Chapter 3: Finding the Bad Guy
The forest closed around them like a wet, breathing fist. Without Jan’s chaotic navigation, every step was a conscious effort, a push against the realm’s insistent, lustful gravity. Stacy led, her shoulders set, her eyes scanning the pulsating undergrowth for threats both physical and metaphysical. Rick stayed a half-step behind and to her left, his presence a silent vow. The others fanned out, a tense, quiet procession through the nightmare.
They followed the only logical path: the one with the strongest pull. It was less a trail and more a thinning of resistance, the trees parting as if in invitation, the ground sloping subtly downward. The air grew warmer, thicker, carrying a new scent underneath the cloying perfume—ozone, iron, and the unmistakable, greasy smell of machinery pushed past its limits.
After twenty minutes of silent travel, the trees abruptly ended.
They emerged onto the rim of a vast, bowl-shaped clearing. It wasn’t natural. The ground was a mosaic of interlocking rubber tiles, cracked and sprouting neon fungi. In place of trees, colossal structures rose—twisted amalgamations of rusted steel I-beams and living, veined wood, shaped into the vague forms of weight racks, leg press machines, and cable crosses. Wires, thick as vines, pulsed with a sickly green light where they burrowed into the soil. At the very center of the clearing, the wreckage of exercise equipment had been fused and warped into a single, massive structure: a throne.
It was built from the mangled frames of multiple Smith machines, polished to a sinister chrome sheen. The seat was padded with what looked like dark, wet leather that pulsed slowly. Behind it, a tangled nest of cables and neon tubes formed a jagged, electric halo.
And on the throne, watching them with a smirk visible even from this distance, was a figure.
He was shirtless, his physique a cartoonish ideal of muscle-bound symmetry, every striation and vein looking chiseled from granite. Short, spiky brown hair. Mirror-like sunglasses that hid his eyes. He lounged with one leg thrown over the throne’s arm, exuding a boredom that felt more threatening than any roar.
“Tobias,” Portia hissed, her hand going to a knife at her belt.
“He’s been waiting,” Kim said softly, her knuckles white on her sword’s hilt.
As if on cue, Tobias raised a hand and gave a slow, sarcastic wave. His voice, when it came, didn’t boom. It was inside their heads, smooth and cultured and dripping with mockery. “Welcome to the heart of the matter. The epicenter. I must say, your progress was… stimulating to watch. Such inventive uses of my ambient energy. The twins were a particular highlight. A beautiful symmetry.”
Maryam spat on the rubberized ground. “Creep.”
“Merely an appreciative audience. And now, the main event. You’ve come for your plump little friend. She’s been… invaluable.” He gestured languidly with his other hand.
The ground in front of the throne shimmered. The air warped, and a figure materialized, suspended a few feet off the ground by crackling bands of green energy that seemed to siphon directly from the throne’s halo.
It was Jan. But not their Jan.
She was older, rounder, her fiery red hair streaked with grey. She wore simple cotton pants and a loose t-shirt, now soaked with sweat and stuck to her skin. Her eyes were open, glazed with pain and a deep, resonant humiliation. The energy bands glowed where they wrapped around her wrists, ankles, and throat. A faint, visible current—a shimmering, pink-tinged wave of pure, undiluted Green Moon magic—flowed from her body, up the bands, and into the throne, which pulsed brighter with each passing second.
Fat Aunt Jan. Her mouth moved, but no sound came out. Only a weak, tear-tracked grimace.
Seeing her, suspended like a drained battery, sent a bolt of pure rage through Stacy so intense it momentarily overrode the ambient magic. Her hand went to the small of her back, her fingers closing around the textured grip of her Glock 9mm.
“Let her go,” Stacy said, her voice cutting across the clearing, flat and deadly.
Tobias’s smirk widened. “Or what? You’ll spin class me to death? This realm is an extension of my will. And right now, my will is to amplify everything you are. Every fear. Every desire. Especially the desires.”
He snapped the fingers of his raised hand.
The rubber tiles beneath their feet didn’t just grow slick; they liquefied. A warm, clear fluid seeped up from between the cracks, pooling instantly. It wasn’t water. It carried the same overwhelming scent as the air, but concentrated, purified. The moment it made contact with skin, the effect was catastrophic.
It was like being plugged into a live wire of pure, undistilled arousal.
A collective gasp tore from the group. Jenny cried out, doubling over. Amanda grabbed her, but her own movements were already becoming clumsy, desperate. Franklin’s calm façade shattered, his eyes locking onto Felicity with a hunger that made her blush scarlet. Ben groaned, his gaze helplessly darting between Calista and Mandy. Kim hissed, dropping into a defensive stance that wavered immediately, her sword tip dipping towards the ground. Maryam gripped her own head, as if trying to physically hold her thoughts together.
The magic wasn’t a suggestion this time. It was a command. A biological imperative shouted directly into their nervous systems.
“Don’t fight it!” Kim shouted, the words strained. She was a Green Moon initiate; she understood the mechanics. “Fighting makes it worse! You have to… to cycle it!”
But there was no time for controlled releases. The fluid was soaking through shoes, spattering up legs. The need was immediate, overpowering, a white-hot cramp of lust in the gut.
Stacy felt it sear through her. Her skin burned. Every nerve ending screamed for contact. Her underwear was instantly soaked, a different, personal wetness meeting the invasive fluid. She turned to Rick, and what she saw shattered her last shred of tactical thought. His eyes were completely black with want, his chest heaving. A dark patch of precum was already spreading on his jeans.
There were no words. Just a raw, guttural sound from deep in her throat.
She lunged for him, and he for her. They crashed together, mouths meeting in a savage kiss. Her hands ripped at his belt, his tore at the waistband of her leggings. They didn’t undress. They made frantic, rough openings. His jeans were pushed down just enough; her leggings and underwear were yanked to the side.
He spun her, bending her over a low, twisted beam that might have once been a lat pulldown machine. The metal was warm, almost body-temperature. She braced her hands on it, arching her back, presenting herself to him. Behind her, Rick spat into his palm, slicked himself roughly, and without any further ceremony, he drove into her.
The penetration was a bolt of lightning. She was so wet, so open, so ready from the magic and their earlier coupling and decades of want, that he slid in to the hilt in one brutal, perfect stroke. A scream was torn from her—not of pain, but of sheer, overwhelmed relief. “Fuck! Yes! Right there, Rick, god, right fucking there!”
He set a punishing pace from the first instant, his hips slamming against her ass with a wet, meaty sound that echoed in the clearing. Each thrust punched the air from her lungs. Her inner walls clenched around him in frantic, rhythmic spasms, trying to pull him deeper, to milk him dry. One of his hands fisted in her dark hair, pulling her head back. The other reached around, his fingers finding her clit, rubbing it in rough, frantic circles that matched the jarring rhythm of his fucking.
Around them, the clearing descended into a frenzied, chaotic tableau of coupling.
Kim and Maryam were on the ground, a tangle of limbs and identical faces contorted in pleasure. Kim was on top, riding her twin’s thigh while Maryam arched up, biting Kim’s shoulder to stifle her own cries.
Nearby, Mandy had her back against a pulsating beam, her legs hooked around Ben’s waist as he drove into her, her glasses askew, her mouth open in a silent scream. Calista, her elven composure incinerated, had pulled Franklin down to her, guiding him inside her with an urgency that matched the fire in her veins.
Bruce had Felicity pressed against a more vertical structure, her scholar’s legs wrapped around him as he pounded into her, her litany of whispered observations devolving into choked, frantic pleas. Mei and Cody, Amanda and Jenny—pairings and triads formed and dissolved in the haze, a raw, synaptic circuit completed again and again to bleed off the overwhelming charge.
Portia fought it the longest, her jaw clenched, sweat pouring down her face. But the magic was inexorable. Her eyes met Cody’s for a second—not a look of desire, but of desperate, pragmatic need. He understood, breaking from Amanda for a moment to help, a grim, functional act in the midst of the orgy.
Through it all, Stacy was pinned to the beam by Rick’s relentless, deep thrusts. The world narrowed to the slam of his body into hers, the scorching heat coiling in her core, the filthy, beautiful sounds of their joining. “Harder,” she snarled, pushing back against him. “Don’t you fucking hold back on me now!”
He grunted, his rhythm becoming erratic, savage. “Stacy… I’m gonna…”
“Come inside me!” she demanded, her voice raw. “Fill me up! Do it!”
Her command triggered his collapse. With a broken shout, he came, his release pumping into her in hot, pulsing jets. The sensation of him emptying himself inside her, of being claimed and filled, was the final trigger. Her own climax detonated, a convulsive, shattering wave that rolled from her core out to her fingertips and toes, wrenching a ragged, continuous scream from her throat as she shook uncontrollably around him.
For a few seconds, there was only the sound of ragged breathing and soft, settling fluids.
The overwhelming pressure in the air had lessened. The magic had found its outlets. The frantic need receded, leaving behind a deep, humming exhaustion and the stark reality of their exposed positions.
Stacy pushed herself upright, Rick slipping out of her. She yanked her clothes back into place with trembling hands, the action sharp with anger—anger at Tobias, at the violation, at her own helplessness. She looked toward the throne.
Tobias was leaning forward, his chin resting on his fist, the picture of amused, theatrical boredom. “Adequate. A bit repetitive in technique, but the enthusiasm was palpable.”
Rage, cold and clean, washed away the last of the lustful haze. Stacy’s mind, trained to focus through burn and fatigue, clicked into a singular, clear mode. Assessment. Threat. Solution.
Her hand moved. Not frantically. Smoothly. Efficiently.
She drew the Glock from the small of her back, flipped the safety off in one practiced motion, brought it up in a two-handed grip, and without a word, without a shout, she aimed not at Tobias’s center mass, but at the space just to the right of his head, and squeezed the trigger.
The report was catastrophic in the enclosed clearing. A sharp, definitive crack that had no place in this world of magic and murmured desire.
The bullet sparked off the chrome of the throne’s high back, an inch from Tobias’s temple.
The effect was instantaneous. Tobias flinched violently, his theatrical smirk vanishing into an expression of pure, uncomprehending shock. The sunglasses slipped down his nose for a fraction of a second, revealing eyes that were solid orbs of polished, onyx black, before he snapped them back up.
“You… you dare? With a primitive… a gun?” His mental voice was no longer smooth. It was sputtering, outraged.
“Yeah,” Stacy said, her voice loud and steady in the ringing silence. She kept the gun raised, sights lined up on his face. “I dare. Let her go. Now.”
The bands of energy holding Fat Aunt Jan flickered. The throne’ halo dimmed. Tobias’s form seemed to waver, like a poorly tuned signal. The realm’s constant, low hum stuttered.
He looked from Stacy’s unwavering gaze to the gun, to the spent brass casing gleaming on the rubber tile. A weapon from a world of physics, of cause and effect, of irreversible lead poisoning. It was an absurdity his stolen, fantasy-themed realm had no counter for.
With a soundless snarl of pure frustration, he waved a hand. The energy bands around Jan dissolved. She dropped the few feet to the ground, collapsing in a heap.
Tobias’s form began to dissolve, unraveling into shadow and green mist. “This isn’t over,” his voice echoed, fainter now, dripping with petulant fury. “This realm is mine. You’re just… stains on the upholstery.”
And he was gone.
The oppressive, directive magic in the clearing vanished with him, leaving only the lingering smells of sex, ozone, and gunpowder.
Stacy lowered the gun, her arms trembling slightly from adrenaline. She didn’t holster it. She walked forward, the group staggering to their feet and falling in behind her, towards the crumpled form at the foot of the throne.
Fat Aunt Jan pushed herself up onto her elbows as they approached. Her glazed eyes focused on Stacy, then on the gun, then on the young faces crowding behind her. A weak, wobbly smile touched her lips.
“Hey kiddos,” she croaked. Her voice was raspy, drained. “Took you long enough. And you brought a pistol to a magic fight.” She let out a shaky breath that was almost a laugh. “Fucking brilliant.”
Stacy knelt beside her, holstering the Glock at last. “Can you walk?”
“With a little help,” Jan said, accepting Stacy’s hand and Rick’s to pull her up. She leaned heavily on Rick, her eyes scanning the young adults, her nieces and nephews. Her gaze softened, filling with a weary affection. “God, Stacy, you look so young. And you’ve seen me… like that.” A flush of shame colored her cheeks.
“We’ve all been ‘like that’ for the last half-hour, Aunt Jan,” Mandy said bluntly, adjusting her glasses. “It’s fine.”
Jan managed a fuller smile. “Right. Okay. He was using me as a focus. The throne’s the main conduit, but he’s linked to the whole zone. Breaking his concentration weakens him, but it won’t last.” She looked at Stacy, her green eyes sharpening with returning spirit. “He’s not used to people playing by different rules. The gun was a good call, Coach.”
Stacy nodded. “Where does he go when he’s scared?”
Jan pointed a trembling finger past the throne, to a section of the twisted, organic-mechanical wall behind it. A new archway had formed, dark and swirling with unstable energies. “There. His control room. The real heart. It’ll be worse.”
Stacy looked at the archway, then back at the battered, resolute group. They were disheveled, emotionally raw, but their eyes were clear. They had a direction.
“Then that’s where we go,” Stacy said. “Everyone, catch your breath. Drink some water if you’ve got it. We move in two minutes.”
As the group hurriedly recomposed itself, Fat Aunt Jan leaned closer to Stacy and Rick, her voice dropping. “He’s scared of you. The mundane violence. It’s a hole in his script. Use it.”
Rick squeezed Stacy’s shoulder. The look they shared was no longer just desire, or reunion. It was a pact, forged in sweat and gunfire and shared, brutal necessity.
They turned together towards the new, darker passage.
They turned together towards the new, darker passage.
Miles away, in a chamber of cold iron and groaning hydraulic pumps, the younger Jan O’Connor sighed with deep, uncomplicated pleasure. She wasn’t sure when the party had started, or how she’d arrived in this vast, pillow-strewn lounge, but the details were blissfully irrelevant.
Cool air caressed her bare skin. She was naked, reclining on a divan of velvet, and her friends—her beautiful, attentive friends—were naked too. Mike’s hands, softer than she remembered, kneaded the soles of her feet. Casey, her dark hair wild, painted swirling patterns on Jan’s thigh with a warm, scented oil. Hank nuzzled the inside of her knee, his beard tickling delightfully. Fatima’s elegant mouth traced hot, open-mouthed kisses along her hip bone.
“God, you guys,” Jan slurred, her head lolling back. “This is the best idea we’ve ever had.”
Yukio, her tattoos gleaming, laughed and leaned in to capture Jan’s mouth in a slow, deep kiss. “Just relax, Red. Let us take care of you.”
And Stacy. Her Stacy. She was there, her sculpted athlete’s body radiant, her dark hair loose. She positioned herself between Jan’s thighs, her strong hands spreading them wider. “We’ve got you, Jan,” Stacy murmured, her voice a husky promise. Then she lowered her head, and her tongue found Jan’s clit with unerring, devastating accuracy.
Jan cried out, her back arching off the velvet. The sensation was electric, a direct line of pure, worshipping pleasure. Fingers and mouths explored every inch of her. She was the center of a loving, sensual universe, every touch designed to amplify her ecstasy. She gave herself over to it completely, a smile of pure, dopey rapture on her freckled face.
She did not see the cold iron clamps fastened around her wrists and ankles, pulsing with a faint green light. She did not feel the needle-tipped tubes inserted into the veins inside her elbows, drawing out a shimmering, rose-gold essence. She did not hear the rhythmic thump-pump-whir of the drainage machinery that surrounded her illusionary lounge, or see the stolen energy coursing up cables into a central, buzzing reactor.
The real world was a dull, painful dream. This was her reality.
Tobias observed both scenes from a shifting vantage point of coalesced shadow and static. The feed from Jan’s spell was a torrent of potent, sugary energy, far more vibrant than what he’d siphoned from the older, exhausted version. This was prime vitality, laced with friendship and trust, making the power infinitely more malleable.
He watched Stacy’s group re-enter the forest, their resolve hardened. The gunshot had been a vulgar shock. He focused his will, feeling the reinforced energy from the younger Jan flow into the realm’s substructure. The forest ahead of the interlopers shivered.
“Persistent stains,” he muttered. He couldn’t risk another direct confrontation, not with that primitive ballistic variable. Distance and distraction were the prudent tools.
He gestured, and the essence of stolen fantasy coalesced. From the bark of trees and the neon fungus, figures peeled themselves free. They were tall, two-dimensional, and moved with a stiff, papery rustle. Their bodies were illustrated in the elaborate, antiquated style of royal playing cards: Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs, Spades. They held spears and swords that were merely sharper extensions of their flat forms. A full squad, silent and expressionless.
“Slow them,” Tobias commanded. “Herd them away from the central spire. I require time to fortify.”
The Card Soldiers turned in unison and marched into the undergrowth, their movement a syncopated whisper of cutting edges.
The new passage wasn’t a tunnel, but a throat. The walls, striated muscle and glistening cartilage, contracted and expanded with a wet, rhythmic sound. The air was hot, humid, and carried a coppery taste. The light came from bioluminescent nodes that pulsed in time with the contractions.
“This is fucking disgusting,” Maryam stated, wiping her mouth.
“Anatomically impossible,” Felicity breathed, her fear overridden by academic fascination. “The scale is all wrong for a trachea, unless we’ve been shrunk, but the air composition doesn’t support—”
“Later, Professor,” Portia cut in, her knife held low.
They moved in a tight formation. Stacy and Rick at the front, the Powers twins flanking, the others clustered in the center. Godfrey III trotted calmly, his paws making sticky sounds on the damp floor. The psychic pressure was different here—not a directed arousal, but a dense, throbbing anxiety that pressed on the temples.
After fifty yards, the throat opened into a new chamber. It was a library, but one conceived by a deranged architect. The books were fleshy, bound in what looked like stretched hide, their titles etched in scars. The shelves were rib bones. The ladder was a spinal column.
And it was guarded.
The Card Soldiers emerged from behind the bony shelves, their flat forms perfectly perpendicular, advancing without a sound. The Jack of Clubs led, its illustrated face a caricature of menace.
“What the actual fuck?” Ben whispered.
“Wonderland,” Jenny said, her green eyes wide. “He’s pulling from Wonderland.”
The Jack thrust its spear-blade towards Kim. She parried with her curved sword, but the metal screeched against the magical card-stock, sending up sparks. The force was real, the edge sharp. “They’re solid!” she shouted.
The squad advanced in a line, a wall of suits and numbers. Beth ducked a slashing sword from the Three of Spades and slammed her camera into its mid-section. It bent, then snapped back into shape with a pop. “They’re springy!”
“Aim for the centers! The symbols!” Franklin yelled, hefting a heavy, flesh-bound book and hurling it. It struck the Queen of Diamonds square in the illustrated diamond, and the card soldier crumpled inward, folding into a neat, inactive square.
The fight became a frantic, chaotic mess. The soldiers were not skilled, but they were relentless, numerous, and their two-dimensionality made them hard to grab. Calista incinerated the Two and Three of Hearts with a focused jet of flame, the paper curling to black ash. Bruce used his wrench to pound a Club into pulp. Rick and Stacy fought back-to-back; he used his longer reach to shove and disrupt, she used precise, brutal kicks to knock them off-balance into the paths of others’ attacks.
A Card Soldier—the Seven of Swords—got inside Mandy’s guard. Its blade sliced across her upper arm. She cried out, more in surprise than pain, and Ben roared, tackling the card and driving it into a bony shelf where it splintered.
“Mandy!” Stacy barked. “Status!”
“It’s shallow! I’m fine!” Mandy lied, clamping a hand over the bleeding cut. Cody was there in an instant, tearing a strip from his shirt to bind it.
Godfrey III sat, unperturbed, as a Five of Clubs marched past him. “Rhese ritzy riff-raff,” his Scooby-voice grumbled in their minds. “Risrupting our ralk.”
The last Card Soldier, the King of Hearts, was cleaved in two by a furious, scissoring strike from Kim and Maryam working in unison. The pieces fluttered to the moist floor.
Silence returned, broken by panting. The chamber was littered with folded, torn, and burned playing cards. The illusory library seemed to shrink back from them.
“They weren’t trying to kill us,” Portia analyzed, breathing hard. “They were trying to delay, to corral. Tobias is repositioning. He’s afraid of a direct fight.”
Stacy nodded, holstering her gun which she hadn’t drawn. The close quarters had been wrong for it. “He’s buying time. Which means we don’t have any.” She looked at the multiple arched exits leading from the library. “Which way?”
Fat Aunt Jan, leaning on Rick, closed her eyes. She was still weak, but the connection to the realm, though painful, was a thread she could faintly feel. She pointed a trembling finger towards an archway framed by what looked like fused, petrified tongues. “There. The pull is strongest there. But it’s… different. Fresher. Hotter. That’s where he’s taken her.”
The group consolidated. Mandy’s arm was bandaged. Adrenaline still pulsed through them, a cleaner cousin to the realm’s earlier influence. A new, grim understanding settled. Tobias had their Jan. The real one. And he was pumping her full of nightmares made to look like dreams.
“Let’s go,” Stacy said, her voice leaving no room for debate. “We run until we hit his new wall. Then we break it.”
In her velvet dream, Jan gasped as a second, shattering orgasm ripped through her. Stacy’s tongue was a miracle. Fatima’s fingers were inside her, curling perfectly. She was babbling, praising them, her vision starbursts of color.
In the iron room, the drainage machines hummed at a fever pitch. The tubes glowed. The reactor flared.
Tobias, shaping the new fortress walls from solidified fear and stolen joy, felt the surge and smiled. He could see Stacy’s group choosing the correct path. Let them come. The fortress around the dreaming girl would be a labyrinth of their own worst impulses. Every step would feed him more.
He settled in to watch, a distant, cruel god fine-tuning his trap. The card soldiers had been the preface. The next chapter would be written in sweat, blood, and screaming, blissful delusion.