Fighting Them There

###Fighting Them There: Chapter Twenty-Five###

As far as he could remember, it was the most comfortable chair he'd ever had in any vehicle he'd ever traveled in. Max had never experienced afirst classseat in an airplane, so he wasn't prepared to claim that it was the most comfortable chair that existed, but the seat on the train was easily the most comfortable he'd had access to. The seats on Earth transit were made for an average human butt and the space in front for an average human leg, all tempered such that some statistically significant portion of humans would fit at all. As Max was considerably taller than the average human, he only barely fit in the typical seat on a bus or a train. Sitting in seats that had been designed with exactly the same mercenary calculations, but with demographic data from Nurn rather than from Earth was a revelation. There was simply enough room for his butt and for his legs to be comfortable, and that was possibly the most alien thing he had encountered up to that point on the planet. More so even than the presence of the massive ball of red fire in the sky.

Two seats forward facing two seats facing back and sharing a window. Sophie, Kwrtzl, and Leticia had won the argument of who was allowed to ride with Max. Not that Kwrtzl had made much of an argument for herself, but Leticia had persuaded the others that a six hour train trip was an ideal time to get vocabulary questions answered by the Tartarian. The train had a central aisle and on the other side was another group of four seats that had other members of the team. Miriam and Chloe had the window seats and were watching the alien scenery go past. Chaeryn and Fiona got the aisle seat, and would sometimes weigh in on questions of grammar. It seemed weird having Ulzhari sit in a completely different row, but she was a better emissary to their orcish guide than Max was.

His name was Karg-Korrak, and he was to lead them to a meeting of clans. Max had a difficult time guessing the ages of orcs. Like humans in old movies, they all seemed way older than their actual years. The man had scraggly hair and deep furrows on his face, were it not for his brocade tabard Max might have mistaken him for a homeless man. He had much to say, and he was much better in saying it in one of the orcish languages. It seemed Ulzhari was able to speak one of them, because they were conversing in it during the trip. The Bloodletter was seated just behind Max, facing the other way. Max's class translated everything she said, so he was able to get half the conversation.

"{It has already been decided,}" Ulzhari stated gently but firmly, "{my harem is with the other hunters. I will be joining no other.}" She'd given roughly the same answer earlier while the train was passing a large lake with small waves. Now they were passing hills covered with grass the color of autumnal leaves. He realized that his initial assumption that they weredryhills might not be correct, and that the color might well represent the new growth of Nurn's equivalent of spring. The revelation made him reconsider the meaning of what he had overheard. His first impression was that she was turning down an invitation to join Karg-Korrak's harem, which Max found disgusting and infuriating. Even if he was younger than he appeared, Max's imagination was a torture show when it worked on producing images of what that might be like. On reflection, it occurred to him that he my well have been attempting to interest her in the harem of a son or even grandson. Or to encourage her to join a harem with a daughter or granddaughter. He might even be attempting to interest her in harems associated with clans he was involved with. It was quite normal on the planet for people to receive outside help when forming their harems. Some were outright arranged marriages, but softer forms of matchmaking were common. He tried to calm himself down, realizing that he basically had no right to expect that other people would refrain from being attracted to his women.

He chuckled at his own presumption. In his internal thoughts, he was thinking of his party ashis women, like he was a coyote or something. They did seem to regard themselves as his, to varying degrees, but he worried that they would tire of the submission games they had all taken up with. Fiona had asked him to start pinching and spanking her, driving her to orgasm from the pain. He didn't think she'd want to do that forever, and once the novelty wore off, he feared that she'd resent him for the pain he had inflicted to her slender body. Earlier she had said that she wanted more tenderness and romance in her life, the "girlfriend experience" she had called it, and that was difficult to square with her asking him to put clamps on her nipples. And then there were the pictures she had demanded and received from Monique Jackson, the woman known to the world as the performer Peppa Grinda, and known to his party as Slave Fifi. Fiona had demanded that she photograph herself in compromising positions and compromising attire. Slave Fifi had looked aroused and submissive with her tits out and hands behind her back, and Fiona had been bubbling with excitement when she showed him the pictures. Max wasn't sure what to make of it, whether he should go easier or harder on the Vietnamese American woman. Either way, he thought they should establish a better red light / green light system for when she wanted things hard and soft.

Considering his other party members, Chloe was star struck and enthusiastic about anal sex, but once she tired of it there wasn't a lot there. He'd delivered her the ravishment she had asked for, right out of the dungeon romances she read, but he didn't know how to give her the happily ever after those dungeon romances promised. Her hunter's strength and resilience meant that her anus was just as tight on his cock after getting regular sodomy as when he first conquered it with his cock, but so far she hadn't shown much interest in any other parts of his life. He was just as guilty he supposed, while he knew she loved dungeon romances, her newly long braided hair, stabbing monsters, and getting fucked in the ass, that didn't leave him anything to do with her outside the dungeon or the bedroom.

Miriam was an enigma to him. From the very beginning she'd been fairly insistent that her joining the party was going to involve sex, but she'd given very mixed signals when it came to accepting him as her master. Even to accepting him as the party's leader. When they'd decided that he was going to be the one calling the plays, it had been over Miriam's tepid objection. Lately she'd been calling himMasterwith more regularity, but he had never been sure that she wasn't kidding. Her pale, freckled face gave away nothing when she told him what she wanted. He never knew whether the Geomancer wanted him for more than a penis and a set of bonuses. She had declared herself to be his slave wife, even joyfully predicted that she would have his babies, but she still seemed to be holding something back and he didn't have the slightest idea what it might be.

"{Shrub,}" Kwrtzl declared, pointing at a dark green plant on a hillside, "{bush.}" She named another. Max dutifully reported both statements, which Leticia excitedly transcribed. Max didn't know what the difference between a shrub and a bush was inEnglish, so he wasn't sure how his class decided which word to give him when the Tartarian spoke. The rosettes of black skin on her orange skin made her look like someone painted up as a jaguar for musical theater, but she was in fact a monster from Tartarus. She had wings, even though they weren't immediately obvious while folded against the train's seat. She looked at him for approval and he gave her a thumb's up. She accepted Max as her master, and that was the entire reason they had been invited to Nurn in the first place. Before they'd met, she had been very aware that Incubuses would take pleasure with the sexual domination of those they had defeated, but the idea of taking pleasure from sexual submission was a completely new idea for her. She'd taken to it like a fish to water, now actively requesting Max to show her new ways that she could sexually submit to him. He worried what would happen if he ran out of things to show her, but she was impressed enough by the train journey that he probably had a while before that became an issue.

Most of the team was spending their time gawking, as this was their first time on Nurn. Chaeryn, on the other hand, gave the world outside the windows only cursory glances. Her perception had been her most augmented stat even before her class was upgraded from Sniper to Assassin, so Max suspected that her quick looks out the window were enough for her to get a pretty good idea of the terrain they were traveling through. The elf's purple eyes spent much of their time fixed on Max himself, and heknewthat wasn't necessary for anything. Max couldn't doubt her devotion to him, she thought he was a religious figure from her peoples' prophecies and would follow him anywhere. Indeed, if he led her to Jotunheim or Tartarus, she'd doubtless feel vindicated and brandish some prophecy of the Shelflands. On the other hand, Max did not believe that he was the Spider Herald, and he worried how the Shadow Elf would take it once she came to believe that as well.

Ulzhari, by contrast, was simple. As an orc from birth, the entire orc marriage concept was normal to her. It had all basically been her idea for everyone in the party to be orc-married together. And yet, she seemed to demand the least from him and from the harem as a whole. The muscular Bloodletter had a confidence that he envied. She relied on the harem in general and him in particular for matters related to sex and violence, and seemed to have little interest in involving him in the rest of her life. It was a clearly defined relationship in a way that the others simply were not and could not be. Ulzhari was the only one of them who seemed completely comfortable with having a life separate from Max's when they were neither fighting monsters nor fucking like animals. And yet, she also felt the relationship was real enough that whatever harem plans had been thrown at her by an important man of her own people had been dismissed out of hand.

Six hours was a long time to be on a train, but they were given food. An orcish woman with a thick leather apron came down the aisle with a wheeled cart with food to dispense. It reminded Max of being fed by flight attendants on a long airplane trip on Earth. He supposed that the needs of the passengers were similar, even if the mode of transportation was different. The food they received was translated aspies, with an external pastry that was greasy and crumbly and an internal filling that was greasy and sweet. There was a slight savory meatiness and sour fruitiness to it, but overall Max found it to be pretty bland. Conceptually similar to a burrito, but with flavors that were too shy even for something that came out of a microwave. It was filling, but that wasn't the primary reason he didn't ask for another pie.

He had a lot of worries, and it was increasingly difficult to concentrate on them because he was distracted. The alien vistas were the kind of thing that might draw his full attention on any average day, but the thing that was truly filling his attention was Sophie's hand on his cock. The blond Valkyrie had been a competitive swimmer even before her strength had been augmented by her class and his seals, and she had been stroking his cock for twenty minutes. Intermittent squeezing, long stroking, short stroking, a varied rhythm, a compelling attempt to grab his attention as she had already grabbed his cock. "Do you think Leticia's ready to drink your Essence, Master?" Sophie had decided to go all in and double down and otherwise poker metaphor herself into really getting deep into the role of a sex slave. "She's watching your cock twitch in my hand, she knows how much pleasure it can give your slaves. She knows that if she agreed to become your slave, she'd have her tight slave pussy trained by your big powerful cock." He looked at the widened eyes of the gate technician and linguist who'd been assigned to catalog Kwrtzl's vocabulary and grammar.

Hunter parties were composed of exactly six hunters comprising six different roles out of the total of eight. That's because that was the maximum configuration that could go through the dungeon gates, and so that was the rule of party composition. It had been thus for many generations before Earth had joined The Alliance, and until Max's class started changing things, it could be no other way. Max's party had eight hunters in it, and one of them was a rampager, which was one of the eight roles known to Tartarus. But his class could also put seals on people who weren't hunters at all. Though they weren't entirely sure what that was useful for, Sophie's suggestion to turn Leticia into a sex slave wasn't entirely an empty one. And from the way the guardian tensed, he could tell that she took the idea very seriously indeed.

Specialist Leticia Clark was one of the guardians traveling with them, along with Technical Sergeants Moreno and Phillips. All three women were from the non-hunter portion of the Space Force. They had no hunter runes, no mana, no powers. Moreno and Phillips were just there as guards, carrying high powered automatic weaponry. That's why they sat away from the group, at either end of the rail car. Specialist Clark didn't bother carrying anything more than a sidearm pistol. She was there for her scientific knowledge, not for her her combat ability. But at that moment she had halted her scribblings on her pad, and was simply watching Sophie's hand go up and down. Up and down. Max shrugged apologetically at the guardian, and her expression became startled as if she had been caught stealing cookies. Sophie grinned in recognition and sped up her ministrations. Shlp shlp shlp. Her hand became a blur and Max's breath quickened.

Evidently, Fiona had been watching, because she leaned across the aisle. "If you don't think you're pretty enough to be one of Max's sex slaves, remember that the seals also make you prettier. And if you think your lack of training would be embarrassing, I've been training Peppa Grinda and I could train you with a leash and a whip until you were a proper receptacle for Max's Essence." She said it like she was offering gardening tips.

While Leticia was coughing and sputtering, Sophie's triumphant grasp of Max's cock increased in intensity even more. He started gasping and twitching and Sophie placed her other hand over the head of his penis. Each spurt struck her palm and for the most part stuck there. She turned her hand over like she was a game show hostess revealing a prize. In Sophie's hand it looked a lot of semen, more than Max remembered having to find a hiding place for from his own nocturnal adventures in the before-times. It had actually only been a few months since he'd had to relieve himself with his own hand. He hadn't had to do that since his rune had come in, but he recalled there being substantially less material when he did.

Bringing the jizz to her her lips, Sophie touched it with her tongue. "Mmmm," she closed her eyes and luxuriated in the feeling of having her Master's Essence once again, "that's such good semen. Do you want some?" She offered Leticia. When the gate technician shook her head, the Valkyrie reached her hand out to wordlessly offer it to Kwrtzl instead.

The Tartarian was looking hungry and excited, and she didn't turn it down. The orange and black skinned woman extended herself forward, trailing her wings and tail in a manner that drew attention to them and emphasized her inhumanity. "Nnng" Kwrtzl groaned nasally, licking the semen up like a cat drinking milk. There was no mistaking the fact that she enjoyed her meal. Sophie, Fiona, and Chaeryn watched with expressions even more predatory than Kwrtzl's.

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Every station they passed had signs of construction around it. When Max remarked on it, Miriam claimed that every station the railroads put up had towns spring up around them, and that this became so predictable that Leland Stanford named the towns of Modesto and Coalinga as jokes. Max had to ask who that was, and was informed that he was a railroad tycoon who founded towns and also a university. He realized that hehadheard of the university at least, and felt somewhat foolish.

Orcs got on and off the train every stop, with several minutes being given to the loading and unloading of cargo. It seemed that the train they were on was neither a passenger train nor a freight train, but a mixture of both. The doors of their car did not open at all, though Max wasn't sure how much of that was about keeping the riffraff out and how much was about keeping the off-worlders from wandering off and getting left behind in some upstart town at a service station. Max was equally glad for both considerations. One orcish man wearing a kilt and a jacket that seemed much too heavy for the apparent weather did not seem to appreciate the unopened doors at all. He shouted and smacked his scabbarded sword against the door. One of the employees of the station directed the man to one of the other cars and was threatened with a sword before the angry man gave up and proceeded to one of the open cars. Max was of course allowed and expected to carry his own sword in public, but he'd been surprised at how many people he saw on railway platforms were openly carrying deadly melee weapons.

Night had fallen before they reached their destination. As the sun dropped low in the sky, the sunset turned the sky red just as it did on Earth. Max thought the red sky was brighter than the blue sky had been at mid-day, and when he mentioned it, Leticia told him that he was correct and that it had to do with the longer wavelengths of the local star being diffracted by a longer path length of atmosphere when the sun was near the horizon. It was an interesting visual effect. Once the sky turned dark, it looked much like the night sky on either of the other planets he'd been able to see the stars on. Obviously the constellations were different on Nurn, but Max wasn't really familiar enough with the position of the stars visible from Earth for it to seem noticeably alien. Looking out the window he was impressed at howdarkit was, the amount of light pollution being much less than anywhere he'd ever been on Earth. That very darkness made the light of High Market very noticeable when their journey still had an hour to go. It reminded Max of driving toward Las Vegas, the darkness of the desert broken by the light of the distant city. High Market didn't produce nearly as much light as Las Vegas, but it was the only comparison he had.

The station at the end of the line was a comparatively massive affair, calling to mind stations in Chicago and New York. A high ceiling was supported by an exposed skeleton of black iron and the platform they were to disembark onto was just one of many intended to service many lines. Electric lights illuminated the station, Almost all the signs were in writing that Max could not read, which made the few signs that appeared in English as incongruous as they were precious. They had quite a lot of luggage, and while the hunters had enough magically augmented strength to physically carry it all, there was no way to do that without being more disruptive than they already were. The plan instead was to have orcish porters place their trunks on wheeled carts and push them through the station while Max's companions followed with only their weapons and backpacks.