neck and holding me close. "Keep this up and we might be fucking, here and now."

"I thought you didn't want it to be gratuitous?" I asked. "Wanted it to be elegant and respectful?"

"If you can use your tongue to pleasure me as well as you compliment me," she smirked, planting her lips mere centimetres from mine. "Then I'll consider that both elegant and respectful."

"Then I'd best get to work," I chuckled, pressing my lips against hers and losing myself in her warm embrace and passionate kiss. Her mint-flavoured tongue, clearly magically enhanced, slid into my mouth as she pushed me up against a large, semi-toppled tree, sliding her hands up my shirt and toying with my muscular abdomen. I did the same with her, using my strong fingers to poke and probe her stronger abdomen, each defined muscle on her trained body being rock-solid and warm through and through.

I soon slid my hands under her coat and down her backside, clamping my hands onto her squat-forged ass and squeezing it gently while lapping and probing her tongue. I listened to her passionate moans of arousal and desperation, trying to push her wet muscle deeper and deeper into my mouth, seemingly enraptured with my own taste. She broke away from me a moment later, her eyes full of lust and her cheeks flushed with red, cast her coat aside and took my hands to clamp them onto her enormous breasts, forcing me to push the wrapping away and feel her rigid nipples dig into my palms.

I could feel my cock beginning to swell in my pants. Angela did as well as she began to rub the rapidly-growing bulge with her palm, curling her fingers around it eventually and beginning to gently squeeze and stroke it. I placed my tongue on her neck, the cold air making her gasp as it cooled the spit on her neck. The two of us huddled close, sharing our warmth as she undid my belt, sliding my near-foot-long cock out of my pants and gasping in amazement. She pulled back the foreskin on the monstrous head and started rubbing it with her thumb.

I groaned in pleasure as she began to pump her hands up and down my sex organ, it being more than big enough for both of them with inches to spare. The mix of her warm touch and the biting cold of the air around us brought a strange sense of both discomfort and satisfaction, with her warmth being evermore appreciated when it covered the inches it needed to. I slid a single hand away from her breasts, pushing it into her pants and beginning to toy with the folds of her pussy, her warm cavern already dripping and soaking the tight-fitting cotton she wore. The newly-restored sex bomb began grinding her cunt against my fingers as she let out a moan and a shiver being awarded for my pleasuring efforts.

The moment was perfect, the foreplay was intense, and the fucking would've been ever so satisfying had the Manticore, now of all moments, decided to make itself known while the two of us literally had our pants around our ankles. The enormous being charged towards us, baring what was left of its fangs, and knocked trees and bushes down in a mighty sprint that we were barely able to dodge. With sex organs ready and rearing to go, the two of us were forced to try and tuck in and dry off as quickly as possible. Angela covered her breasts and grabbed her coat while I fumbled with the buttons on my pants, trying as hard as I could to tuck my eleven inch cock down my leg without spraining it.

Once we were covered up again, hearts pounding from a mix of frustrated arousal and genuine anger at the Manticore, we prepared ourselves for battle. I drew my sword from its sheath, squaring my stance and preparing for a fight, while Angela lashed her hands down by her sides, her eyes glowing yellow as her magic kicked in and her fists covered with giant yellow ones. Her construct magic was working wonders now that she was back to her youth and full strength. She launched forward at the Manticore, slamming her enormous fist into its face and knocking several shards of fang from its mouth in a single blow.

I rushed in, slashing briefly at the Manticore's back legs and managing to dodge under a slash from its stinger-less tail, bringing my sword up in a countering fashion only for the metal blade to bounce off the tail's exoskeleton without leaving so much as a scratch.

"Harder than plate armour," I reminded myself. "And barely any reachable gaps."

I landed a few more strikes on the beast's legs, spewing green blood onto the snow around us with the heat of the fluid rising off the white ice like steam, and I turned my eyes back to Angela. There was no elegant warrior’s term to describe what she was doing, no name for the technique, and no tournament way to classify it other than "Angela was beating the living shit out of this Manticore." Over and over again, she cocked back her enormous fists, brutally pounding the creature in the mouth, knocking out shards of teeth and globs of blood.

Its eyes were swollen shut, its tongue had been nearly severed clean off after hitting against its teeth as many times as it had, and its face was nothing more than a shattered skull held together by flesh and muscle. The beasts whimpered and crowed in an aged, pained manner and a pang of remorse welled up inside me; I didn’t want this creature to die in such an agonising fashion after trying to do no more than protect its territory. It clearly had no chance of winning and I wanted it to die quickly, so I dashed over to Angela and made my request, hand on her shoulder and mouth near her ear.

She nodded quickly, changing the giant fist construct into an enormous spear, cocking her arm back and throwing the spear directly into the beast's ruined eye socket. The monster went stiff where it stood as she destroyed its brain, the muscles going into spasm as it toppled over onto the floor, blood pouring out of the eye as the construct disappeared in an explosion of sparks that soon faded to nothing. Angela crossed her arms over her chest and smiled proudly.

"So..." I said to her as I placed a hand on her shoulder. "You finished that off so fast that I still haven't gone soft yet."

"Well keep that nice and big for me," she said, pulling me into an embrace and kissing me once more. "Because we're going back to my bedroom and putting it to good use, okay?"

"That's sounds perfect," I chuckled, eager and ready to fuck her good and proper after the blue-balling I'd just received from this bastard Manticore. And as for claiming the reward and paying the mercenaries to work for me... I'd much rather claim this ass and pay it a pounding first.