bluedragonauthor

VIP: The Blue Dragon: Chapter 35

Added 2024-08-15 21:29:42 +0000 UTC

My apologies for the posting delay. I had some personal matters I needed to take care of but should be back on schedule now. Thank you for your patience as I catch up.

****

-- CHAPTER 35: Cindy Lou --

****

I screamed until my throat was raw.

I screamed until my voice died out completely.

Ziyi was dead.

I’d thought she was dead before. Her neck had been bent at an unnatural angle back in the Palace of Great Benevolence after battling the seven-foot-tall Huodou Fire Dog, but as it turned out, she’d been able to survive that encounter. But the crumpled mess I saw before me now had suffered far more than a simple broken neck.

It looked like every single bone in Ziyi’s body had been shattered. Not only had she been folded in half, but the rock that had entombed her had also compressed together, flattening everything from the neck down into a folded-in-half pancake. She’d been fully armored with her scales covering her body up to her neck, but while they may have been strong enough to turn back a bazooka shell, they certainly hadn’t been strong enough to stop her body from being crushed. Arms, legs, torso, everything: trash-compacted into a bloody mess of flesh only a couple of inches thick.

Her head had been outside of the impact zone. Her head was completely intact. But there was no life behind her sightless eyes. She didn’t blink. She didn’t breathe. She didn’t make a sound behind that infernal ball-gag still propping open her mouth.

My lover was dead.

I couldn’t collapse to the floor, much as I might want to. I couldn’t even sink to my knees, not with the enchanted earth shackles binding my feet to the floor about halfway up my shins. So I simply stood there, burying my face in my hands, sobbing like an infant and covering my eyes so I wouldn’t have to stare at her destroyed body anymore.

“Do you want her back?” Shen Wu asked softly, although any gentleness in his tone was washed away a moment later when he cackled like an evil villain from some campy budget horror movie.

It took me another minute to stop crying. I wiped the leftover tears from my eyes, stood up straight, and glared at the ancient sorcerer without replying out loud. We both already knew the answer to his question.

Shen Wu’s arm was extended, dirty fingernails pointing straight at the dead hui between us. Once he was sure I was paying attention, he flipped his hand over and slowly curled his fingers into a ball, baring his grotesque teeth that hadn’t been brushed in a thousand years and opening his inky black eyes wide while he growled.

The flattened pile of flesh twitched once.

Then it twitched twice.

Ziyi’s folded-in-half body straightened out. Her legs extended, her arms tucked in by her side. Like I was watching a video playing in reverse, I saw the pool of blood beneath her body contracting inward and gradually disappearing. Her arms, legs, and torso thickened, swelling outward as the various internal components that gave her body mass and dimension slowly reformed. The whole process took much longer than it had taken for the rat, but in the end, Ziyi looked more or less like Ziyi.

And then she opened her eyes.

Her empty-black-pools-of-nothingness eyes. Her jade-green irises had been completely covered. Her mouth was a hard line. She remained flat on her back, staring up at the ceiling. And at first, she didn’t move at all.

“Ziyi?” I asked hesitantly.

I swear a sharp crescendoing jump-scare sound echoed throughout the cavern when Ziyi abruptly jerked up into a seated position and turned to look at me. If it weren’t for the earthen shackles around my feet, I would’ve literally jumped backwards. But I couldn’t move, and my no-longer-quite-dead lover continued to stare blankly straight at me, neither speaking nor otherwise moving for a long time. And I had enough time to catch my breath before trying again.

“Ziyi?”

“Aksel Andersen,” she stated in a flatly monotonous voice.

I frowned. “It’s me. Chezhou…”

“You are Aksel Andersen, The Chosen One of Qinglong. You are the one destined to find Faguang Long,” she continued in the same tone, like an automated voice messaging system. She looked like Ziyi, but the spark of life that had made her a person wasn’t there.

“Ziyi, please. Don’t you remember me? Don’t you remember us?”

“I remember,” she replied listlessly. “But your Ziyi is gone. I am only Jade.”

Dong suddenly popped up on my shoulder. “It’s her hun. Remember, she has two souls: the po that is tied to her corporeal body, and the hun that contains her spirit. Shen Wu reanimated her, but he didn’t resurrect her. Her po is still in there. But her hun…” Dong winced as his voice trailed off.

“Her hun is gone? Forever?”

“That is up to you,” Shen Wu interjected, descending the steps alongside the dais. He gestured dismissively, and as if she had been switched off with the push of a button, Ziyi’s eyelids closed and her body collapsed limply like a ragdoll back down to the ground, her arms askew. The old man then grinned a sickening grin at me, stating smugly, “I do not have the power to rejoin your lover’s hun to her body. Only Faguang Long has the power to do that.”

“Only Faguang Long,” I grunted, staring at the simulacrum of the woman I loved while recalling the look on her face when she’d stared at me. There had been no warmth in her expression, no soul behind her eyes. Ziyi had been alive… sort of… but she didn’t truly live.

The Golden Dragon had the power to warp and shape the very fabric of reality. In theory, restoring the hun soul to a single reanimated woman would be a piece of cake.

All this time, I’d been told it was my destiny to find Faguang Long in order to stop a great evil and save the world. But truth be told, saving the world didn’t matter much to me if Ziyi wasn’t in it.

Motivation. That’s what Shen Wu had said. He didn’t need me to want Faguang Long for him. He needed me to want Faguang Long for me.

Well I did.

“Tell me what you want me to do.”

****

The main tower of Himeji-jo was known as Daitenshu or “Great Castle Tower”. It had seven floors: one underground and six above. Inside the top floor was a square wooden structure with purple curtains featuring white flowers. A placard identified it as the shrine to Osakabehime, the Japanese yōkai supposedly inhabiting and protecting the castle. If she was, she wasn’t doing a very good job of it at the moment.

I was no longer naked. Shen Wu had given me cotton sweatpants, cheap white sneakers, and a tourist t-shirt with a giant picture of Himeji castle on it. He’d also given me some pre-packaged snacks, which made me wonder how he’d obtained all of these items. Had the ancient, undead sorcerer gone down to the gift shop and purchased everything with a credit card? I’d tried to imagine such a situation, given his skeletal appearance and anachronistic clothing. Did he have some thus far unseen lackey running around in the background doing his bidding? Or had he sent his rats in during the night to acquire all of the items?

I supposed it didn’t really matter. What was important was that I had clothing and had been fed. My feet were no longer shackled to the earth. I stood on the polished wood flooring, free to walk around wherever I wanted to go. Bordering the room was a corridor with windows to the outside. From them, I could see across the lit-up city all the way to the Seto Inland Sea to the south and vast mountain ranges to the north, east, and west. It was nearing dawn, with the sun’s rays just starting to peak above the mountains to the east. We were running out of time.

Beside me stood Ziyi, or at least the reanimated body of Ziyi. The soulless woman did not respond to the name at all, only reacting if I called her ‘Jade’, which only served to reinforce the idea that while she might look just like the woman I loved, it wasn’t really her.

In a way, I didn’t really want her around. The cognitive dissonance of her very existence - both alive and undead - gave me a headache and stressed me out. I simultaneously wanted to reach out and hold her in my arms as well as push her away and never let that… thing… get within ten feet of me. But I knew that her presence in accompanying me was a requirement if the mission was to be completed.

Not that Shen Wu necessarily believed me.

“I tried to tell you while you were busy crushing her, but you wouldn’t listen,” I insisted before repeating for what felt like the umpteenth time, “She’s the only one who can get the Sword of Baihu!”

“You lie,” he snarled. “This is an American trick to try and resurrect your beloved without fulfilling your end of the bargain. The hui yaoguai will remain with ME until you return with Faguang Long.”

“No, no, no. This isn’t a trick,” I insisted. “If it were up to me, I’d LET you keep her; to be perfectly honest, she kinda freaks me out. But I’m telling you: I met Baihu. She’s the one who declared that Ziyi is the only one who can take the sword.”

“But you are the one of prophecy. Only The Chosen One can unlock the gates leading to the four relics. Only The Chosen One can find Faguang Long.”

“The way she said it, I may be The Chosen One of Qinglong the Azure Dragon, but that doesn’t make me The Chosen One of Baihu the White Tiger.”

Shen Wu pursed his lips and studied me, scrutinizing my face for any signs of deception.

I held my hands out and did my best to give him a frank expression, to make sure he understood I was telling the truth. “I may have been the one destined to find Faguang Long, but that doesn’t mean I was destined to do it alone. Baihu made absolutely clear to me that she wouldn’t let me take the sword, and that only Ziyi could do so. I didn’t really want to believe in destiny before, but I have to believe it now. I have to believe that she is meant to claim it - even in this state - and come back to me the way she was.”

The reanimated viper lady next to me didn’t react when I gestured vaguely in her direction to illustrate what I mean by “in this state”. She wasn’t a shambling zombie, but nor was she the living, breathing, loving woman I’d come to care so much about. Her manner was to remain supremely still, almost like a mannequin. When she did move, it was only in an economically efficient manner when needed. She didn’t even seem to breathe, staring blankly straight ahead and out the windows to the west with those empty black eyes.

She didn’t react to my gesture, nor did she react when Shen Wu began to pace around her, studying her. She remained absolutely still, continuing to stare out to the west.

Shen Wu stopped scrutinizing Ziyi and turned to frown at me. “You claim that Baihu the White Tiger stated that this woman - Jade the Viper - is The Chosen One?” he asked incredulously.

I held out my hands again. “That’s what she said.”

His eyes narrowed. “But there can only be one prophesized ‘Chosen One’.”

“I know, right? It’s in the name ‘Chosen One’. But don’t ask me to make heads or tails of Ancient Chinese Prophecies.”

Shen Wu shook his head like the math didn’t add up, and he gave me a freshly confused look, as if he was only discovering now that I wasn’t who he thought I was. I remembered having that same expression on my face one day when a couple of girls by the Santa Monica Pier started screaming, ‘That’s Michael Jordan! That’s Michael Jordan!’ and I’d wandered over to discover with mild disappointment that it was Michael B. Jordan of Black Panther fame signing autographs and not the Chicago Bulls basketball legend.

“Who ARE you?” the undead sorcerer asked.

“My name is Aksel Andersen,” I stated firmly, drawing myself up to my full height. “You should know that, already.”

He shook his head as if I didn’t understand. “What is your REAL name, boy? The name you were given at birth?”

“I don’t know. I never knew. I was raised by Merethe Andersen of Van Nuys, California, because my real mother was murdered in the street at the intersection of Sepulveda and Victory when I was just a baby. Murdered by the Cao Wei. A murder ordered by you.”

Shen Wu’s right eyebrow went up. “I know of no such order.”

“You sure? You’ve probably ordered a lot of murders over the years.”

“I have,” he admitted without a trace of guilt, and in fact sneered quite smugly. “But why would I care to murder the mother of a small, baby boy?”

“Because she was a daughter descended from the Shu Han Dynasty. Because you believed that perhaps she could be The Chosen One who would fulfill the prophecy and find Faguang Long.”

“Shu Lien,” the rat demon seethed, speaking the name as if it were a curse word, his nostrils flaring and his upper lip pulling back in a snarl.

“Yes, that’s right,” I confirmed, having only heard the name spoken aloud once before, back when Rae first told me about the prophecy. But it was a name I would never forget, because it was the name of my real mom.

Shen Wu shook his head. “I did not order the murder of your mother, Aksel Anderson, nor did anyone else in the Cao Wei. Whoever told you that lied.”

“And I’m supposed to believe a word you say?”

The man took a step forward, pushing his face uncomfortably close to mine, so close that I could smell his rotting flesh and even worse, his incredibly foul halitosis. It was enough to nearly make me pass out, and I took a step back while waving my hand in front of my face. But he paid me no mind as he growled quite menacingly, “The Cao Wei were protecting Shu Lien. I wanted her alive. Someone else orchestrated her murder.”

My eyes went wide and my mouth gaped open. “Who?”

The shu yaoguai didn’t respond except to cackle with laughter, pointing with derision at the dumbfounded look on my face.

My forearm started burning.

My world faded into infinite white.

****

-- SEVEN YEARS AGO --

“Oh! Oh! Holy sh-sh-SHIT-SHIT-SHIT!”

Searing disappointment flooded throughout Cindy Lou Humphrey’s entire body even faster than the schoolboy’s semen spurted down her throat barely ten seconds after she’d gotten his dick in her mouth.

Ten seconds. The fucker couldn’t even last ten seconds.

This is my peak. It’s all downhill from here.

She knew that high school was as good as it would ever get for her. Cheerleading. Popularity. Being a social queen. Her grades weren’t good enough to bother applying to college, entry-level jobs would put her at the bottom rung of the corporate ladder, and her teenage metabolism was already on the decline. Every afternoon she was working her ass off at the school gym trying to work her thickening ass off, and it would only get tougher from here.

Cindy Lou had two older sisters who didn’t get very far, and now they were plump little mothers with plump boring husbands. Both spent every day stuffing themselves into business-appropriate outfits to work dead-end jobs they were thankful to have just so they could spend the majority of their paychecks on daycare. They weren’t necessarily unhappy (most of the time), but neither one was exactly living a life of joy.

This was it: Senior Year. Cindy Lou’s last hurrah. She was going to make the most of it while she was still young and all the boys still leered at her as she walked by, and tonight she’d chosen Aksel Andersen.

From the first moment her lips wrapped around his dick, his whole body had trembled as if he’d been zapped by a bolt of lightning. Cindy Lou felt powerful in that moment. She felt energized. She felt in control.

And then she’d felt his jizz pouring into her mouth way, WAY too soon.

Are you fucking kidding me?!?

She looked up at him with an expression that conveyed an entire lifetime’s worth of disappointment even while she continued swallowing. There wasn’t much light in the room – the wall switch had only turned on a small lamp on the nightstand – but even so Cindy Lou could see heat flushing throughout Aksel’s body, evidenced by just how bright pink his entire face burned. And when he was finished, she sat back on her haunches and tilted her head up.

“Really?” she scoffed, using two fingers to flick the still-hard member waving in front of her face that just moments ago she’d praised as ‘a nice one’ just before inhaling it.

Aksel, of course, looked thoroughly humiliated by his poor performance, and deservedly so. She knew that premature ejaculation was among every man’s worst fears. Undoubtedly, he expected her to walk out the door and find some other guy who could satisfy her. By Monday he imagined every girl in school whispering as he walked by and the guys in the locker room never letting him live it down. And tragedy of tragedies, he'd never even get to see her tits!

With his pants still halfway down his thighs, Aksel pleaded with her to give him another chance. “Look! I’m still ready to go!” he insisted, gesturing at his admittedly rock-hard erection still waving in front of her face. “I’ll make it up to you! I promise!”

Cindy Lou pursed her lips and gave him a skeptical look as she stood up, staring down at Aksel’s exposed junk. Well, it was ‘a nice one’, after all. She had licked her lips in anticipation when her dainty fingers had fished that welcome surprise out of his pants. For one shining moment, the evening had been looking up, which had made the subsequent disappointment all the more a kick in the tits. Her lady parts voted to give him another chance, and it would certainly be less of a pain than going out and finding another boy.

“Alright, baby. I’m not going anywhere.” She eyed him curiously while backing up and then taking a seat on the side of the bed. “Are you a virgin?”

Remaining against the wall, Aksel blushed bright pink again. Cindy Lou, of course, already knew. And he knew that she already knew, but he was still clearly embarrassed to admit he’d made it to Senior Year without getting any action.

“C’mon, just tell me. I won’t judge. Would actually excuse why you lost it so quickly,” she told him kindly. Arching an eyebrow, she added, “Was that your first blowjob, too?”

Aksel’s pink cheeks flushed anew, and he nodded silently.

“It’s okay, Ax,” she soothed, gesturing for him to approach while studying his throbbing member. It wasn’t just ‘a nice one’. It was a pretty damn impressive one. And she knew her admiration for his manhood showed on her face.

Aksel started breathing again, and even smiling in relief as he shuffled over like an uncoordinated penguin with his pants still around his thighs. He gazed down at her as if she were the most beautiful, most special woman in his entire life. And Cindy Lou grinned, once again feeling that rush of power.

“They say a boy never forgets his first,” she intoned hungrily, staring up at him with an expression of carnal hunger and pride. “Don’t you worry about your virgin status. I’m gonna take care of that for you soon enough. Would you like that?”

Wide-eyed, Aksel nodded like an over-eager puppy.

Smiling warmly, Cindy Lou crossed her arms over her torso and then raised the hem of her sweater up and over her head. She’d worn one of her nicest lace bras, planning to show off “the girls” tonight. And when she saw the way his mouth started watering at the sight of them, she grinned rather happily, basking in the glow of his ardent gaze.

“Never even got to second base before?” she asked.

Aksel merely shook his head.

“You’re almost as excited about playing with these blouse bunnies as you are for everything else, aren’t you?”

Aksel merely nodded, keeping his hands to himself and waiting for permission.

A well-behaved virgin. Cute.

Reaching behind herself, Cindy Lou unhooked her bra and winked at him while raising the cups. “Go for it.”

He did. With relish. So aggressively that she fell backwards across the bed while his hands, mouth, and tongue quickly acquainted themselves with her perky breasts.

Cindy Lou giggled at the first physically pleasurable sensations she’d gotten out of this encounter so far. But they would have to get far beyond second base if she was to make tonight truly worth the effort. So way too soon (for him) she told him to stop, and Aksel released her nipple from his mouth with a wet plop and an unmanly whimper.

“Like that, did you?” she asked teasingly while sitting up and then squirming to wriggle out of her tight jeans. “Well, they’ll be all yours tonight, but baby, I want to get stuffed.”

Wide-eyed, Aksel nodded immediately and started tearing his own clothes off. He got a little tripped up trying to jerk his foot out through one of his jeans legs and fell in a heap on the floor. But he quickly bounced back up and suddenly loomed over her.

“Not so fast! Not so fast!” she scolded. “I know you’re excited but don’t rush it. Let me get comfortable first.”

The poor boy got a bit of a deer-in-the-headlights expression on his face as she scooted back across the bed and spread her legs apart expectantly. But he must have mistaken her invitation to climb aboard as an instruction to do something else, because he abruptly ducked his head down between her thighs and tried to shove his tongue up her twat.

“Oh, shit!” Cindy Lou squealed in surprise, instinctively grabbing the top of his head and bunching up his hair between her fingers as he lapped at her labia and sent little tingles of pleasure up her spine. “Oh! Okay… I like a guy with that kind of initiative, but I really do want to get stuffed.”

Aksel picked his head up, wiping her fluids off his face with the back of his wrist and hand, looking rather crestfallen. “Am I doing it wrong?”

Truthfully, she’d had better. But then again, she’d also had worse. Hell, she’d had guys who refused to put their mouths down there altogether.

Cindy Lou smiled and told him, “That was pretty good for your first time, but seriously, Ax, just put it in me.”

He nodded eagerly and once again loomed over her. But she abruptly put a hand to his chest. “On second thought, not this way, baby. Go sit up against the headboard. Since it’s your first time, I should probably handle things.”

Blinking twice, Aksel pouted for just a second before nodding obediently. “Um, okay,” he muttered. More than likely, he’d obey everything she said so long as it ultimately led to him losing his cherry. Or at least, that’s what she thought.

But when she swung a leg over his lap and took hold of his steel-hard shaft, Aksel unexpectedly pressed a hand to her belly to stop her. Cindy Lou frowned, recognizing the hesitation on his face. To his credit, the boy had a soft heart. Not that it would do Cindy Lou any good tonight.

With a sigh, she sniffed, “Not the way you pictured this happening?”

Aksel screwed up his face, muttering, “Not exactly.”

“Thought it would be with a girlfriend? Or an old friend? Surely a girl you gave a shit about. Not some bored cheerleader skank who randomly picked you out of a crowd at a party you didn’t even really want to go to in the first place.” Cindy Lou sighed again. “Well, big boy, I’m not gonna rape you. The door’s right there. You can leave right now and keep your precious cherry for ‘the right girl’. You’ll still be a virgin, but at least you’ll have the dignity of knowing you’re a virgin by choice. All you have to do is say ‘no’.”

Aksel pursed his lips, looking thoughtful. And then he raised his eyes to her and shook his head, muttering, “No.”

Cindy Lou deflated. “No?”

Aksel’s eyes went WIDE, and he immediately stammered, “N-n-no! Not what I meant! I mean YES!”

Cindy Lou smirked. “Yes?”

“Yes!”

“Yes, Cindy Lou, mount me and make me a man?”

“Yes, Cindy Lou! Make me a man! Please?”

“Okay, baby,” she drawled with a smile and then abruptly yanked on the back of Aksel’s head to mash his face into her boobs, knowing he’d like that. And while he moaned and rubbed his cheeks against her mammary flesh, she reached between them for his unflagging steel-hard shaft once more, swabbing his mushroom head through her slippery labia until she felt him notch into place.

And then she slowly sank down.

Aksel froze. Even his lips stopped gnawing on her boobs.

And then he started shuddering, twitching, and whimpering, “Oh! Oh! Holy sh-sh-SHIT-SHIT-SHIT!”

The schoolboy’s semen spurted up into her body barely ten seconds after she’d dropped down on him with a single plunge.

Cindy Lou started laughing - well, crying to the ceiling really - as she exclaimed, “You have GOT to be kidding me!”

Heat flushed throughout Aksel’s body, evidenced by just how bright pink his entire face burned. And he glanced at the door, perhaps hoping against hope that nobody was standing right outside to hear that.

Premature twice? In what, five minutes? Her chest still quivered as she struggled to control her mirth. She lifted herself up and reached over for the tissues she’d strategically left on the nightstand, getting ready to pack it in. Cindy Lou knew that teenaged boys could wank off a dozen times a day and often possessed incredible refractory rates. But even so, it would be difficult to keep going after popping off twice in such rapid succession.

Well, that wasn’t the worst hookup I’ve ever had.

She looked down at her latest lover. The boy looked absolutely mortified, which somehow made this ridiculous situation even funnier and sent another burst of laughter through her before she could think better of it. The pained expression on his face caused some embarrassment for Cindy Lou.

To her, this might be a random hookup that didn’t quite work out, but to Aksel Andersen, this was a monumental moment in his life. She’d told him that a boy never forgets his first, and this wasn’t the memory she wanted to leave him with.

“It’s alright, baby,” Cindy Lou told him kindly, still fighting her grin. She gently slapped him in the face twice and said sympathetically, “Don’t worry about it. I won’t tell anyone about your performance. I’m sure you’ll do better next time.”

“I’ll do better right now!” Aksel growled, abruptly rolling them both over. An impossibly hard erection probed at the entrance to her loins.

“Oh, baby!” Cindy Lou exclaimed in surprise, staring down at the really nice one that somehow looked even bigger than before. She looked back up at Aksel, momentarily mesmerized by an inexplicable sizzling electricity in his eyes before she closed her own to moan as his thick prod began stretching her snatch open wide.

And then he FUCKED her.

The sex itself was only okay. Aksel pounded her with relentless power that was more virgin-enthusiasm than real skill. It wasn’t quite enough to give her an orgasm, but he lasted at least three minutes before slamming into her one final time and filling her up with a second helping of schoolboy sperm.

Cindy Lou wasn’t laughing at him anymore. She hadn’t cum, but she still felt the pleasant afterglow of enthusiastic sex and stared up at the mussed-up hair and sweaty face of a no-longer virgin teenage boy, knowing she probably looked the same.

“That’s my man,” she told him appreciatively, and even a bit proudly. Aksel Andersen was a virgin no more, all because of her. “You did great.”

His eyebrows furrowed with concern. “Did you cum?”

She knew the truth was already written on her face, and she could read the disappointment on his. “It’s alright,” she assured him. “You did really well for your first time. And there are some starters on the football team who weren’t able to handle me as well as you did.”

Aksel made a face at that pronouncement, uncertain of whether or not to take that as a compliment. But she didn’t let him dwell on that for long, pushing up against his chest to get him to roll off her. And after grabbing the remaining tissues from the nightstand to blot herself up, she started hunting around for her clothes.

He watched her naked body moving around, enjoying the view for as long as humanly possible until she took away the sight of paradise by putting her bra on. Only then did he reach for his own clothes.

After they both got dressed, Cindy Lou kissed his cheek and asked him not to blab about what they’d done. He promised he wouldn’t with an expression so earnest she believed he would genuinely try, if for no other reason than to hope she might sleep with him again. To that end, she told him they should try it again sometime once he got some more experience under his belt. And who knew? Maybe they would.

Then Cindy Lou left the room, headed downstairs, and walked out the door. Better to make a quick exit than deal with overcurious teenagers interrogating with questions she didn’t want to answer.

She knew that half the kids at that party would know she’d fucked Aksel Andersen, whether or not he blabbed.

She knew that half the school thought of her as a skank.

She knew that she would likely never see most of them ever again.

This was nothing more than high school, after all.

This was as good as it would ever get.

****

Rae Yu Li Richards watched the trashy cheerleader with cheap bottle-blonde hair strut out of the suburban McMansion upstairs bedroom, grinning a silly post-sex grin. The target was still seated a few feet away from her on the bed, looking rather dazed as if he couldn’t quite believe he’d actually lost his virginity.

With a smug smile, Rae detached herself from the wall, left the room, and slowly materialized into visibility as she descended the stairs. Seconds later, she went out the front door and onto the sidewalk. And moments after that, she settled into the driver’s seat of her car parallel parked against the curb less than a block away.

Fishing out her cell phone, Rae pressed a button and then put the receiver to her ear. When she heard breathing on the other end of the line, Rae succinctly stated four words.

“The sleeper has awakened.”

And then she hung up.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 36 will post on August 18. For anyone who can't wait, Beta Tier will be maintaining a one-month lead from that date on until the story is complete.

Remember that all authors thrive on feedback, so let me know how you're enjoying the story! Leave a comment here or come chat with us on Discord! And be sure to connect your Discord account here on the Patreon website to get access to the Patron-Only channels! https://discord.gg/fg3m6MdfN9

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Prologue & Chapter 1: The Ax Effect: https://www.patreon.com/posts/99894240

Chapter 2: Santa Monica: https://www.patreon.com/posts/100614606

Chapter 3: The Zellij Fountain: https://www.patreon.com/posts/100887440

Chapter 4: Euhemerism: https://www.patreon.com/posts/101140816

Chapter 5: The Fremont Troll: https://www.patreon.com/posts/101373122

Chapter 6: Jade: https://www.patreon.com/posts/101713211

Chapter 7: The Blue Gecko: https://www.patreon.com/posts/101962728

Chapter 8: Yaoguai: https://www.patreon.com/posts/102225122

Chapter 9: Rome: https://www.patreon.com/posts/102437581

Chapter 10: Seeing Sights: https://www.patreon.com/posts/102690886

Chapter 11: Liu Kang: https://www.patreon.com/posts/102919633