Chapter 8: Fists of Fury
The corridors of the Pleasure Prison shook. Dust rained from the mirrored ceiling, distorting reflections into screaming mosaics. The golden dome around Stacy’s group flickered, then held firm against a sudden wave of nausea-inducing purple energy that washed over it. From somewhere deep in the labyrinth, a roar of pure rage echoed—a sound of crumbling stone and twisting metal.
“The others are making their move,” Rick said, his hand going to the knife at his belt.
Stacy nodded, checking the chamber of her 9mm with a practiced snap. “Then we make ours. The throne room. Now.”
Cooper, his color back, his eyes clear, cracked his knuckles. “I owe that fucker a conversation.”
Bruce hefted his wrench. “Lead on, Coach.”
They moved as a unit, the dome contracting around them like a bubble of pure air in a toxic sea. Godfrey III trotted ahead, his tiny nose twitching. “Rhis way,” his Scooby-voice muttered in their minds. “Rhe rreaming is rtrongest.”
The ogre’s club smashed into the wall where Calista’s head had been a half-second before, showering her with pulverized stone. She didn’t flinch. Silver fire traced a arc through the damp air as she spun, her bare foot connecting with the beast’s knee. Bone cracked. The ogre howled, swinging backhanded. She ducked, the massive fist whistling over her silver hair, and came up inside its guard again.
This time, she didn’t just burn. She grasped. Her hands, wreathed in cool, hungry flame, sank into the matted fur on its chest. The fire didn’t spread; it focused, drilling inwards like a laser. The ogre’s bellow cut off into a wet gurgle as the inferno found its heart. Its single tusk dropped from its mouth, clattering on the stone. It teetered, its glowing eyes dimming, and fell backwards with a ground-shaking thud.
Calista stepped back, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps, the silver light around her hands dying. She didn’t look at the corpse. She looked down the tunnel where Franklin, Mandy, Ben, and Bob had disappeared. “Hurry,” she whispered to the empty air, then turned to guard their retreat.
Franklin skidded to a halt, Mandy and Ben bumping into him from behind. Bob, clutched in Ben’s arms like a frightened child, pointed a trembling finger.
Before them was not a room, but a nexus of tortured space. The walls curved inward like a giant, ossified ribcage. The floor was a single, polished sheet of black obsidian that reflected a night sky full of wrong, pulsing stars. In the center, on a dais of fused, groaning barbells, sat a throne made from the warped, still-screaming faces of Tobias’s victims, their mouths frozen in endless silent pleas.
And floating above the throne, rotating slowly, was the Orb.
It was deceptively simple: a perfect sphere of milky white, about the size of a grapefruit, emitting a soft, gentle light that seemed to repel the room’s inherent vileness. It was the only clean, whole thing in the entire dimension.
“The Orb,” Bob breathed, a tear tracing a clean path through the grime on his cheek. “My beautiful Orb.”
“Don’t just stand there,” a voice hissed from the shadows to their left.
They spun. Portia stood there, her clothes torn, a bloody scratch across her cheek. At her feet lay the unconscious form of Jenny, the violet energy whips gone from her hands. Amanda and Cody were knelt beside her, Cody holding Jenny’s head in his lap, Amanda stroking her hair.
“Tobias’s hold on her broke a minute ago,” Portia said, not taking her eyes off the Orb. “Something’s overwhelming him. Distracting him. Now’s our chance.”
“How do we get it?” Mandy asked, eyeing the vast, exposed space between them and the dais.
“Very carefully,” Franklin said. But before he could move, the air in front of the throne shimmered.
Tobias appeared. Not in his muscular, spiky-haired human form. This was a thing of jagged shadows and screaming mouths, a silhouette of concentrated hunger. His sunglasses were gone, revealing eyes that were pits of swirling, sickly purple light. He reached a clawed, insubstantial hand toward the Orb.
“No!” Bob shrieked, leaping from Ben’s arms. He scurried forward, a tiny, green flash of defiance. “Mine! You stole it! You made me small!”
Tobias’s form swiveled. A tendril of shadow lashed out, knocking Bob across the room. He hit the obsidian floor with a sickening crack and lay still.
“Bob!” Mandy cried.
The shadow-thing that was Tobias let out a wet, rattling laugh. It was a sound that promised infinite, empty consumption. It turned back to the Orb.
Amanda looked from Tobias, to the Orb, to her unconscious sister. Her face, usually so cheerful, hardened into a mask of furious determination. She grabbed Cody’s face, pulling him to her. The kiss wasn’t gentle or sweet. It was a claim, a defiance. Her tongue pushed into his mouth, greedy and desperate. Cody responded in kind, his hands sliding under her shirt, cupping her breasts, pinching her nipples through the fabric of her bra.
“What the hell are they doing?” Ben muttered, horrified.
“Fighting,” Portia said, a grim understanding dawning on her features.
Amanda broke the kiss, panting. “He feeds on stolen pleasure,” she gasped, her voice rough. “So give him nothing. Give me everything.” She yanked Cody’s pants open, freeing his already hard cock. There was no finesse. She shoved him back against the rib-like wall, hiked her skirt up around her waist, and guided him into her with a single, brutal thrust.
“Ah, fuck!” Cody cried out, his head hitting the stone.
Amanda rode him with a frantic, piston-like rhythm, each impact a slap of flesh against flesh that echoed in the vast chamber. “You want to watch, you hungry bastard?” she screamed at the shadowy form of Tobias, who had paused, his attention wavering. “You want to feed on this? It’s not for you! It’s for me! It’s for him! It’s for my sister!”
Her cries were raw, unfiltered. “Harder, Cody! Fuck me! Make me come! Don’t you dare hold back!”
Cody obeyed, grabbing her hips and driving up into her, his own groans joining hers. It was anger and fear and love transmuted into pure, violent physicality. A visible wave of warm, gold-tinted energy—the opposite of Tobias’s hollow purple—began to emanate from them, pushing against the room’s oppressive atmosphere. It was real. It was theirs. And it was utterly useless to a parasite who craved only what was taken.
Tobias flinched, his shadowy form rippling as if buffeted by a strong wind.
From the opposite archway, a thunderous noise grew. The clash of steel, the thud of running feet, and a chaotic, joyful shouting.
“For the Zone! For the fun run!”
“Liberate the barbells!”
“Death to the gains goblin!”
Kim Powers burst into the throne room first, her curved sword a silver arc as she disemboweled a slavering, dog-like creature made of knotted muscle. Behind her came Mai Harata, who vaulted over Kim’s shoulder to deliver a spinning kick to another creature’s head. Maryam followed, swinging a reclaimed weight plate like a discus, smashing a third monster into paste. And behind them, led by Beth who was pointing and shouting photographic instructions, charged an army.
They were short. They were stout. They were dressed in an odd assortment of workout gear, many holding kettlebells or resistance bands like weapons. They had the cheerful, determined faces of hobbits on a grand adventure.
“The exercise enthusiasts,” Franklin breathed, awe breaking through his calm. “Bob’s lost clients.”
“Transformed,” Ben said, understanding dawning. “Tobias turned them into… that.”
“And now they’re pissed,” Mandy finished, a wild grin spreading across her face as she watched the horde pour into the room, overwhelming Tobias’s lesser minions with sheer, confused enthusiasm.
High above, in a chamber sealed by living, breathing latex that pulsed with a captive heartbeat, two women held hands. One was 26, her red hair vibrant against the glistening black walls. The other was twenty years older, her body softer, her eyes holding the same fiery spark.
“They’re all in it now, Red,” Fat Aunt Jan whispered, her face slick with sweat.
“Then we give them everything we’ve got,” present-day Jan grunted back.
They closed their eyes. In their mind’s eye, they saw their friends. Stacy, Rick, Bruce, Felicity, Cooper, Godfrey. Franklin, Mandy, Ben, Portia, Amanda, Cody. Kim, Mai, Maryam, Beth. Calista, standing alone in a tunnel. They poured their power, the uncomplicated, joyous, and fiercely protective magic of the Green Moon, not as a seduction, but as a shield. A blanket of pure, unassailable comfort and defiant love settled over each of them, fortifying their wills, burning away the last vestiges of doubt and fear Tobias’s realm had sown.
The golden dome around Stacy’s group flared brighter than ever, becoming solid, impervious. The remaining whispers from the walls fell silent. The path before them cleared, the labyrinth unwinding itself in a straight, urgent line towards the epicenter of the conflict.
Stacy felt it like a second wind. “Jan,” she murmured, a smile touching her lips. Then she ran.
They exploded into the throne room from the opposite side just as Tobias, reeling from Amanda and Cody’s defiant lovemaking and besieged by the hobbit army, finally turned from the Orb, his form solidifying into the spiky-haired, muscular man with the demonic eyes. His control was slipping, his attention fractured in a dozen directions.
He saw Stacy. His purple eyes widened in recognition, in fury.
She didn’t break stride. She charged across the obsidian floor, her boots pounding a war-drum rhythm. Bruce and Rick fanned out beside her, Felicity and Cooper behind. Godfrey III was a white blur at her heels.
Tobias raised a hand, tendrils of purple energy coalescing. But he was too slow, too distracted.
Stacy launched herself the last ten feet, a flying tackle that would have made her high school rugby coach proud. Her shoulder connected with his midsection with a sound like a sack of wet cement hitting concrete. They went down in a tangle of limbs.
His sunglasses flew off, skittering across the floor. The demonic eyes blazed with hate. He swung a fist, catching her on the cheekbone. White light exploded behind her eyes.
She didn’t let go. She coiled her legs, rolled, and came up on top of him, pinning him with her weight. She drew her fist back, every muscle in her sculpted arm corded with tension.
She saw Cooper, glowing with the energy they had given him, snatch the Orb from the air.
She saw Rick and Bruce dive onto Tobias’s thrashing arms, pinning them.
She saw Felicity, her face a mask of academic focus, carve a glowing, intricate rune into Tobias’s heaving chest with the tip of her dagger.
Tobias screamed, a sound that was less a voice and more the shrieking tear of reality.
Stacy brought her fist down.
Her knuckles, hardened from years of lifting weights and holding focus mitts, connected with his jaw. The impact traveled up her arm, a bright, clean shock of pain. Skin split. Blood, dark and thick, sprayed across her fist and his face. His head snapped to the side with a crunch.
He stared up at her, his purple eyes swimming with stunned confusion. The parasite, the consumer, the thief of time and will, had never been hit before. Not like this. Not by something so direct, so real, so fucking human.
Cooper, his face alight with a terrible joy, stepped forward. He raised the Orb high above his head. It pulsed with a pure, cleansing white light.
“Bob says ‘hello,’ you son of a bitch,” Cooper snarled, and slammed the Orb down onto Tobias’s forehead.
For a second, nothing happened.
Then, the white light poured into Tobias, not through his skin, but through the cracks in his very being. He began to unravel. Not bleeding, not burning, but deleting. His form pixelated at the edges, dissolving into motes of nothingness that screamed as they vanished. The process spread inward from the point of impact, a silent, terrifying erasure.
His mouth opened in a final, soundless curse.
And then he was gone. The throne room was silent save for the heavy breathing of the victors and the distant, confused cheers of the hobbit army.
The throne room was silent save for the heavy breathing of the victors and the distant, confused cheers of the hobbit army. Then, a weak groan cut through the quiet. Bob the Goblin stirred where he’d been flung against the obsidian floor. Cooper, the Orb still glowing in his hands, hurried over and knelt beside him.
“Here,” Cooper said, his voice thick. He placed the Orb in Bob’s small, trembling hands.
The moment Bob’s fingers curled around the familiar, warm surface, a visible wave of energy pulsed outwards. Color flooded back into his greenish skin. His bat-like ears perked up. The milky white light of the Orb flared, then softened to a gentle, steady glow. Bob sat up, cradling the artifact to his chest like a lost child.
“My mind,” he whispered, his voice no longer a squeaky caricature, but measured, intelligent, and filled with regret. “It’s… clear. The fog is gone.” He looked around at the shattered throne, the confused hobbits, the exhausted, bloodied friends. His enormous eyes welled. “What have I allowed? What did he make me do?”
“It’s over now,” Stacy said, wiping Tobias’s dark blood from her split knuckles.
“It’s not,” Bob said, climbing to his feet. He held the Orb aloft. Its light intensified, radiating out in concentric, cleansing rings. Where the light touched the warped, screaming faces of the throne, they softened, their expressions smoothing into peace before dissolving into mist. Where it touched the short, cheerful hobbits, they began to change. Their stature lengthened. Their workout-gear clothes morphed back into modern athletic wear—leggings, tank tops, running shoes. Confusion gave way to dawning memory and bewildered recognition in human eyes.
“I will restore everyone,” Bob vowed, his voice gaining strength. “Every soul he twisted. Every life he stole. Starting here.”
From a corridor to their left, two figures emerged, leaning on each other and laughing breathlessly. Jan, the 26-year-old, her fiery red hair plastered to her forehead with sweat, and Fat Aunt Jan, her face flushed with effort but her green eyes sparkling with triumph.
“Holy shit, Stace,” the younger Jan said, her grin wild. “You really know how to make an entrance.”
Fat Aunt Jan looked at the dissipating throne, the changing people, and then at Stacy. A profound pride warmed her features. “The Stacy from my time is a force of nature,” she said. “But she couldn’t have done any better than you just did.”
Fat Aunt Jan then scanned the room, her eyes landing on Jenny, who was now sitting up, supported by Cody and Amanda, looking dazed but herself. “There’s my other favorite niece,” she murmured, her tone shifting to one of gentle concern. She walked over, crouching before Jenny. “How’s the head, kiddo?”
Jenny managed a weak smile. “Feels like I went ten rounds with a possessed disco ball. But I’m okay.” She rubbed her temples. “He was… inside my thoughts. Using my illusions.”
“Every sorcerer worth their salt gets puppeted by an evil thing eventually,” Fat Aunt Jan said with a wry laugh, smoothing Jenny’s hair. “It’s a rite of passage.” Her smile faded slightly. “Your mother will still insist on therapy, though. Brigid never could stand a messy magical education.”
Just then, Calista walked into the throne room. Her silver hair was perfectly arranged, not a strand out of place. Her clothes were untouched by soot or blood. She smelled faintly of ozone and lavender. She glanced at the charred, fallen ogre visible in the hallway behind her and then at the group. “Is it concluded?”
Stacy stared at her for a beat, then shook her head with a faint smile. She turned back to Bob, who was watching the transformation of his former clients with tearful joy. “Bob. We need to talk business.”
He looked up at her, hopeful and ashamed.
“If we’re going to be partners in reopening this place,” Stacy continued, her ‘Coach’ voice firm and clear, “I will insist on major security upgrades. No more un-vetted entities. No more dimensional backdoors. A full, magical security audit. My people will oversee it.”
Bob nodded vigorously, clutching the Orb. “Yes. Of course. Anything. I never wanted… this.” He gestured at the fading remnants of the Pleasure Prison. “I just wanted people to enjoy the burn.”
Portia checked a slender, complex device on her wrist. She let out a long sigh. “The temporal alignment is stabilizing. It’s time.” She addressed the group from the future. “Mandy, Beth, Ben, Cody, Franklin, Calista, Mai, Kim, Maryam, Jenny, Amanda, Bruce, Felicity, Godfrey, Rick. We need to go back. Now.”
A weight settled in Stacy’s chest. She looked at Rick. He was watching her, his expression a painful mix of relief and impending loss.
“Portia,” Stacy said, her voice quieter. “Can I have a minute? Alone with him? The Rick in my time is… an infant.”
Portia pinched the bridge of her nose, shaking her head in exasperation. Fat Aunt Jan and the younger Jan exchanged a look and, in unison, made shooing motions with their hands. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, let them have their minute,” Fat Aunt Jan chuckled. “They’ve earned it.”
“It doesn’t really matter for a time traveler,” Portia conceded, her tone grudging. “Five minutes. The vortex won’t hold longer.”
Stacy didn’t wait. She grabbed Rick’s hand and pulled him through the nearest archway, finding a small, windowless chamber that might have been a guard’s nook. The moment the door shut, she pushed him against the wall.
His mouth met hers with equal hunger. There was no gentle lead-up, no soft exploration. This was a frantic, physical confirmation of survival, of a future promised but deferred. Her hands ripped at the buckle of his belt. His fingers hooked into the waistband of her pants and underwear, yanking them down her thighs.
She kicked them off, and he freed himself from his own clothes. He lifted her, her back against the cool stone, and she wrapped her legs around his waist. She guided him into her with a single, desperate thrust, biting down on his shoulder to stifle her cry. He was already hard, and she was wet, still slick from their earlier coupling, but this was different. This was goodbye.
He fucked her like it was the last thing he’d ever do, driving into her with a pace that was almost punishing. The room filled with the raw, wet sounds of their joining, the slap of skin on skin, their ragged, shared breaths. She clawed at his back, her nails leaving red trails. “Don’t stop,” she growled into his ear. “Don’t you fucking stop.”
“I love you,” he gasped, his rhythm fracturing. “I’ll be there. I’ll be waiting. Every day.”
“I know,” she said, and then her orgasm ripped through her, violent and consuming, her inner muscles clamping around him in fierce, rhythmic pulses. He followed with a choked shout, spilling into her, his body shuddering against hers. They stayed like that, locked together, for a handful of thundering heartbeats, breathing each other’s air.
They separated slowly, dressed in silence, not meeting each other’s eyes. Words were useless now. He touched her cheek, his thumb brushing the cut on her lip. Then he turned and walked out to join the others.
Stacy leaned against the wall for a moment, centering herself. She fixed her clothes, smoothed her hair. When she walked back into the throne room, her face was composed, all business.
Portia was ushering the group from the future into a shimmering, vertical tear in reality that looked like a curtain of liquid mercury. Rick glanced back once, his eyes finding hers, and then he stepped through and was gone. The tear sealed with a soft pop.
The younger Jan walked over, handing Stacy a canteen of water. “Worth it?” she asked, her voice knowing.
Stacy took a long drink, the water cleansing the taste of blood and sweat and sex from her mouth. She looked at the spot where Rick had vanished. Then she turned to Bob, who was watching her expectantly.
“He is,” Stacy said, her voice absolute. “He truly is.” She squared her shoulders. “Now, Bob. Let’s talk about liability waivers and non-human entity screening protocols for your clientele.”