Mark 2.0: Book 2: Hate Read online

  He looked his deadly beauties in the eye one by one and then asked, “Does this work for everyone?”

  “Yes,” Sasha said quickly and moved to his side.

  Jezebel smiled. “Of course, Mark. I like your way of doing things.”

  Abby turned her eyes up to his, her green tentacle squeezing his bicep.

  “This code of ethics may make our already insurmountable task more difficult, but I will follow your beacon of light… even if our travels take us beyond the Bottomless Black.”

  “Or beyond the mysterious moon,” Jezebel added before she turned around and wagged her white fluff of a tail.

  “Or between the silken sheets,” Sasha purred in his ear.

  Mark shivered with a mix of contentment and excitement as he just took a moment to bathe in the mesmerizing monster-women linked to his heart.

  “Right,” he said finally. “Enough of this beautiful poetry from you three. We know there are six more shards at the top of that mountain along with some earth elemental ass that needs pulverizing.”

  Jezebel held up the Thomellia charm as she approached the group.

  “So, we just brazenly open an interdimensional doorway in their city instead?” Her one strawberry-blonde eyebrow raised as she regarded him with mock disbelief.

  “Yep,” Mark said, reaching out to touch her shoulder.

  The green-eyed satyr snapped the charm, and they instantly appeared in the bustling landing zone. Carved runes and circles decorated the marble under Mark’s feet, and he pulled in a breath of mountain air. These recall charms were invaluable.

  “Sasha,” Mark said as he began walking, “you said that you believe the Lokenda Falls Mountain is in the same place as the Steam Pit on the Wrongside, but like inverted… correct?”

  The succubus shrugged. “Sure, the distance feels right.”

  Mark reached back for Jezebel’s hand, and she took it quickly, hastening her black hooves clacks on the stone to catch up to his side.

  “I believe the difference here, my love, is that we’re fairly confident there isn’t an unfathomable warzone on the other side.”

  “See any doorways yet?” Sasha asked, sarcastically rolling her eyes. “I’m getting bored talking about all this moral bullshit.”

  Mark looked over at the curvy succubus squeezing close to his other side, pressing her soft breasts into his arm, and he realized they needed to stop and pick up their coats before doing anything. He cast his eyes back to Abby and her smooth green skin only covered by a skimpy yellow bikini. Her brow was furrowed as she turned inward, still evaluating her own moral compass.

  He left her to it, and when he swung his head back around to look for telltale pinpoints of light, he caught one right in the middle of a lengthy marble bridge near a violently powerful waterfall. A pack of Vulpath moved straight toward it, and the glinting fractured pinpoint passed through an older guy with tan-fur.

  Tons of rushing water made talking impossible as they passed the dimensional link, but there wasn’t much to talk about anyway. He wasn’t about to rip open a doorway in the middle of all these onlookers, so Mark only took a mental note of its location. Would any of these people see the door once he opened it? His Enthralled did, but… there was always such a towering stack of shit he didn’t know.

  The busy streets were thick with morning travelers all the way to Nalo’s shop on the Fire Level. They had just missed Loa, apparently as she was still out moving product to fund the Awysai drug empire. They traded a silver to purchase a gray knitted sweater for Abby to wear over her bikini, and she was grateful for it.

  “I will never forget the cold, up there,” the abyssal horror said, the tips of her tentacles hanging out of the sleeves. There was a flash of anxiety from her, and Mark could tell she remembered more than the cold. The thief had experienced a lot of pain and fear at the top of that mountain before Mark scooped her up and saved her. He felt their connection pulse once, and she turned to lock her yellow eyes on his. There was a moment of perfect harmony when their hearts seemed to beat as one.

  “Cold up where?” Nalo said, taking a step back and tapping his forehead five times.

  Mark stammered. “Oh? Uh-”

  “Up north,” Sasha said, not technically telling a lie. “You’re lucky I’m so good with directions, Mark.” The voluptuous succubus pulled on her red leather jacket and sashayed toward the exit. “Say hello to Loa for us,” she said over her shoulder on her way out. Mark gave the wolfish shopkeeper a sheepish grin before thanking and him following Sasha out onto the streets outside One Copper Jerky.

  The foot traffic thinned out when they approached the stairs to the Wind Level. A pair of cream-white Vulpath started up the statue stairs ahead of them, and they made him think of the impossibly soft, furry breasts of his once-enthralled painter. How long had it been since he’d left Audra to follow her dreams?

  He was about to ask either Jezebel or Sasha if they had a better sense of time than he did when another mote of blue-and-red light caught his eye as it hovered in the middle of the stairway.

  “I see one,” Mark said, keeping his eyes locked on it. All three Enthralled tightened their bonds on him and focused on looking for something out of place in the area. “On the stairs,” he clarified as he weighed the possibility of opening a door there with the trickle of people around them. He saw a group of black-and-white badger-people carrying sacks of mushrooms heading up and coming down the stairs was what appeared to be a snake with a bearded human face. It was hard to tell because the lengthy creature was wrapped in layers of leather sheets and matted furs.

  “Are we going for it?” Jezebel asked, glancing about nervously.

  There were too many witnesses, but he’d been up these stairs enough to know that if they waited for a few minutes, there was a good chance they’d have an opening. Mark scanned the closest vendors near the carved statue steps for anything with a good angle. He passed over ‘Discount Scrying’ and noticed a banner labeled “Windclaw Corner” over a market stall focused solely on fist-weapons. His mind was forced to cycle through what any of them could do with a fist weapon and stopped when he came to Jez’s armor morphing with her into bear form.

  “Hey!” he said, pointing. “Let’s check out what weapons they have for sale.”

  A spike of confusion hit him from all three beast-women tethered to his heart. Sasha caught on first, but Abby was still frowning when they stood before a slender Vulpath in the center of spikes, blades, and all manner of glinting metal claws. His fur was sable-brown with hints of orange accenting his face and hands.

  “What can I do for you three fine ladies and your Collector?” he said, exposing his fangs in a grisly smile.

  Sasha smiled, her tail swishing slowly. “Finally, someone has it the right way.”

  Mark caught Jezebel fixated on the stairs, and he gave her an elbow in the armor covering her ribs.

  “We were thinking of outfitting our shapeshifting satyr with some stronger claws.”

  “Actually,” Jezebel said, her eyes now dancing around the stall. “That is an amazing idea.”

  Abby held up her tentacle for everyone to see, her oversized sweater drooping off her shoulder.

  “Do you not offer tentacle weapons as well?”

  The vendor eyed the petite abyssal horror and rubbed his furry chin.

  “Mmm, you seem to be a cloth-wearing caster…” he trailed off before turning to pull down a set of small iron hoops with metal blades welded on. “Try one of these.”

  He gingerly handed Abby one of the hoops, and she wrapped her tentacle around it. The tapered end of her smooth, green skin grasped the weapon firmly, yet she held it as if the object was heavier than expected.

  “Casting is now impossible,” she said, slightly deflated.

  “Don’t worry, sweetie,” Sasha said. “I’d probably deep fry my hands if I tried to use one while…”

  She stopped, her tail snapping once behind her then coming to rest. Her sudden spike in se
lf-loathing almost knocked Mark over, and it was only after he looked into Sasha’s roiling thoughts that he remembered his own electrified hands. He looked down at his fingers as he rubbed his thumb against their tips. Faded memories struggled to reach the front of his mind, and he once again became viscerally aware of how impossibly distant that life-altering day felt.

  Shaking it off, he reached out for his ex-AI Assistant’s hand and caught her eyes with his. They were more connected than they had ever been, and he soothed her mind with his warm reassurance.

  His beautiful succubus melted under his gaze, and she gave him a small nod as she squeezed his perfectly working fingers.

  “How much are these?” Jezebel asked. Mark looked down and saw her squeezing a pair of simple iron-knuckles in her fists.

  “Those? Mmm, five silver.”

  Mark’s eye registered this as not only the truth but that he was asking less than he wanted. A quick glance deeper told him that this merchant had been holding on to them for years and was desperate for someone to finally take them off his shelf.

  Mark paid the Vulpath from his pocket and casually glanced at the Wrongside pinhole during the transaction. There was only a lone Vulpath hiking up the stairs and if they left now…

  “Thank you,” Mark said with a quick nod. “We gotta get to the Cloud Consulate before those lines get too big.”

  He hurried his team up the stairs and gave the area one more glance before attempting to tear a hole in their universe. To his right was a high railing and mountainous cliffs. To his left were the slate rooftops of the shops of the Fire Level. With the stairway currently clear in all directions, Mark coated his hand in the new black energy then pulled open the doorway.

  A quick peek confirmed their belief that the upward stairs of Thomellia crossed the downward, blue-dirt stairs of the Steam Pit.

  “In you go,” Mark said, trying to stand in front of it while Sasha, Jezebel, then Abby stepped into the searing heat of the linked dimension.

  After the green-skinned woman in the gray knit sweater was through, Mark joined them and zipped up the hole behind them. A puff of cold air blew through the opening as it vanished, and they were all back in the Wrongside.

  - 3 -

  The concepts of up and down were hard to separate for Mark as the upward-slanting stairs in one universe became the downward-slanting ones in another, but the feeling passed quickly.

  Abby peeled her thick garment off over her head.

  “There is an elemental tolerance branch on my essence tree that I’ve assessed as a waste of points, but I am beginning to see their appeal.”

  Mark nodded as he took off his own leather coat. He glanced over the edge, and the sun-bleached bottom seemed closer than it should be.

  Jezebel daintily clomped down a few steps before turning around and clicking her new iron knuckles together. Everyone watched as their Druid shifted into her thickly muscled bear form. He kept his face on her emerald eyes as the rest of her poured into the shape of a hulking beast.

  Bear-Jezebel held up a huge paw in front of her muzzle, and they all saw that her claws were now coated in blades of iron. The leather-clad beast let out a deep grunt then shifted back to the smaller satyr.

  “The skill is quite clear on the leather armor restrictions, but apparently fist weapons are compatible,” she said, her emerald eyes focused on the basic hunk of iron wrapped around her fingers. “This proves that we need to be experimenting more.”

  “Essence first,” Abby said, shoving her sweater into Jezebel’s arms for storage. “I’ve realized that I will always be behind you two in that regard.”

  Mark could feel her frustration at not being the best, and he grabbed her shoulder from behind.

  “You’re right, but this is a collective, not a competition. We have plenty of time to fill you with so much essence the difference will become unnoticeable.”

  The abyssal horror nodded slowly. “Your logic is irrefutable.”

  “Great,” he said. “Now let’s see what this weird underground machine did with itself after I gave that watery woman her new purpose based on Awysai sex drugs and hope we can find a dimensional crossover point.”

  The group moved down the sharp-cut stairs and into the long dark tunnel leading into the billions of tons of blue dirt around them. The cool darkness was again a welcome break from the searing Wrongside sun. Neither angry nor horny clouds of steam could be seen anywhere until they reached the end of the main corridor. As before, all four of them stood overlooking the massive machine floor where the woman in the tank was located.

  Last time, the mysterious factory was mostly empty. Now, there seemed to be hundreds of pink clouds- and all of them were writhing in one huge orgy. The tank appeared to hold only liquid, and directly in front of it, a pinpoint of light hovered above the oral sex puffs they’d help create.

  “Hello?” Mark called out, trying to get the attention of the woman in the tank. His voice echoed off the forest of pipes and machinery, but nothing else happened. The ladder they’d used to climb out still remained against the wall, and he gazed down its length into the madness below.

  The horny cloud entities reminded him of a honeybee dance as they all writhed in one uncountable train of oral sex. Where one puffy set of lips ended, a vertical slit between fluffy ass cheeks began.

  “There’s a doorway down there,” he said, turning to Sasha. “You think it would take us beyond the gate on the mountain?”

  “Maybe?” she shrugged.

  Abby coiled her tentacle around his fingers, and he turned to see her staring out at the empty tank.

  “If the mirror universe concept holds true,” she said, then looked into his eyes. “I can surmise that this tank reflects the woman in the globe we observed when you rescued me.”

  Mark nodded. “Hey, you might be right. Okay, I’m going down,” he said as he put on his leather coat again.

  He climbed down the metal ladder and paused only a moment before gently sliding his boot between the layer of mist creatures. They seemed to have no interest in him, however, and parted a little to give him room as he moved. Satisfied he wasn’t going to get mobbed by oral-sex elementals, Mark moved toward the tank and the shimmer of light a few yards in front of it.

  Before he did anything, he cast a glance back up at his Enthralled to see Jezebel holding position halfway down the ladder. The others crouched near the ledge, and they all silently waited for him to do his thing.

  “Here goes nothing,” he said before coating his left hand in crackling shadow. As if pulling aside a drape, Mark opened a doorway back to his starting dimension.

  Directly in front of him and in the exact same spatial location, was a ghostly white Vulpath woman suspended in a 10-foot glass sphere. She spasmed in bizarre reverse movements that felt wrong in his mind and then tilted her head back and silently screamed as if in terrible pain.

  There were no earth elemental men to be seen, and it seemed like the perfect place to sneak back into the Dreamcatcher’s castle at the top of the mountain.

  “You guys ready for round two with the weird banshee and rock men?”

  “Yes,” Abby answered as Jezebel began moving her hooves down the rungs of the metal ladder. The armored satyr tuned to wade through the lusty clouds, but it seemed they were more interested in her than they were Mark.

  “Oh!” she said. “These things are trying to get at my crotch.”

  Mark tensed for combat, but he relaxed as he watched her effortlessly shove the buoyant fluffs of warm steam out of her way. Sasha came up behind her and got the same insistent fluffy lips slurping for her crotch but was a bit more aggressive with them, making it clear she wasn’t into whatever it was they wanted.

  The strawberry-blonde Druid made it to the portal and looked through, studying the scene on the other side.

  “What is going on there…” she mumbled to herself.

  Sasha clomped up to the portal next, and Mark caught her spade tail batting away the persi
stent oral advances. Behind her and over near the ladder, he saw Abby standing still with her smooth legs spread apart. One of her tentacle arms had pulled aside her yellow bikini bottoms, and she currently had a pair of steamy lips on both her bare pussy and her asshole.

  Now that he was paying attention to her, he could feel a distant shadow of the hot pleasure that currently had her big eyes rolling into the back of her head.

  “Abby,” Mark said quietly, and her yellow irises slid back down to focus on him. He continued. “We’re kinda doing a thing here. After we finish, I bet Sasha and Jezebel will do that for you later.”

  Her eyes shot open wide, and she let her bottoms snap back into place. She quickly stalked forward, roughly shoving the cunnilingus-clouds out of her way.

  “I believe I would enjoy that immensely. I’m still trying to parse how vivid my new world is.”

  Now that they were all together, it was time to move out. Mark caught their eyes and nodded toward the doorway he was holding open.

  “I think Jez should go-”

  “Shit,” Sasha interrupted, pointing back toward the hole. He turned to look and saw two of the pink clouds from Wrongside floating around near the glass ball.

  “Shit!” Mark agreed. “Let’s go! Now!”

  Jezebel jumped in first, then Sasha, and two more clouds followed them in. A few more were excited to follow Abby, but Mark was able to stop the flow of interdimensional cross-contamination as he shut the rift behind him.

  A burst of lightning from Sasha demanded his attention before he could take anything else in, but it was an effective way to focus on what was important. Behind the portal were three of the creatures made from pressed rock and sand, and Mark made a brief mental note encouraging him to try looking through the portal from different sides next time.