Chay Catena speaks.

I awoke with a start when I heard strange noises behind me and when I got off the bench and looked around, I couldn’t believe what I saw.

They were at it, right here under the bright lights, in this strange place and they had no idea or a care I was even there. I thought of leaving, looking away but I couldn’t because it was just the strangest thing you’d ever see.

He was sitting on the bench, and she was kneeling across him, they were kissing. He was tearing her dress and pushing it off her shoulders and she, in turn, was ripping through the burned fabric of his clothes and they just fluttered to the ground in pieces.

But that wasn’t the strange thing.

It looked once her clothes were off as though her back wasn’t real, not skin, but layers of different coloured lights and yet she was solid enough, sounding real enough, moaning through the kissing. Her hands were leaving streaks of colours on him and he as well started to turn into a mesh of light.

I stood and stared and watched them with something in between excitement, and horror, and jealousy too because whatever I thought I could give her, it could be nothing ever like this.

Imagine fucking a demon.

She came first and I thought she would explode with it, and I mean that exactly as in explode, the lights racing around her and up her spine were so bright I had to turn my eyes away. I could hear hear her fourfold – her actual voice, calling his name, then again inside my head with such a vengeance attached to it I nearly came myself right there and then, through the lightshow that I could still see clearly enough straight through my closed lids and finally, pulsing all through my body like a sandstorm that could get inside you right through your skin.

Then he started to come as well and that was it. I was on the floor, thrashing around as I got his sensations added on to hers and between them, they created a firestorm a hundred times as bright and a hundred times as ferocious as that house they set on fire when they’d fought.

I must have lost consciousness and came to a bit later, with a wet patch in my own pants and my eyes bugging from my head. I was alone in the place and all there was left to remind me that I hadn’t dreamt the whole thing was a heap of burned bits of cloth, black and scattered, near the bench where they had been. I picked myself off the floor and opened the door.

Outside, it was grey already.

Dawn on its way.

And ahead, the long ride to Manoranta.

I grimaced and shook my head.

I don’t know how much of this I can take before I just strip off the ring, change my name and enlist somewhere quiet. Perhaps I should do so right now. I still have three gold coins and some coppers, more than I have ever had before, and a damn fine sword. Hell, I can even get them to give me horse, Regent’s Champion and all of that, and ride straight out of here.

The thought is pleasant and I keep it for a while longer before I close the door of the round building behind me and start my weary way to find Solland and use his quarters for a wash and a shave; bum another uniform jacket off someone.

Mine got toasted in her bedroom.

----- End Book 2 ----