Chapter 8: Barnyard Distractions
The smell of hay was thick and sweet, layered over the older, deeper scent of dust and dry rot. Mai’s consciousness swam up through layers of disorientation. The last clear memory was the stinging spray from Caleb’s modified seed-pod, the world going soft and gray. Now, her bare skin prickled against the rough, dried stalks. A deep, muscular ache resonated in her bones, a leftover echo of the artifact’s violent transfer of energy.
She was naked. The cool loft air moved over her, raising goosebumps. Her wrists were bound in front of her with what felt like rough twine, but the knots were loose, almost perfunctory. Amateurs, she thought, a flicker of her mother’s defiant spirit cutting through the fog.
She kept her breathing even, her eyes closed to slits. Three figures stood in a semicircle a few feet away, backlit by the faint, ghostly glow of neon-green sigils painted long ago on the rafters. Caleb, his broad shoulders tense. Beau, wiry and nervous, chewing his lip. Sage, the woman, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, her expression unreadable.
They were arguing in hushed, urgent tones.
“—told you the directive was observation and retrieval of the vessel-host. Not kidnapping,” Sage hissed.
“The construct failed,” Caleb whispered back, his voice a low rumble. “The Primary Root said the echo-signature was strongest in her. She is the vessel. We secured the vessel.”
“By soaking her in Pollen of Forgetfulness? She’s a person, Caleb. Not a damn flower bulb.”
“She’s inscribed,” Beau interjected, his voice reverent. “Did you see her palm? The gold leaf? It’s in her. The Artifact chose her. That makes her part of the harvest.”
Mai listened, piecing it together. Vessel-host. Inscribed. The True Root. They saw her as a container for the artifact’s power. The memory of the faceless Urger wearing her clothes, her face, sent a cold shiver through her that had nothing to do with the air.
Time to stop being a vessel.
She let out a soft, deliberate moan, stretching her body languidly against the hay. The movement was a performance of waking, arching her back to press her breasts upward, letting her thighs fall slightly apart. The twine on her wrists was obvious, but she made no attempt to hide it. She turned her head, letting the dim light catch her profile, and opened her eyes fully.
Three pairs of eyes snapped to her.
She gave them a slow, knowing smile, one that didn’t reach her eyes. Her English accent, when she spoke, was a polished, amused weapon. “Well. This is a bit more rustic than my usual accommodations.”
Caleb took a step forward, his face a mask of forced authority. “You will remain calm. You are in the custody of the True Root. You carry a sacred seed. You will be treated with respect commensurate with your status.”
Mai let her gaze travel down his body, then back up, lingering. “Respect. Is that what the twine is for? Charming.” She shifted again, rolling onto her side, presenting the curve of her hip, the shadow between her legs. The hay scratched pleasantly, sensually, against her skin. “You know, for a bunch of plant magicians, you’re not very observant. Can’t you feel it?”
“Feel what?” Beau asked, his voice barely a whisper.
“The energy,” Mai purred. She raised her bound hands and placed them on her own stomach, her fingers splaying. “It’s not just in my palm, you dull boy. The transfer… it went everywhere. It’s humming. Under my skin.” She slid her hands slowly upward, over her ribs, until her thumbs brushed the undersides of her breasts. She didn’t look at her hands. She looked at Beau, then at Caleb. “It likes attention. It feeds on it.”
Sage took a sharp step forward. “Don’t listen to her. It’s a trick. She’s trying to manipulate you.”
“Of course I am,” Mai said brightly, her eyes locking with Sage’s. “But that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.” She let one hand trail back down, over the flat of her belly, through the dark, neat triangle of hair. She didn’t break eye contact with Sage as her own fingers found her folds. They were already slick, a combination of anxiety, adrenaline, and the strange, resonant warmth still pulsing from the golden tattoo. “See? It’s restless. It’s hungry. You trapped it in here with me. Now you have to deal with the consequences.”
She pushed two fingers inside herself, a slow, explicit entry. Her breath hitched, genuine pleasure mixing with the performance. The leaf on her palm throbbed, a pulse of warm gold light that echoed up her arm.
Beau made a choked sound. Caleb’s jaw was rigid, but his eyes were fixed on the movement of her hand.
“Untie me,” Mai said, her voice dropping to a husky command. She pumped her fingers slowly, the wet sound obscenely loud in the quiet loft. “Or are you afraid of what the sacred vessel might do if her hands are free?”
“Caleb, don’t,” Sage warned.
But Caleb was moving. He knelt beside her, his big hands fumbling with the simple knots. His fingers brushed her wrists, and they were trembling. His scent, earth and honest sweat, washed over her.
“Good,” Mai breathed, her other hand still working between her legs, curling inside herself. The knot gave way. The twine fell.
Her freed hands flew up, but not to strike. They wrapped around the back of Caleb’s neck, pulling his face down to hers. She kissed him hard, biting his lower lip, her tongue thrusting into his mouth. He grunted in surprise, his body going rigid for a second before melting against hers. His hands, awkwardly, came to rest on her bare hips.
Mai broke the kiss, pushing him back just enough to look past his shoulder at Beau. “Your turn. Clothes off. Now.”
Beau stared, paralyzed with desire and shock.
“Now,” Mai snapped, the authority in her voice absolute.
He scrambled, yanking his shirt over his head, fumbling with his belt. Sage turned away, a strangled protest dying in her throat.
Mai turned her attention back to Caleb. She guided his hand from her hip to her cunt, pressing his thick fingers against where hers were still buried. “Feel that? That’s the power you want. It’s dripping out of me. You want to harvest it? Then take it.”
It was all the permission he needed. His restraint shattered. He yanked his own pants down, his cock springing out, already fully hard and flushed. He was big, thick, and urgent. Mai pulled her own fingers free, glistening, and spread her legs wider, guiding him to her entrance.
“Don’t be gentle,” she growled. “It wants to be fucked.”
He drove into her in one brutal, claiming thrust. The air left Mai’s lungs in a sharp gasp. It was too much, too fast, a burning stretch that edged into pain. She embraced it, arching her back, taking him deeper. The golden leaf on her palm blazed like a miniature sun.
“Yes! Like that! Fuck your precious vessel!” she cried out, the words filthy and raw.
Caleb’s hips settled into a punishing rhythm, each slam of his pelvis driving her into the hay. The loft filled with the sounds of their bodies: the slap of skin, the creak of the old wood beneath them, Caleb’s guttural grunts, Mai’s sharp, encouraging cries.
She looked over Caleb’s heaving shoulder. Beau stood naked, his slender cock in his hand, stroking himself feverishly as he watched. Sage had turned back around, her face a conflict of horror and fascination, her own hand now unconsciously pressed between her thighs over her clothes.
“Beau!” Mai yelled, the voice of a commander in the throes of battle. “Get over here. I want your mouth on my tits. Now!”
Beau stumbled forward, dropping to his knees beside them. He latched onto one nipple, sucking greedily, his hand groping her other breast. The dual sensation—the brutal pounding from Caleb, the hungry suction from Beau—sent cascades of conflicting signals through her. It was overwhelming, degrading, and electrifyingly potent. The artifact’s energy swirled in her core, reacting, amplifying.
Mai reached down between her and Caleb’s sweat-slick bodies, her fingers finding her clit. She rubbed hard, rough circles, chasing not just pleasure but a trigger. The power needed release. It needed to be fed.
“I’m close,” Caleb grunted, his pace becoming ragged, frantic.
“Not inside me,” Mai ordered, her voice strained. “On me. Mark your harvest.”
With a final, shuddering roar, Caleb pulled out. Thick, hot ropes of cum spattered across her stomach and breasts, painting her skin white. The sight of it, the visceral claim, seemed to shatter the last of Beau’s control. He groaned, his own release pumping over his fist and onto the hay beside her hip.
Mai’s own orgasm ripped through her a second later, triggered by the command, the spectacle, the intense overstimulation. It was less a pleasure and more a seismic event, a conduit opening. The golden leaf tattoo flared with a light so intense it illuminated the entire loft, bleaching the color from everything for a three-second burst. A wave of force, silent but palpable, emanated from her, making the old sigils on the rafters buzz and crackle.
In the sudden, stunned silence, broken only by heavy breathing, the consequences landed.
Sage was staring at Mai’s glowing palm, her face pale. “The signal… it just spiked. A localized eruption. Every tracking spell within a hundred miles will have felt that.”
Caleb, pulling his pants up, looked from his own spend on Mai’s body to her triumphant, exhausted face. The awe in his eyes had been replaced by a dawning, horrible understanding. “You did that on purpose.”
Mai lay amidst the hay and semen, utterly spent, a smirk on her swollen lips. Her hand was still glowing, a persistent beacon. “You wanted the artifact’s power?” she breathed, her voice hoarse. “You got it. And now so does everyone else. The Green Knights. The Setting Sun. My friends.” She lifted her head, meeting his gaze. “You’re no longer the hunters. You’re the bait, sitting right next to the dinner bell.”
Outside, far in the distance but unmistakable, came the sound of engines—multiple, converging from different directions. The hunt was zeroing in. The hayloft, for one perfect, terrible moment, was the still, bright center of the converging storm.
The converging storm arrived not with a whisper, but with the shriek of bending metal and the percussive thump of displaced air. Down on the county road, Jesse white-knuckled the steering wheel of Grampa Joe’s pickup, the engine screaming as she pushed it past sane limits. Franklin braced a hand against the dashboard, his inky-black fingers splayed. “Jesse, step on it,” he said, his voice calm but strained.
“I’m already there!” she shot back, her eyes wide as another vehicle—a sleek, black sedan with polarized windows—blurred past them going the opposite direction, then executed a terrifyingly precise J-turn in the road behind them.
“That’s a Wand transport, but it’s all wrong,” Franklin muttered. “The signature is… hostile.”
A beat-up van covered in swirling, phosphorescent graffiti swerved around them next, its open windows revealing figures in deep crimson robes. The air around it tasted of ash and stale perfume. “Setting Sun,” Jesse breathed, the words catching in her throat. “What did Caleb get them into?”
Ahead, the old barn came into view, and the scene was chaos incarnate. Figures in green armor—Green Knights—were already spilling from the black sedan, firing pulses of coherent emerald light. From the fields, robed True Root adepts rose from the very soil, their bodies half-composed of tangled roots and granular, shifting earth. The Setting Sun initiates swarmed from their van, weaving spells that unspooled like sickly violet chains, seeking to latch onto and drain anything with a pulse.
Inside the hayloft, the world dissolved into noise and violent light. A beam of green energy sheared through the corner of the roof, spraying splinters and dust. Caleb and Beau scrambled for their clothes, their panic pure and animal. Sage didn’t panic. She ran to the large hay door, threw it open, and screamed into the maelstrom below. “Elder! We have the vessel! The beacon is lit!”
Riding a machine that was less a tractor and more a jagged assembly of corroded iron and pulsating wooden growths, the Elder arrived. He stood tall in the seat, his robes the color of dried blood, his face obscured by a cowl. He raised a gnarled staff, and the very crops in the surrounding field lashed out, entangling a Green Knight, who screamed as thorns pierced his armor.
“To me!” the Elder’s voice boomed, impossibly loud. “Protect the sacred soil! Uproot the interlopers!”
A massive, three-way battle consumed the farmyard. Emerald blasts incinerated vines. Violet chains latched onto Root adepts, making them stagger and shrivel. The air became a soup of ozone, burnt sugar, and loam.
Mai crouched by the shattered wall, naked and shivering, her mind racing for an exit. The golden leaf on her palm was a lighthouse in a shooting gallery. She saw a Green Knight look up, its helmeted gaze locking onto the glow. It raised its arm cannon.
A shadow fell over her, vast and warm.
It was not the cold shadow of spellwork. It was the living, breathing shadow of immense wings blotting out the moon. The downdraft was a furnace-blast, smelling of charcoal, brimstone, and a wild, familiar musk. Scale the color of banked coals, a belly of cracked gold, eyes like molten pits. Flamewing roared, and the sound was not anger, but a declaration of territory. The dragon’s tail, spaded and wicked, swept through the barnyard, sending a Setting Sun initiate and a Root construct flying like ragdolls.
The dragon offered a distraction, a path of sheer, beautiful terror.
A screech of tires, the smell of burning rubber. A familiar, boxy used car—a Honda Civic with a dented fender Ben refused to fix—“parked” itself halfway into a cornstalk beside the barn’s foundation. The passenger window rolled down.
Ben’s grinning, worried face appeared. “Mai! Get in! Clothes still optional, I see!”
Bruce leaned over from the driver’s seat, his steampunk wrench in hand. “Move your arse, lass! It’s a wee bit lively out here!”
From the backseat, Yukio Harata leaned forward. Her face was thinner, her body still leaning on a cane propped beside her, but her eyes were the same fierce embers. “Mai. In the car. Now.”
Mai didn’t hesitate. She vaulted over the ragged edge of the loft floor, dropping the ten feet to the soft, torn earth below. She landed in a roll, came up running, and yanked the back door open. She dove inside, onto the seat beside her mother, her naked skin smeared with hay, sweat, and drying cum.
Yukio didn’t flinch. She threw a worn leather jacket over her daughter’s shoulders. “We can worry about modesty later. Ben, hit the gas. Get us out of this fucking mess right now.”
Ben, his hands tight on the wheel, stomped on the accelerator. The Civic’s tires dug into the soft earth, then found purchase. They shot forward, weaving between a dueling Knight and a Root adept, a violet chain glancing off their trunk with a spark of sickly light.
In the rearview mirror, Mai saw Flamewing rise on a column of fire, bathing the battlefield in dragonflame, drawing all eyes and weapons upward. The barn, the Root, the Knights, the Setting Sun—all of it receded into a clamor of light and fury as Ben aimed the car for the dark, open road, putting foot to floor.